2023 Volume 90 Issue 3 Pages 422-434
The public library, a social education facility, has long been lauded as a facility "equally accessible to all" and a “local gateway to knowledge.” The purpose of this study is to examine from the perspective of equal access who uses public libraries and who should be using them, based on analysis of a large-scale online survey. Since the function of libraries has largely shifted from lending books to providing a place to stay, user analysis has important implications for the future of libraries.
Public libraries, which have a history of being called "the people's university" or "the poor people's university," have operated under the principle of equal access for all people in the community. However, most usage surveys focus on users of each library, and there are only a few national surveys that include non-users.
In 2020, the National Diet Library conducted a nationwide survey of Japanese residents, for which raw data are available. In this study, we conducted a secondary analysis with the following two analytical viewpoints.
(1) Who uses the public libraries?
Examine the actual use of public libraries. Clarify the relationship among social attributes such as educational background and library usage.
(2) Who should use the public libraries?
From an ideal and hypothetical perspective of who needs libraries, clarify the relationship between the raison d'être of libraries and social attributes such as educational background.
The findings are as follows.
(1) Those who did not use public libraries in 2020 accounted for two-thirds of all respondents. When social attributes, reading habits, and other basic variables were put into multivariate analysis as determinants of library use, it was found that educational background had the strongest influence.
(2) First, respondents perceived the significance of libraries on an altruistic (for the community) basis in greater numbers than on a selfish (for themselves and their families) basis. Next, examination of the determinants of the significance of libraries from both a selfish and an altruistic perspective found that more college graduates than non-college graduates altruistically value the significance of libraries, as well as those with higher expectations for new stay-type services.
Based on the results of these analyses, we found the following two issues for future public library management in a lifelong learning society.
(1) In order to reduce the strong influence of educational background on the use of public libraries, it is not enough to provide educational facilities; more in-depth outreach is needed.
(2) The ideal future of public libraries faces, on the one hand, the risk of being run for the well-educated under the guise of equal access (“reproduction of inequal access”), and on the other hand, existence as a "local gateway to knowledge" through residential services (“production of equal access”). To achieve equality, however, critical examination of services related to non-educational activities and correction of regional disparities in library facilities are essential.
