نشریه تحقیقات اطلاع رسانی و کتابخانه های عمومی
پیاپی 113 (تابستان 1402)

Public libraries have historically played a role in supporting economic development, entrepreneurship, small businesses, and providing commercial information to various stakeholders. This study aims to identify the types of services, programs and economic activities that public libraries offer in this domain, based on a review of the relevant literature.

The present research is a systematic literature review, and the systematic study framework of Kitchenham and Charters was used to carry out it. By identifying the databases and query terms, searches were conducted and finally, by refining the sources and applying the entry and exit criteria to the research, 37 sources in English and 6 sources in Farsi were entered into the systematic review. The research tool was a checklist type. The information obtained by summarizing the contents is presented in the form of a table.

The activities of public libraries for economic development were grouped into four components: information, education, social, and space and equipment. The information component consists of two dimensions: resources and databases, and reference services. The resources and databases dimension involves assessing resource needs, providing economic information services, developing economic collections, collecting job resources, resume writing and job interview skills, marketing economic collections, creating job databases, providing access to commercial law databases, and creating and maintaining economic websites. The reference services dimension offers services such as general and specialized reference and consultation, business and research reference, document delivery, remote business question answering, job search assistance, subject guides and search assistance. The education component includes developing financial literacy and entrepreneurship skills, specific skills for jobs and businesses, digital and technology literacy, skills for students and low-educated adults, business information literacy training, economic and business consultations, and coach training. The social component includes services such as community socio-economic development, creating social partnerships, networking, holding business events, organizational cooperation, and meetings with consultants. The space and equipment component includes creating innovation buildings and spaces, preparing physical spaces, creating reference spaces, independent commercial libraries, and developing equipment.

Originality/value: 

This review examines the diverse services, programs, and activities that public libraries offer to support community economic development. The findings reveal that public libraries are developing a new function, called economic function, that encompasses various roles and dimensions, such as information, education, social issues, and space and equipment development. To address the economic challenges of the society, public libraries design and deliver various programs and services for businesses, business owners, entrepreneurs and even general users. This study enhances the existing knowledge about the economic impact of public libraries and proposes directions for future public library action.

360-degree evaluation is one of the evaluation methods that provides a complete and accurate evaluation of the skills, abilities, competencies, and performance of the evaluator due to the use of several sources to evaluate people. The aim of the study is to evaluate the performance of public library managers in Qom city by 360-degree feedback method.

The current research is an applied study which used a survey-analytical method to evaluate the performance of libraries managers in eight indicators (management skills, decision-making, encouragement and innovation, communication and interaction, leadership, professional skills, behavioral skills and teamwork) by 360-degree feedback method. The statistical population included all library managers (12 people), librarians (42 people) and superior officials (2 people) in the public libraries in Qom city. The tool for collecting data was the Brown questionnaire (with some modifications) in the five-point Likert scale with 64 items. The face validity of questionnaire was approved by experts, and its reliability was calculated by Cronbach’s alpha coefficient (0.97). Non-parametric tests of SPSS (version 26) software were used for data analysis.

Findings revealed that the status of all indicators of the performance of the managers of public libraries in Qom city is in a favorable situation, and there was no significant difference between the managers’ self-evaluation with librarians and superior officials- except for the “leadership” indicator. “Management skills”, “Interaction and communication” and “Team work” are ranked first to third. According to its average rating, the “decision-making” indicator has the least importance from the respondents’ point of view and there was a high and significant correlation between performance indicators of managers. Furthermore, no significant difference was observed between the opinions of the respondents based on the demographic variables of age, gender, education degree, discipline and work experience.

Originality/value: 

Thus far, there has been no study on evaluating the performance of public library managers with this method. 360-degree feedback method can be a suitable model for deciding on the performance of public libraries managers in a group and selecting them. The need to pay attention and delegation of authority is emphasized in indicators such as “encouragement and innovation”, “leadership” and “decision-making” according to the findings of the research in evaluating the performance of managers. Moreover, compiling and communicating performance evaluation indicators to librarians and managers of public libraries in order to gain a better understanding of these indicators and improve the quality of their performance can be useful.

Knowledge and information science specialists can succeed in creating and providing entrepreneurial services by using knowledge of the society, the needs of the audience and having an entrepreneurial attitude. In the field of knowledge and information science, entrepreneurship is a type of social or value entrepreneurship service. Accordingly, the purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of entrepreneurship education in changing the entrepreneurial attitude of public library librarians in Birjand city.

The present study is a type of applied research. In terms of data collection, it is a quasi- experimental study with a control group, a pre-test and a follow-up test to determine the duration over times. The statistical population of the study included 30 librarians of public libraries affiliated to the library of the city of Birjand; Data collection was done by Entrepreneurship Attitude questionnaire (Robinson et al., 1991) and SPSS software was used to analyze the information collected through the questionnaire.

The results of the tests showed that entrepreneurial training has led to a shift in the attitudes of librarians in the test group, and entrepreneurial training has led to a shift in the orientation of self-esteem, Succession, innovation and personal entrepreneurial control of the group librarians and the post-test scores of the two control and experimental groups were reported differently (F = 5/568, P > 0/05). The average of librarians’ desire for success in the post-test stage (M = 4/528) has changed compared to the pre-test stages (M = 4/313). Also, the test of the repeated measurement design, which included librarians in the experimental group in the follow-up stage, showed that that the change in the orientation of personal entrepreneurial control of librarians has become significant, which has caused stability and stability in them. Self-esteem components such as confidence in one’s ability, confidence in work results, ability to solve personal problems, ambition and self-belief can be influenced to a large extent by changing librarians’ views due to the increase in the level of advertisements and their knowledge about entrepreneurship.

Originality/value: 

The current research considers entrepreneurship in public libraries as a great opportunity for managers and librarians. Considering that entrepreneurship can be acquired in libraries, librarians can use the benefits of entrepreneurial training to raise their level of work and provide entrepreneurial services to users. According to the goals and social roles of public libraries, entrepreneurship training in the society of librarians and users should be considered and implemented as one of the special requirements based on the goals and functions of these types of libraries because entrepreneurship training causes a change in the direction of personal entrepreneurial control of people and increase the amount of their personal control.

The correct selection of information sources significantly impacts the readability of the retrieved sources in the library. On the other hand, the collection development, organization of resources, and their classification in libraries, as well as the design of efficient and user-friendly user interfaces that sufficiently support the selection of resources, require sufficient knowledge of the behavior of choosing resources by users. Based on this, the present study aimed to identify the components of book selection behavior by adolescent members of public libraries in Kermanshah Province of Iran.

The current research was conducted with a qualitative approach, and the research method was the qualitative content analysis. The data were collected using semi-structured interviews. The participants were adolescent members of Kermanshah Province public libraries affiliated to the Iran Public Libraries Foundation in the winter of 2021. The purposive sampling, also known as judgmental sampling, was used to select participants, and continued until data saturation was reached. The qualitative content analysis method was used to analyze the findings.

The analysis of the interview data led to the formation of 12 main codes and 285 sub-codes, which were classified into 5 categories and 30 concepts. The main categories were: factors related to the user (including demographic characteristics; personality and intellectual characteristics; interest; life issues and events; previous knowledge; experiences and skills; the goals of selecting a book in public libraries; time and cost spent to select; selection strategies; the process of selecting a book; measurement of credit and quality of resources; the causes of communicating with the book and reading it up to the end; reasons for not reading or half reading books); factors related to books (including apparent and physical elements; bibliographic elements; content elements; mold, language, expression and style); factors related to the library (consisting of reading programs; environmental factors; facilities and facilities; human factors); people, media, productions, occasions, programs, and lists influencing book selection (including persons; media; production of printed works; occasions and programs; lists); and barriers to book selection in public libraries (includes: library; book; person; society).

Originality/Value: 

The behavior of selecting information resources of adolescent members of public libraries showed the complexity and influence of this behavior by numerous factors, including individual differences, appearance and content characteristics of books, environmental factors, and library factors. The components identified in the aforementioned behavior can be used as a basis for a broad survey of users’ information resource selection behavior in physical and virtual environments and can also be used as a guide for acquisition, space creation and service design in libraries, compilation of resources and appearance, and structural design of books by authors and publishers.

The aim of this study is to validate the identified components model of strategic management in the public libraries of Iran.

The present research is a quantitative study that was conducted using the Delphi method in 2020. The statistical population of the study consisted of 20 experts in strategic management, information science, and knowledge management who are faculty members of Iranian universities. The research sample was selected purposively. The components of this research were based on the article by Kohzadi Tahneh et al. (2021). Data were analyzed using the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) method.

The results of validating the strategic model using structural equation modeling showed that in developing strategies, ʻidentifying the type of services and resourcesʼ had a factor loading of 0/847, ʻattention to political, legal, and governmental factorsʼ had a factor loading of 0/801, ʻalignment of organizational culture with developed strategiesʼ had a factor loading of 0/870, and for the variable selection of strategies, ʻsupporting strategies for special cultural productsʼ had the highest factor loading at 0/875 and were highly important. For the strategy implementation index, ʻimplementing specific strategies for promoting library products/services to attract new usersʼ had a factor loading of 0/878, and for management issues variable, ʻrewards and salary increases based on employee performanceʼ had the highest factor loading at 0/794. In the control and evaluation components of strategic program management, ʻalignment of implemented strategic programs with the library's operational environmentʼ with a factor loading of 0/754 has the highest impact among other components. These factors are highly important in the development, implementation, and evaluation stages of library strategic management. The obtained model fit value of 0/514 indicates a very strong overall model fit.

Originality/value: 

The results of this research can assist managers in identifying strategic gaps in the process of strategic management (formulation, implementation, evaluation) and prioritizing issues to achieve goals, improve service quality, satisfaction of users and employees, and sustainability of public libraries. It is necessary for senior managers to have different measures in the field of strategic management, especially in the process of formulation and implementation of strategies, with greater attention to the needs of society.

The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of implementing a reading plan with family and reading cycles on reading motivations and improving study rate of students.

The present study is applied in terms of purpose and is a survey in terms of the type of data collection. The statistical population of this study includes all students who have been educated in the study movement educations in Kerman province from 1395 (SH) to 1400 (SH) and have been covered by the family study plan and the study cycles plan. The statistical population of the study included 3182 people, from whom 342 individuals was determined as the statistical sample based on Cochran’s formula. Multi-stage cluster sampling method was utilized to select the sample. A researcher-made questionnaire was used to collect research data. The validity of the research tools was confirmed by content method. Cronbach’s alpha test was performed to calculate the reliability of the research tools. The calculated alpha value for this questionnaire was 0/83. To test the main and sub-hypotheses of the research, a t-test was implemented for independent groups.

Results indicated that there is a significant difference between the reading rate of students who have a reading plan with family and reading cycles. People who have reading plan with family have more reading rate in the fields of extracurricular study, cyberspace study and study of religious books. Therefore, it can be concluded that the trainings and programs that are defined to strengthen literacy, will extremely help in increasing the reading motivation and improving the reading rate, if they are prepared correctly and are based on the principles of education.

Originality/value: 

The results of the research seek to re-define the role of implementing the family reading plan and reading cycles on reading motivation and reading rate of students. Since the implementation of such plans and similar plans leads to the continuation of literacy and the preservation and strengthening of literacy in the newly literate students, and helps them to use these skills in life and using the wide world of science and knowledge and finally achieve happiness for themselves and the society, the Literacy Movement Organization can implement such plans by considering the results of all studies carried out so far in this field for all learners in all courses in order to prevent them from returning to illiteracy or functional illiteracy.