Library user studies for strategic planning

Introduction: There are five county public libraries in Lithuania with specific functions in the state library system. A research project LiBiTOP was conducted to identify directions of their strategic divelopment. Case studies of each library were carried out to identify their strengths and weaknesses. Library user satisfaction with library service were part of these case studies. Goal: The aim of this paper is to reflect on the data of usage of library services and user satisfaction for outlining the directions of strategic development of the county public libraries in Lithuania. The data used for the purposes of this article is only part of a larger qualitative and quantitative data collected for the LiBiTOP project. Method: Statistical data of library activities was provided by libraries for the latest five years. User satisfaction was surveyed using a questionnaire in all five county public libraries in Lithuania. The questionnaire was based on other user satisfaction tools, especially, the SCONUL Satisfaction Survey for library services. Analysis: Descriptive statistics were used to make sense of two sets of data (usage statistics and user questionnaire) for each library case study. Results. Results show that the usage of county public library services and collections is inadequate. The percentage of target group reached is very low. User satisfaction is expressed as high and very high, however, the data depicting the actual use of services under evaluation reveal which library services are not used or demanded by users. Conclusions: A number of strategic development possibilities were outlined for the county public libraries in Lithuania using data of users' survey and usage statistics. They were used to formulate recommendations on further development of Lithuanian public libraries for the law-makers, governmental bodies, and library managers