Perception of Users towards Public Libraries: An Evaluative Study of Sri Pratap Singh (SPS) Public Library

Asifa Ali; Sumaira Jan

Abstract

AbstractPublic libraries are a living force for education, culture, information and development of the common people living in a society. These libraries are spread all over the country, which consist of state central libraries at state level while district, urban public libraries and rural public libraries at the village level. In this milieu, owing to immense importance of public libraries, the main aim of the present study is to ascertain the perception of library users towards the use of Sri Pratap Singh (SPS) public Library, Srinagar. The major findings of the study reveal that maximum (75%) respondents of the study are males. It emerges that the majority of the respondents (65.6%) visit library daily, followed by 21.9% once in a week and 6.3% once in a month with majority of users opining that the library is holding very good collection covering all the major subjects/disciplines. Furthermore, the most common purpose of users for visiting the public library emerges out to be education. However, at the same time it is observed that the main constraints for not visiting the library are lack of time (84.4%), followed by lack of awareness (58.8%), among users. As far as services are concerned, users are very much satisfied with library issue/return, reference and reprographic services but translation services emerge to be very poor.Keywords: Sri Pratap Singh (SPS) public library, public library, library users, collection, services, user perceptions, SrinagarCite this ArticleAsifa Ali, Sumaira Jan. Perception of Users towards Public Libraries: An Evaluative Study of Sri Pratap Singh (SPS) Public Library. Journal of Advancements in Library Sciences. 2020; 7(1); 1–7p.