Willingness of patrons to use library public computing facilities: insights from Malaysia

This paper aims to examine relationships between attitude, self-efficacy and subjective norm with library patrons’ behavioural intention to use public computing facilities at a library.

Data were collected from 200 undergraduate students enrolled at a higher learning institution in the Federal Territory of Labuan, Malaysia, via a structured questionnaire comprising closed-ended questions. A structural equation modelling technique using Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS) computer software version 21 was used to examine the stability of the model with the data and to estimate impacts among factors instantaneously.

The results show that library patrons’ behavioral intention to use public computing facilities at the library is widely affected by subjective norm factor, i.e. influence of the support of family members, friends and neighbours. Using public computers in a library helps them to be more independent in completing their assignments and conducting research collaboration, checking email messages, social networking and performing other online tasks.

The findings of this study provide a better understanding of factors likely to influence library patrons’ behavioral intention to use public computing facilities at a library. It also offers valuable insights into factors which university librarians need to focus on to improve library patrons’ behavioral intention to actively use public computing facilities at a library for quality information retrieval.

This study replaces perceived behavioral control with self-efficacy in the framework, as it overlaps with the concept of self-efficacy to provide more variance in behavioral intention to use public computing facilities at a library, which has been marginally researched in the Malaysian context.