User Involvement in Library Service Planning: A Case Study of the National Library of Iran, 2018

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to monitor the views of users about the services of the National Library of Iran and use them in service planning. The method of this research is qualitative and focus group and brainstorming and group decision making were used to collect data. Focus groups continued until data saturation with the participation of 29 members (in two groups of 11 and 18). Maxqda software was used for data analysis.The results showed that the service factors of the Information department of the National Library of Iran from the perspective of users fall into 4 themes. Qualitative analysis of the data collected from users led to the extraction of 546 initial codes that reported service factors. Multiple revisions and code integration based on similarity over several stages resulted in 14 sub-themes. The findings of this study indicated some problems in the service desks of the National Library from the perspective of users and 4 main themes of librarians, clients, services and service desks were studied separately in its sub-themes. Based on the suggestions of the participants of this research and due to the lived experience of the authors in the service desks, suggestions were presented separately for the topics discussed.

Keywords

• user-oriented
• information services
• national library of iran
• service planning