Abstract

This study determined the communicative characteristics of public libraries through locality, communality, interactivity, and organism and sought to measure the validity of their components to define the role of libraries based on the analysis. According to the analysis results, there are four communicative characteristics of public libraries: locality, communality, interactivity, and organism. This study defined the role of public libraries according to communicative characteristics. First, libraries should encourage the formation of a healthy society by providing a space for diverse community activities, contributing to the building and strengthening of their local communities, and offering the necessary information to do so. Second, libraries should contribute to the formation of local cultural communities and strengthen interpersonal relations among community members to reinforce a sense of community, while also supporting the heightening of social adaptability to foster a sense of belonging and community activity participation among members. Third, libraries act as a space for sharing ideas between generations, provide a space to carry out leisure activities, and enable the cultural prosperity of local communities. Lastly, as a representative space of local communities, libraries raise the value of the residential environment and contribute to their communities and members.