Purchase of Materials:
Subject to this Policy and legal requirements, the County Librarian has responsibility for and discretion on all materials selected for the Library.
Suggestion for Purchase:
The Library shall encourage and give serious consideration to all acquisition suggestions made by library users.
Selection Criteria:
All material, whether purchased or donated, should be considered in terms of selection criteria. The process of appraising materials takes in account the degree of importance each of these guidelines has when it is applied to a specific piece of material under consideration. Clearly, an item need not meet all criteria to be acceptable. Materials purchased or donated to the County Library must provide or fulfill:
- Insight into human and social conditions
- Relevance to present and potential information, educational and leisure-time needs
- Importance as a document of the times
- Scarcity of information in subject area
- Permanent value to the collection
- Reputation and/or significance of the author
- Appearance in book selection aids and attention by critics
- Judgements made by professional librarians, plus the evaluation of qualified book reviews in national magazines and/or reviews found in professional library Literature, provide a balance of opinion and a basis for selection
- Public demand
- The quantity and kind of requests submitted by the public are always taken into consideration. Best sellers are typically purchased because of high reader demand.
- Availability of materials in other libraries, or elsewhere in the community
- Price requirements.