Understanding the participatory library through a grounded theory study

摘要

Lankes and Silverstein (2006) introduced the “participatorylibrary” and suggested that the nature and form of thelibrary should be explored. In the last several years, someattempts have been made in order to develop contemporarylibrary models that are often known as Library 2.0.However, little research has been based on empirical dataand such models have had a strong focus on technicalaspects but less focus on participation. The researchpresented in this paper fills this gap. A grounded theoryapproach was adopted for this study. Six librarians wereinvolved in in-depth individual interviews. As a preliminaryresult, five main factors of the participatory library emergedincluding technological, human, educational, socialeconomic,and environmental. Five factors influencing theparticipation in libraries were also identified: finance,technology, education, awareness, and policy. The study’sfindings provide a fresh perspective on contemporarylibrary and create a basis for further studies on this area.