A Study of Health Information Needs and Health Information Seeking Among Users of Mazandaran Public Libraries During 2015-16: A Short Report

Health information plays an important role related to increasing people’s health level in today's societies and can provide appropriate condition for developing health policy and system of different countries. This study aimed to determine the health information needs and health information seeking ways among the users of Mazandaran public libraries.
This was a descriptive study. Statistical populations included 384 users of Mazandaran public libraries in 2016. A self-constructed questionnaire was used to collectdata and data analysis was done using descriptive statistics, Mann-Whitney, and Kruskal-Wallis none-parametric tests.
The findings showed that the information related to "access to healthy life" and "Non-communicable infectious diseases" were identified as the most important health information needs by the average of 4.11 and 4.04, respectively. Also, 28.1% of people (103) mentioned that they highlyneed to receive information throughout the day and they also stated that doctors and TV are the most important ways to access health information (348 users, 94.8% and 326 user, 88.8%, respectively).
Users saythat public libraries play a great role in having access to health information resources. Public libraries also can be effective in obviating ing health information needs of all people in the society and helping them to improve their health information.