This retrospective study of the usage and breadth of user- vs. pre-selected ebook collections across 5 libraries, using the EBL demand-driven system, will help libraries anticipate the effect of adding a patron-driven component to their monograph acquisition strategy.

Library lore includes a cautionary tale of a few users in a patron-driven acquisitions pilot who spent a large part of the library budget on ebooks about bananas. This story and others like it have been used to perpetuate the argument that patron-driven acquisition will inevitably result in collections that don’t appeal to a broad audience or are otherwise undesirable. The authors apply post-acquisition holdings and multi-year usage data to test the hypothesis that patron-selected versus library-selected collections have different usage and subject profiles.