Information Needs of Rural Populations: Implications for Planning Library/Information Services

Abstract

While working in a rural district library system, the question of planning library/information services to meet the needs of the population was always of foremost importance. Community profiles of the region had been conducted continuously for ten years, and during the eleventh year it was decided to survey the entire area in a methodical way to search for the information needs of the population. The purpose of the study was to identify information needs in a specific rural area in Israel in order to design a plan for library/information provision to meet those needs. The study consisted of a literature search of relevant material on information needs in rural areas and less developed countries and a multi‐level field survey in one specific rural area of Israel.

The social impact of libraries as reported in the Region of Extremadura’s communications media during the economic crisis in Spain

“…Regarding this second reason, internationally, there are studies about rural libraries in Australia (Haines and Calvert, 2009;Leary, 1991), USA (Mehra et al, 2010;Standerfer, 2006;Watkins, 2004), Finland (Wigell-Ryynänen, 2009, France (Germanaud and Rapaport, 1988), Israel (Hoffman-Pfeffer, 1987), and China (Yuan, 2011). In the case of Spain, there has also been considerable research on rural libraries in different geographical areas such as Andalucía (Busutil Rivera, 2011;Gavira Moreno, 2009;Villegas Lirola, 2009), Álava (Gómez Santamaría, 2009), Asturias (Busto Fidalgo, 2009), Barcelona (Cano Vers, 2009;Comalat Navarra and Reyes Camps, 2001), Castilla-La Mancha (García López and Arroyo Ortega, 2005;Lorenzo Jiménez, 2009), Madrid (Cid Ruiz and Fraile de la Hoz, 2009), and Valencia (Moliner Ruiz, 2010aRuiz, , 2010b.…”