It can be found many public libraries in Japan have had the tendency of providing the services supporting citizen’s learning activity and a variety of events for the enhance of multimedia uses in addidtion to book rental service since 1990s. Therefore, the planning theory specified to book reading and rental of a public library is needed to revise, corresponding to those multipurpose uses of a public library. Then, in order to establish the public library’s planning theory meeting current needs, this study pays more attentions to the spaces and the operation arranged for citizen’s multipurpose use and the relationship of them, and aims to examine the current situation of space and operation of public libraries, based on the responses from the public libraries which have managed itself for citizen’s multipurpose us. To reach this study’s goal, the questionnaire research to the public libraries (924 libraries) located within 1 km distance from s station in Japan was implemented in 2016, and 550 responses (59.5 %) were collected. As a result of intensive analyses of the responses to the questionnaire, the followings were found.
The libraries with the operation policy for stay-type have increased since the late 1990s when the direction of library planning and operation as the stay-type came to be discussed. And, based on the tendency of the responses to each question related to the question items about the spaces for the multipurpose use, firstly, two classification axes could be extracted by mathematical quantification theory class III, and secondarily, 3 types of libraries were categorized by non-hierarchy cluster analysis. Among them, the libraries of Type A are relatively spacious and seemed they can meet the variety of citizen’s use purposes. In fact, this type's libraries tend to take the stay-type policy in its operation and to prepare the spaces for citizen’s various uses and activity actually. But, even the libraries of type A tend to be likely to become the problems in the securing of budget and the establishment of the operation system for knowing citizen’s needs.
As the next step of research, based on the findings in this study, the case studies on the spaces and the operation for citizens’ multipurpose uses will be conducted carefully in order to establish the planning theory for current needs to a public library.
