Popular culture is often described as the vernacular, or people's, culture that prevails in any given society. It encompasses a range of subjects - sociology, literature, anthropology, history and cultural studies - and draws on television, movies, theatre, art, magazines, radio, music, sports, fashion, health, politics, trends, community life and advertising.
Popular culture materials are often ephemeral in nature and not well represented in traditional library collections. It is for these reasons as well as in recognition of the importance of popular culture sources to future researchers that the Library has increased its collecting of these materials in recent years. In addition the Library’s increased focus on exhibitions has led to greater collecting of popular culture material suitable for display.
A wealth of popular culture material exists in the collections across the Library, often concerned with, but not limited to, entertainment. Apart from music and video CDs, the prevalent format collected has been paper-based. More recently collecting has expanded to include digital formats with the archiving of popular Victorian websites to PANDORA [external link] and collecting of computer games.
Some examples of popular culture material collected are:
