A Comparative Study on the Utilization of Community and Supplemental Type Toy Libraries

Since the establishment of first toy library in Japan at Mitaka in 1981, the concept of toy library started to spread among Asian countries. Unlike public library, toy library exists in different ways varies from stand alone facility, supplemental service for hospital or kindergarten to mobile toy library. This variation has caused confusion to many and after many years its existence still remained negligible among the general public. However, a closer look to this toy library will leads one to recognize its contribution and significance to the users as it is not only allows children and their parents to borrow toys, games and others as they would books from a public library, it also provide a place for the children from different families to play together and encourages the exchange of ideas among parents about the development of their children. Therefore, it is necessary to have a better understanding on the utilization of toy libraries before the suggestions for future improvements can be made. Generally, toy library can be divided into two categories, which are Community Type and Supplemental Type toy library. Community Type Toy Library can be considered as a type of welfare facilities under community center, volunteer center or it itself is a stand-alone community facility. Whereas the Supplemental Type Toy Library is usually attached to another main facilities like hospital or nursery and operated as an additional service. Before pin-pointing the existing problems in toy library, it is important to find out the similarities and differences of utilization among different types of toy library. Therefore, this study is generated to compare the users’ utilization of Community Type and Supplemental Type toy library by focusing on the spatial elements as well as the users’ behaviors. From there, merits from each type are suggested for another for better usage of space and more user-friendly environment. For methodology, case studies are used and 2 toy libraries from