Ranking of public libraries in Khorasan Razavi province based on Multi Attribute Decision Making method

The purpose of this study is to rank public libraries in Khorasan Razavi province based on Multi Attribute Decision Making Method.

The study was a descriptive survey. The sample consists of a total of 98 urban public libraries under the Iraninan foundation of public libraries in Khorasan Razavi, and 100 employees and librarians working in public libraries were chosen randomly. For collection data a checklist and a researcher made questionnaire were used. The questionnaire validity was verified by professionals and experts in the field of public libraries and the reliability of questionnaire was verified and confirmed through Cronbach alpha test and test-retest method.

The findings showed that the indicators in ranking public libraries through which the state of access to the libraries and collections, facility and speed of the process of membership were identified as important factors. And also overall indexes of human resources, access, services, acceptance, technology, space, equipment and resources were identified important indicators, respectively. The findings also showed that libraries of Shahid Bahonar Kakhk, Shahid Sayyad Shirazi Dargaz and Hasheminejad Bidokht were as high ranked libraries respectively. Meanwhile shohaday Mashhad, Beyt al Hoda Sabzevar and Nawab Safavi Mashhad libraries were at the bottom of the rankings list. The study showed that the rank of the majority of libraries (73 libraries) were lower than the foundation of public libraries ranking list. The results showed that there is no significant relationship between the scores of indicators used in this study. No consistency was found between the indicators of Iranian Foundation of pulic libraries and the proposed indictors used in this study.

It is not possible to achieve optimal scores in all evaluation indicators for a public library, and getting high scores in one evaluation indicator or more does not make it possible to identify a functioning library, so evaluating and rating public libraries should be based on multiple evaluation indicators and multi-indicator decision-making techniques that could be relevant in determining the ranking and effectiveness of a library. According to the results of the research, it is suggested that in the ranking of libraries, more attention should be paid to the quality indicators in the evaluation of libraries. It is also suggested that the decision makers of the Iranian Foundation of public libraries get the opinions of experts in public libraries, professors of information science and specialized librarians the field for collecting important indicators to evaluate public libraries. In order to make more objectivity and realizing the rating of public libraries, this study tried to rank them according to management techniques such as TOPSIS