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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine and discuss the basis for management decisions among options expressed by customer groups on the basis of their perception and assessment of library service.Design/methodology/approach – In 2008, the authors investigated how customers perceive library functions and assessed the actual activities of Echigawa Library (Shiga prefecture, Japan). Two consecutive analyses were conducted: factor analysis and cluster analysis in order to segment the customers into individual groups based on their perception of libraries. Each of the segments of library customers was then examined to ascertain how they appreciate and make use of the Echigawa Library.Findings – The survey results indicate that in general the customers show a high demand for multiple library services and give a good grade for its services delivery. Four groups of library customers are identified by cluster analysis; however, their demand for service and judgment of the adequacy of service delivery ar...

PurposeDespite a growth in demand that public libraries be accountable to citizen needs, basic research into the socio‐cultural context in which libraries operate, particularly cross‐culturally, is still needed. Durrance and Fisher have argued that libraries have too long relied on output measures to indicate library efficiency (and to justify funding) but that such measures do not reflect the social, cultural or other values actually held or gained by library users. This observation begs the question, what socio‐cultural functions do public libraries actually have? What values do they reinforce? What needs are met? How do public libraries fit into the larger social fabric of public and private institutions? And how might these functions vary from one society to another? This paper aims to address these issues.Design/methodology/approachThe questions are similar in scope to those found in museum studies (for example, see the book series Museum Meanings edited by Eilean Hooper‐Greenhill and Flora Kaplan), but have been rarely applied to libraries. In an unusual research collaboration we explore these questions relying on both qualitative and quantitative methods to gauge some of the socio‐cultural functions of a public library in Japan.FindingsOf primary concern is the methodological problem of developing questions that draw out values and concepts of which the visitors themselves may not be explicitly aware. In this research the paper attempts to draw out not just the satisfaction levels of patrons, but to delineate something of the patrons' own conception of their public library. Studying a rather unusual library by Japanese standards, it is found that some patrons have responded to the particularly strong community focus of the library director.Originality/valueSocio‐cultural studies of the functions of libraries are rare. This study therefore can act as an exemplar for further international studies.

In Friction, Anna Tsing asks us to see the rain forests of Indonesian Kalimantan as a place where chaste concepts such as “nature” and “science” get pulled into the forest, shoved past devastated hillsides, and dragged through community meetings into a desperate melee of stories and desires. The concepts will never be the same again. The book is organized into three sections: “Prosperity,” “Knowledge,” and “Freedom” (with a crucial introduction and a pensive coda). The headings refer to universalist aspirations; they serve as themes rather than markers of the actual chapter topics. In each section, using a wide range of ethnographic techniques, Tsing explores how various peoples’ ideas and desires come into engagement and how that engagement changes the people, their ideas, and the world. The book has seven chapters, but the chapters alternate with short segments of writing offering particular perspectives that implicitly explore how to take a perspective at all. These segments allow the suggestion that the concerns in them have been generated by the way the chapters themselves rub against each other. Under the first section, “Prosperity,” Tsing asks us to consider how global capitalism operates in specific instances, as she puts it, “in friction” (p. 12). A preliminary segment that traces the 1970s dreams of progress before circling around to rage and despair. Chapter 1, “Frontiers of Capitalism,” explores the concept of “frontier,” the negotiation of what is “legal” (and for whom), and how land is made “public” (thereby taking it from people who use it and giving it to others) and then tumbles into the depths of the struggle to control the valuable commodities in the Kalimantan rain forests. This will be difficult going for many readers. Some will be put off by the constant presence of Tsing’s pointing finger directing us exactly where to look and what to see. Others will be unnerved by the violence (no easy escape to paper generalities allowed—there is mud here, and greed, and despair–“Look at it!” Tsing insists). Chapter 2, “The Economy of Appearances,” at first seems like a safe refuge. There is even a reassuringly abstract graphic

In this report of research currently underway on libraries in the city of Pune, Maharashtra (India), the focus is on commercial, street-corner libraries. Using an ethnographic approach, this research explores the way these libraries function, and the values placed on reading by Pune's middle class library users. Commercial libraries seem to have occupied a niche not filled by the public libraries in Pune, that of providing current popular fiction and glossy magazines in convenient locations. The libraries have a variety of origins and motivations, but are typically run with only the most rudimentary of cataloging and shelving systems, and no reference functions at all. Patrons describe their reading activity as leisure, and name television viewing as the main alternative or competing activity.