The use of additional specific selection criteria that relates to resource format considerations is very important to ensure that all students have access to the library collection. It is only through outlining specific selection criteria that the school library can ensure that access is carefully considered and implemented.
For example, a criteria would outline how fiction ebooks are selected. In my context, I know that we subscribe to Wheelers books but I don’t know how it is decided which ebooks and audiobooks we acquire. We definitely have more hard copy titles of fiction than ebooks. Perhaps selection of ebooks would be based on popularity (books sold, #BookTok), awards, teacher requests.
Another consideration would need to be that the ebooks must cover all levels of difficulty, with a quota of ebooks in dyslexic formats, be representative of diversity in all its forms (culture, ethnicity, language, religion, beliefs, community and family structure, sexual orientation, and more), and present a spectrum of points of view.
We would need a criteria on ensuring that curated electronic resources are provided in the form of Libguides for any assessment requested by teachers. There would need to be criteria around these eresources and websites to ensure that all TLs are scrupulous about their background checking … I know it is expected, but we can’t be too careful! Also the resources provided would need to provide a breadth and diversity of viewpoints to encourage students to form informed judgements through developing their critical thinking skills.
There would be a criteria that ensures that we have resources that are multimodal, that are audio, and video as well – and perhaps even outlining a quota for this. This would be an evolving document, if for example a student or staff member joined our school community with vision impairments and requiring books in braille, we would build this collection as well.