The Effectiveness of the Municipal Libraries in Seoul

서울특별시립도서관의 유효성에 관한 연구

Public library effectiveness is determined by a complexity of the internal and external environments of the library. The purpose of this article is to investigate community environments and library resources as determinants of the output measures of the 15 municipal libraries in Seoul and to cope with changes in the environments for the improvement of their performance. This study is based on the hypotheses that the library's output would be proportioned to the size of budget and library collection, and to the relationships between the characteristics of the library and of the community in which the library develops. The variables identified in this .study are population density, family size, institutions (social, cultural, financial and educational), presence of the mass media, size of service area, and economic level of the community. The output measures employed for analysis are: number of professional staff, expenditures, number of books in the collection, number of books added annually, total circulation, number of library visits, circullation per capita, library visits per capita, .and registration as a percentage of population. The recommendation made in this study is the innovation of the 15 libraries in organization.