A Critical Study on Validity of the Present Purpose of the Public Library Defined in the Korean Library Act

'도서관법(圖書館法)' 중(中) '공공도서관(公共圖書館)의 목적(目的)'에 대한 비판적(批判的) 고찰(考察)

Toe public library may perform a social good only when its objectives are adequate to the community's needs. The present purpose of the public library in the Korean Library Act has no direct concern for our social needs from its very beginning because it was not created in response to our social needs but transplanted from American principles. It is, therefore. difficult to expect socially useful output of our public library programs under the present purpose which may be inadequate to our social tradition and needs. This study purposes to examine validity of the present purpose of the public library in the Korean Library Act, in the light of our community needs and our own library tradition. The methods employed to achieve the purpose of the study are (1) to survey needs of the library frequenters through questionnaire, and interviews with the public librarians in Seoul, (2) to gather the statistical data relevant to, and supporting, the hypothesis, and (3) to compare our social background with that of the United States of which the American purpose, a model for our present purpose, came out. The conclusion is as follows: A. The idea to induce people to pull themselves upward by providing for all the members of the community access to the world's best books shelved in the public library should be abandoned. The reasons are (1) that the idea is alien in our public library tradition, (2) that little demand of the community goes with the idea, and (3) that reading outside the library has come into wide practice, thanks to recent increase in individual income and that in publications. B. That the public library maintains fiction and other recreational reading materials is meaningless in the light of the community needs. These are the two explanations supporting the thesis. (1) The "uplift" theory has proved inoperative and people apparently do not progress from, light fiction to more respectable fare. (2) The conviction that fiction and other recreational reading materials keep the middling classes from the "vicious" entertainments maintaining order in the community by giving them a harmless source of recreation has lost its significance as the modern society provides a number of choices in recreation: television is an obvious example. C. The nature of the informational needs of the community has radically changed, so radically as to require substantial changes in the outlook, collections, and services of the public library, which is :slow in adopting itself to the new social surroundings in Korea. D. 92.2 per Cent of the present frequenters of the public library are high school and college students. Since the library is to meet the existing community needs it should turn its attention to the student group, and develop the means to serve it better, not the "theoretical group of specialists who do not come to "the public library. E. In revision of the purpose of the public library, priority of each objective should be given. The priorities in the last analysis are research and information. culture, recreation in that order.