I was fortunate to attend the VALA conference last week. As I process my notes I will post relevant items to Counterculture for possible wider interest. These notes are from the ProQuest eBooks Forum at the conference. Four libraries shared their experiences on eBook purchasing which may be of wider interest.
I was asked what does DDA mean – apologies for using a lot of jargon in these notes. DDA or Demand-driven acquisitions involves loading MARC records from a Vendor (in our case YBP) into the Library’s catalogue against a predetermined Profile. This Profile describes subjects that are relevant to University of Canterbury learning, teaching and research. Users discover these records through browsing the Library Catalogue or via Summon. If further access is needed, a Library’s DDA access permissions define whether the user can access the eBook by automatic (or immediate) purchase (cost charged to the Library), mediated purchase (where a librarian must approve the order before a user can access the resource), or non-mediated short term loan (STL). At Canterbury for most of our DDA eBooks, we provide automatic short-term loans up to 3 times against any title. If there is demand after the 3rd loan, we make a decision whether to purchase the ebook outright for unlimited access, or whether we offer alternate access such as Interloan as another option depending on the need.