Rural and Small Public Libraries by Brian Real

Author:Brian Real
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781787432536
Publisher: Emerald Publishing
Published: 2017-10-26T16:00:00+00:00

B. Respondent Feedback Regarding Information-Related Challenges

The researchers again could safely assume small business representatives would be more forthcoming with information-related challenges than public librarians. Public librarians in total listed less than half the number of challenges that small business representatives did. The public librarians most often mentioned the challenge of Internet access. In part, this is because public libraries serve as an anchor institution and in many rural communities are the only free Internet access point. However, no small business person listed the Internet as a challenge. Without this challenge being overcome, it would have been difficult to complete or receive an online survey. Perhaps, the method limits the actual number of businesses that do face challenges related to Internet connectivity and costs.

It is worth repeating that the three highest count categories for each stakeholder group were scored with a low count by the other group. Again, there are significant gaps in awareness across the two groups and there is a need for research and education to bridge the differential knowledge and realities of experience. The small business challenges most listed were legal information, finance information, external environment, and functionalities to maintain business. Public librarians indicated only legal information from this set. This gap was expected, but can inform other parts of the toolkit given that public librarians appear seemingly unaware of the information-related challenges of small business representatives. Only small business representatives listed personnel management and health information. Again, these challenges related to human resources and their health insurance are gaps to be addressed in a toolkit if public librarians will play a role in assisting the economic development in their communities. Some requirements of the Affordable Care Act, the comprehensive healthcare reform law enacted in March 2010 (sometimes known as ACA, PPACA, or “Obamacare”), were in place when the data were collected in this research (i.e., October 2014 to September 2016), though the future implications of the political aftermath of the 2016 presidential election are uncertain. But no matter what healthcare policy exists, small businesses will still have some questions about it AND librarians will be able to help answer their questions. Public librarians also list several potential challenges that small businesses did not mention, and they reflect areas where a public library’s services and resources could help economic development (e.g., marketing, reference, printing, and space). There is a good chance that small business representatives do not know that a reference librarian at a public library may be able to answer their questions more quickly than using their own personnel. The gap in understanding the challenges is clear, but the small business representatives’ challenges must be addressed first in a toolkit to lead those stakeholders to understand the other challenges public librarians may help with (even if they do not perceive these challengers at the moment).

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