Picking the right tools for the job: personas, scenarios and Patron Driven Acquisition (PDA)

The following chapter will reflect on the i2c2 2014 workshop titled “How would Theresa May respond if all available copies of a book she urgently needed were out on loan? Exploring the use of PDA to deliver first class and super quick customer service in an academic library”. The intent of the workshop was to re-purpose web design tools such as personas and scenarios to explore the ways in which PDA can positively disrupt some of the Library’s most traditional values and processes in supporting different types of Library user. In this chapter we will introduce the PDA model used at the University of Sussex and explain how it has been implemented to meet our users’ needs. In addition to discussing the benefits and challenges of using PDA as an innovative tool for collection development (both at Sussex and at the different institutions of workshop participants), the chapter will also discuss the relative merits and limitations of using personas and scenarios as tools for designing effective user-centred services. The chapter will give practical guidance on how personas can be used in a workshop situation to explore the potential of services such as PDA (giving examples from the i2c2 session), along with what we found to be the pros and cons of taking such an approach.