Bibliographic record
Abstract
Purpose – As patron-driven acquisition (PDA) becomes increasingly popular we must consider its impact on academic libraries and their communities of researchers. Of particular interest is how successfully e-book PDA programs serve humanities scholars, as traditional representations of their information-seeking behaviours suggest that e-books are largely unsuitable for their needs. More recent investigations into the research practices of humanists suggest that this perception is not completely accurate, making it important to assess the potential fit between PDA and the humanities based on available information. This paper seeks to address these issues. Design/methodology/approach – Based on published investigations into the information-seeking behaviours of humanities scholars, e-books in libraries, and e-book PDA programs the author determined ways in which e-book PDA programs intersect with the needs and practices of humanists, as well as the points of disconnect between them. Findings – Humanities scholars demonstrate many information-seeking behaviours that suggest they can be well-served by e-book PDA programs. Their growing acceptance of electronic resources, significant reliance on the monographic form, heavy use of library catalogues, and the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of their work mean that e-books and PDA programs can be viewed as compatible with their needs even though print remains their preferred format. Originality/value – While some note the number and monetary value of humanities titles purchased through PDA, no authors have assessed the nature of PDA programs in relation to the information-seeking behaviours of humanities scholars. Such analysis is necessary to get an accurate picture of how well the humanities will be served by PDA.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.008 | 0.033 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.020 | 0.013 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.012 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.029 | 0.003 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".