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Many visually handicapped people face difficulties with using libraries. Public libraries are thus required to meet the need of visually handicapped people. Public libraries should guarantee the visually handicapped the right to use appropriate services. If so, the visually handicapped can improve their life quality by decreasing information gap and increasing information comprehension or accessibility. This study is designed to analyze how visually handicapped people can use public libraries. Based on the analysis, this study can provide actual suggestions to improve opportunities for the visually handicapped to use libraries. Data are collected from visually handicapped people who are the members of Suseong Public Library, Daegu, Korea. In specific, this study can analyze various characteristics(i.e., information needs, selection and use behavior of information sources, difficulties and gaps to access information, use behavior and service satisfaction of public library) regarding their library use by telephone interviews.

In Korea, public libraries lack the adequate services for the visually disabled, and therefore the visually disabled rarely use public libraries. This study aims to secure the information accessibility and usage rights for the visually disabled, and to suggest solutions in order to vitalize their use of public libraries. For this aim, the researcher investigated the reasons why the visually disabled did not use public libraries, extracted the correlations between their awareness of public library services and their actual use, and then tried to propose how to secure their right to use libraries and access to information and knowledge and improve their use of public libraries.