世論 What Japan Thinks

Just a very quick translation for today, a look with japan.internet.com at a survey conducted by iBridge into public libraries and the internet.

Demographics

On the first of December 2008 300 members of the iBridge monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 56.7% of the sample were female, 13.0% in their twenties, 39.0% in their thirties, 33.0% in their forties, 9.0% in their fifties, and 6.0% in their sixties.

Note that internet services here are not public-access terminals in the library, but an external web site for the library.

I’ve never actually been to my local library, but I have checked out their web page for opening hours.

Research results

From the orginal sample, 14.7% said they often used a public library and 38.0% said sometimes, although the remaining percentages for “rarely” and “never” were not reported. These 158 people were then asked the following question.

Q1: Have you used any services over the internet offered by your main library? (Sample size=158)

Yes (to SQ)	55.7%
No	18.4%
Don’t know	26.0%

Q1SQ: What services have you used? (Sample size=88,multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
Book search	71	80.7%
Looking up address, facilities, opening times, etc	69	78.4%
Reserving a book	57	64.8%
Viewing digitised documents, books	6	6.8%
Other	1	1.1%

Q2: Do you think that internet-based public library services are necessary? (Sample size=158)

Think so	82.3%
Don’t think so	6.3%
Don’t know	11.4%