Abstract

In Korea, the term 'public library service population' is applied in various situations without academic discourse. This study analyzed concepts and applications of the term with literary reviews and case studies in United States, Australia, Japan, and Korea. And also this study redefined concepts and suggested new measurements of 'design population' and 'service population.' The former is the population who lives in area where public library can serve, and only demographic characteristics can be identified. It can be calculated based on the population of administrative district. In case of urban areas with a population of more than 100,000, it can be calculated the population within a radius of 2km from library. In areas with a population of less than 100,000 it can be calculated based on the population of Eup, Myeon, and Dong. In both cases the estimated population up to the library's opening year is added. Service population is used for the planning, evaluating, and promoting library services, and it can be defined as the actual users or estimated population determined by the input resources of the public libraries. It can be calculated by the number of enrolled members, or service participants, or target populations according to the size of input resources. The advantages of the proposal in this study are enabling efficient facility placement or resource inputs in public libraries and enhancing reliability of measuring output versus input. In addition, this study proposed to delete <attached table 1> for paragraph 1 of Article 3 of the Library Act to avoid confusion.