The most borrowed books of Croatian authors in public libraries

Abstract

In this paper the issue of library borrowing of books written by Croatian authors was explored. The focus was on the most borrowed books. In the first part of the paper there is a literature review related to topic, such as readers' preferences and importance of culturally diverse materials. After presentation of theoretical background there is a second part of the paper in which research results are presented. These were the goals of research: 1) to explore how often the users of Croatian public libraries have borrowed books of authors from Croatia in comparison to books of non-Croatian authors; 2) to explore characteristics of the most borrowed books of Croatian authors (when they were published; gender of authors; are they fiction, non-fiction or picture books; what are their genres). Public libraries in Zagreb, Split, Rijeka and Pula were included in research. Findings indicate that there are about 10% of books of Croatian authors among 2000 most borrowed books of these libraries. Majority of these books are fiction books published for the first time after the year 2000.