Give The Patrons What They Want

Interesting article: I’d never heard of patron-driven acquisition before, but the basic idea is one that other services could borrow:

[L]ibraries will load a selection of records for potential titles into the library's catalog. When a user discovers an item of interest, they'll be able to explore the title at no initial cost to the library. After a certain amount of use, however, a purchase is triggered, and that title is added to library's collection, charged as either a single-user access price (usually list price for an ebook), or the higher multi-user access price, depending on the preference of the library and on the availability restrictions put in place by the publishers. </em>Crucially, the process is automated and seamless to the user, who is unaware of the transaction.</blockquote>