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The Effects of Socioeconomic Deprivation on Public Library Book Circulation: A Community-level Study

  • Journal of the Korean Society for Library and Information Science
  • 2021, 55(4), pp.219-243
  • DOI : 10.4275/KSLIS.2021.55.4.219
  • Publisher : 한국문헌정보학회
  • Research Area : Interdisciplinary Studies > Library and Information Science
  • Received : October 18, 2021
  • Accepted : November 8, 2021
  • Published : November 30, 2021

Jongwook Lee 1 KANG WOOJIN 2 Myeong Lee 3

1경북대학교
2경북대학교 일반대학원 문헌정보학과
3George Mason University

Excellent Accredited

ABSTRACT

This study analyzes the effects of community-level socioeconomic deprivations (SED) on public libraries’ book circulation in the Seoul metropolitan area. The study design draws upon the theory of local information landscapes, which explains the relationship between community characteristics and information behavior. Using four-year (2015-2018) open government and public library circulation data, we constructed a socioeconomic deprivation index by adjusting a multi-dimensional deprivation index and generated other variables. Multi-level robust linear regression models were used to examine the relationship between SED and public library circulation. In addition, we tested the moderating effects of the library collection size and the number of libraries per unit area, respectively, on library circulation. The results show that there is a significant negative relationship between socioeconomic deprivation and library circulation rate. Also, we found that the size of the library collection negatively moderates the effects of SED in areas with a large number of books, and the number of libraries per unit area was positvely related to the library book circulation, not moderating the effects of SED. These findings suggest that public libraries and policymakers should consider community characteristics in designing strategic plans for public libraries.

Citation status

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