The selective tradition, the role of romance fiction donations, and public library practices in New South Wales, Australia

Publication year
2020
Journal
Information Research
Volume
25.2
Comment

Note that a version of this is included in Veros's thesis (2020), details for which are elsewhere in the database, where it is noted that "There is a typographical error in this article [...]. The text should read that there are 102 local councils rather than 112."

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Results. The practices used to select and acquire romance fiction differ significantly from those used with general fiction. In particular, since most romance fiction titles appear to be acquired through donation, they cannot be considered to be included in the selective tradition.
Conclusions. There is a misalignment between the interests of the community whose enthusiasm for romance fiction make it a huge part of the publishing market and the practices of public librarians in including these books in library collections.

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All of the librarians interviewed in this study acknowledge that their libraries accept romance fiction donations to build their collections. However, these books are to some extent prevented from being fully included in the fiction collection from the differences in acquisitions processes and cataloguing records. As the findings have shown, donations of romance fiction books are not treated as having the same value in the collection as purchased fiction, and quite often are not treated the same as other types of donated books.

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through an interrogation of selection and acquisition practices, we see that in the case of romance fiction at least, the values expressed in the collection development policies are not implemented in a consistent manner. The evidence indicates that the practices for implementing collection development policies tend to present literary fiction as everyday reading whilst excluding romance fiction. This happens in spite of the fact that the collection development policies themselves do reflect the importance of building a collection relevant to popular culture or everyday culture, as is seen in the emphasis on meeting the needs of the library’s community.