DePauw University has routinely used faculty collaboration, book reviews, patron-input and other conventional methods to make informed selections for its collections. Like most academic libraries however, there is still a need to re-assess our operations and adopt newer tools to alleviate the rising cost of books. One of such options is Patron-Driven Acquisitions (PDA). This is in part a direct response to the large number of loan requests and non-circulating titles. The PDA uses periodic data to identify quality books of an interdisciplinary nature that were frequently requested via inter-library loan (ILL). For the past three years, De Pauw University libraries have strengthened its collections using the PDA approach. In order to ensure that selection is limited to only quality, cross-disciplinary titles linked to subjects taught and researched, only faculty and student requests of print materials were used in this initial project.. This paper will analyze and discuss with other conference participants, the benefits and drawbacks of DePauw University’s use of PDA over the last three years.
