Awareness and usage of cultural and community services by Chinese, Korean, and Japanese users of Christchurch City Libraries

Abstract

Research problem: The provision of services to people from a non-English-speaking background has been considered as important to meet the information needs of immigrants in public libraries. However, services targeted at immigrant users are found to be underused. The objective of this research was to identify the reasons why these ethnic groups do or do not use the cultural and community services at Christchurch City Libraries (CCL), and whether CCL are meeting their information needs. This research explored questions such as what they knew, what experience they had, and what they thought of the services in terms of meeting their information needs.

Methodology: Quantitative research using descriptive survey questionnaire was selected for this research. Survey questionnaire with a combination of open-ended and closed-ended questions was used for the data collection method. The population of interest in this study were people who identify themselves as speakers of Chinese, Korean or Japanese language. Quota and snowball sampling were used, and a total of 99 questionnaires were collected.

Results: The survey has shown awareness of CCL’s cultural and community services was low, which had a direct association with low usage of the services. Although it might not apply to some services, it was discussed that better promotion strategy would improve the current situation. Regardless of English skill or length of stay in New Zealand, all respondents perceived CCL positively, which was contributed to a high level of customer service. Users visit the library primarily to borrow books, and CCL’s collection of physical foreign language books was found to be the most known and most used community and cultural service.

Implications: Better promotion is a key to increase users’ awareness and usage of the library services. It would be beneficial to determine what promotional strategy works the best. A future research could focus on physical book collections, eResources and events separately and ask questions that are more appropriate to each of them. A demonstration of each resource allowing respondents to have a play with it may have helped the research more. This could be done with a smaller sample population or in focus groups.