Public Libraries Victoria and Australia Post are testing weekly, rather than daily, deliveries between smaller groupings of libraries after a state contract for courier services ended last year.
The end of the contract, which had distributed half-a-million items a year, saw inter-library loans shelved for six months.
“No-one could afford to deliver the service at that rate,” Public Libraries Victoria chief executive Angela Savage said.
“We were looking at cost increases of between 300 and 720 per cent to sustain the service at the levels that had been operating.”
The trial will run until July 31 and will provide more media to local schools, remote tertiary students and bookworms in Victoria’s 283 library branches.
“We've got a consortium of 31 libraries that share their collections so that a tiny little service like Buloke, which only holds 13,000 items, can actually provide access to a collection of 3.2 million items,” Ms Savage said.
Goulburn Valley Libraries chief executive Felicity Macchion was receiving her first delivery on Wednesday.
“The customers are just happy that it’s back,” Ms Macchion said.
Under the trial, Public Libraries Victoria has engineered each sharing group to contain libraries of varying sizes, regions and collection age, and holds roughly 600,000 items per grouping to slash transit costs.
Public Libraries Victoria is negotiating a three-year contract with Australia Post, and a spokesman for the carrier said the two groups were working to understand the needs and challenges of the service.
The library body wants confirmation and continuity of funding for the program from the Victorian Government.
The government would not be drawn on the issue ahead of its budget on May 23.
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