The Patron-Driven Acquisition Model, at University of Wisconsin--Madison, offers an interesting glimpse into a new theory behind acquiring electronic resources (esp. electronic books or similar resources) for academic libraries. Personally, I can see this as a very good model for electronic books and not just online journal articles.
While the 1-year evaluation outlines the perceived successes and failures of the test program at the University, it would be great to see pilot program results from a trial in a public library.
It was interesting to read about 45% of the total cost came from what the paper describes as "auto purchases," which are derived by a specific number of browses for a specific amount of time. It would be interesting to see more information on time spent on each of these "auto purchases" in order to know more about how each was used.
I was also intrigued by reading this program seemed to be a money-saving effort. The value section reported the University "paid about 26% of combined list prices to facilitate access." This estimation seems like a tremendous savings. It would be interesting to see more contrast and comparison to budgetary expenditures from non-pilot programs or similar programs at other universities.
Two other interesting points of analysis for this program came from the breakdown of sum of cost by publisher. Springer, obviously, had the highest sum of cost. It would be nice to read some follow-up information regarding whether this correlated with the types of articles being downloaded (for example, does Springer offer the most articles on popular subjects like Science and engineering?) In addition to that, it was interesting to see the breakdown of prices related to auto-purchased materials broken down by subject area.
One of the positive aspects outlined by this program was the ability for the library to provide materials based on actual usage, as opposed to guesswork. This could be supported by more specific data, though.
The other positive aspects of this program outlined by this paper were impressive. The negative aspects were either minimal or could possibly be fixed through experience and user feedback. The funniest part about the "Challenges" section was the statement about some people preferring print material.
Finally, I think the road map at the end providing information about the next steps in the program are helpful.
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