Study of the factors influencing children and adolescent's willingness to return to the library from the viewpoints of children and adolescent clients of public libraries in Mashhad

INTRUDUCTION: This study was conducted to identify the effective factors of children and adolescent's willingness to return to the library from the viewpoints of children and adolescent clients in the public libraries of Mashhad.
This study is a survey and was conducted using the questionnaire. The study population is all children and adolescents (7-18 years old) referring to the public libraries of Mashhad during one month, and the study sample is included 80 of these children and adolescents who were chosen through two-stage cluster sampling method. The validity and reliability of the questionnaire were investigated and confirmed. Data were analyzed by binomial test, Friedman and Kruskal-Wallis test and Mann-Whitney test.
FINDINGS: The main factors influencing willingness to return to the library, in order of priority are librarian’s behavior, library working hours, intrinsic motivations, environment and welfare facilitates, and information resources. Girls and boys have very different point of view on the "impact of environment and facilities" and "intrinsic motivations". This means that the girls consider these two factors more effective. Results of the Kruskal-Wallis test show that the older age groups consider the "working hours" factor more effective in comparison with the younger age groups.
It can be concluded that the willingness to return of children and adolescent clients to the library is a function of a set of factors. The results of this research can be useful in making the policy of public libraries, school libraries, and in general any kind of library that serves the children and adolescents. The results of this study can helpful for macro policies and public libraries, school libraries and in general any library that gives service to children and adolescents.