PDA Reflection

Conceptually I like the idea of PDA. Less so for the patron driven aspect, and more so that purchasing follows demand. The PDA vendor that I liked the most was EBL which was mainly because they pushed short term loans as well as purchasing on demand.

My favorite part of the PDA vendors was the ability to search the vendor’s database yet you were only charged if item was leased or purchased. Other things I liked about EBL specifically was simultaneous users, and ability to download to mobile devices.

Aspects of PDA I have concerns about is on one hand it attempts to librarian proof the purchasing, and on the other hand it takes a highly skilled technician to set up the initial filtering. If it is not set up correctly it could be very costly, such as not accounting for new publishers.

I thought Barbara Hamel made a good point that it may not be a bad thing to pay out more with short term loans over purchasing, that is more or less what you are doing with a subscription model. With that said, I like the automation as the default setting, but still think there is an important role for librarian intervention.

Last summer I reviewed Brain Hive which was a PDA directed at the school market. I thought it showed lots of promise, but the site is down so maybe it never made a go of it. Similar to PDA’s discussed when a patron checked out the book 99 cents was charged. Money was made with multiple patrons checking out a book simultaneously, but the librarian had the opportunity to purchase high demand eBooks. As a model for eBook delivery I am optimistic about PDA.