2012 top ten trends in academic libraries

A review of the trends and issues affecting academic libraries in higher education by the ACRL (Association of College and Research Libraries) Research Planning and Review Committee

The ACRL Research Planning and Review Committee is responsible for creating and updating a continuous and dynamic environmental scan for the association that encompasses trends in academic librarianship, higher education, and the broader environment, e.g., economic, demographic, political; providing an annual environmental scan “snapshot.” The committee also is responsible for identifying the ACRL “top ten trends” for release every two years.

The list of the ten most important trends perceived covers:

• communicating value
• data curation
• digital preservation
• higher education
• information technology
• mobile environments
• patron drive e-book acquisition
• scholarly communication
• staffing
• user behaviours and expectations

There is also an extensive bibliography.

Full text (HTML)
Full text (PDF 10pp)

---

Individual title requests in PDA collections: A small university library’s experience

an article by Debbi Dinkins is (duPont-Ball Library, Stetson University) published in College and Research Libraries News Volume 73 Number 5 (May 2012)

Opening paragraph

Patron driven acquisition (PDA) is nothing new to academic libraries, especially for the print format. Libraries have been using patron requests to help drive collection building for years, through interlibrary loan (ILL) suggestions and requests for acquisition. More formalized PDA programs, such as that at the Purdue University library, fill ILL requests with purchased books. Librarians concluded that they could buy books for about the same cost as obtaining them through ILL and the books tended to circulate more than regularly acquired books.

---