Abstract
Public libraries play an important role in guaranteeing the right ot know, but recently the fiscal deficits of the local governments make it difficult without operating more efficiently. Public libraries generally have several purposes, for example the provision of the access to infomation, promoting reading books among children, and so on. Therefore we observe several outputs of public libraries corresponding to these purposes, for example total circulation service for adults and those for children. In the present paper, we analyze the efficiency of public libraries in the wards of the ordinance designated cities using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) because this method can deal with multiple inputs and multiple outputs. The empirical results point out the following two findings. One is that libraries in Osaka and Kobe are operating more efficiently than other cities. Another is that most of libraries are suggested an enhancement of circulation service for children in improvements. In addition to the DEA analysis, we also examine the demand side factor to affect the efficiency of public library, using the Tobit and the ordered probit models. The results show that corresponding to the children's demand for cirulation service properly is a key to improve the efficiency in administering libraries.
