The problem that this study addresses is that, although the facility is crucial to the daily
operation of a public library, the majority of library facility evaluation research occurs in
academic libraries not public libraries and the facility evaluation research that does occur in
public libraries tends to be aimed at practitioner journals, not theoretically based, and focused on
collection and furniture space needs with minimal attention paid to user wayfinding needs.
Understanding how users actually orient and navigate in public library facilities is an underrepresented
yet vital piece of the knowledge in the field of public library facility evaluation. In
general, evaluation is a group of methods for assessing how well a person, service, facility, etc. is
serving its purpose or purposes, and specifically, facility evaluation is a group of methods for
assessing how well a building serves its purposes.