The Role of Public Libraries on Kerman Health Information Seeking Behavior

Health clients when seeking health information are faced with challenges such as complexity of the health system, increase in prevalence of chronic diseases, need to participate in the health care, and increase in the available information from different and various sources. Disregarding the importance of health information-seeking behavior and the effectiveness of library services in this field, a few studies have been performed on health information-seeking behavior in developing countries like Iran.
The present survey was performed on 373 members of the public libraries in Kerman. The sample size were determined based on the Morgan table. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics (frequency, mean, and standard deviation), chi-square test, and SPSS 19.
The results show that among 373 participants, 1.33% believed that library has no significant role in access to health information, and 8.9% believed that the library plays a key role in this area. In this study, a significant relationship between the age, sex, marital status, educational level and occupation of individuals, and the diagnosis of disease was reported. In addition, a significant relationship between the role of library in access to health information and age was also reported.
Investigation of individuals’ health information-seeking behavior can be used as an effective tools to help planners and administrators. Although Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has been remarkably grown and internet plays significant role compared to the other channels that help people to access to health information but the book is still regarded as an important and common resource to access the information.