4. Formats
Published material comes in a wide range of sizes, shapes, and formats, many of which are designed to be eye-catching in a commercial bookshop setting. Not all published material is suited for the public library environment as not all material published is robust enough to last multiple loans. This must be taken into consideration as part of the selection process. Unsuitable formats may include items which are very large, very small, irregular in shape, flimsy, fragile, stapled or ring bound, contain ‘product samples’ such as craft supplies or cosmetics, or are designed for a single user to fill in questions or complete puzzles.
Books, audiobooks, magazines, films, and music and virtually all content previously purchased by libraries in physical formats are now often available in digital form. Libraries Tasmania will consider acquiring digital or electronic versions of any item purchased in a physical format, using standard selection criteria, where a digital version is available and where the budget allows.
Large print format books provide access to reading for many visually impaired or elderly clients for example. Libraries Tasmania acquires a wide range of titles in different genres and subject areas for the general lending collection area and Home Library Service. We do not acquire Braille or DAISY format books, leaving this to specialist vision support services.
All non-book formats are purchased on a ‘basic compatibility’ model, for example Libraries Tasmania currently purchases DVD but not Blu-ray, PS4 but not PS5. Obsolete formats are deselected from the collections once supply is unavailable and demand has ended, for example we no longer hold cassettes, VHS or CDROMs in our lending collection areas.