Library in intergenerational view – the meaning and purpose of library in children’s and adolescents’ conceptions

Abstract

The paper presents the research project which is carried out by teachers and students of the Institute of the Czech Language and Library Science, Faculty of Philosophy and Science, Silesian University in Opava, and is focused on determining the meaning, purpose and role of a library in an intergenerational perspective. In the first part of the contribution the philosophy and methodology of the research project, the main goals and sub-targets are presented. There are also analysed basic motivation for choosing a qualitative approach and reason for the use of the behavior research methods (psychometry) for data acquisition. The advantage of using mixed-methods strategy for data analysis in this kind of library research is discussed as well. In general, the first part of the paper offers the way, which can be very effective in exploring both general and specific library user’s attitudes. The second part of the paper is focused on main results obtained from the qualitative research section – individual interviews. Data obtained from elementary school children and teen adolescents are presented and interpreted. At the end of the paper the research project and all presented outcomes are related to the ideas of community library open to intergenerational meeting of values.