| This study investigated the contribution of governance on the level of public library debvelopment in Malaysia. Public libraries placed under different governing authorities exhibited variation in their level of development. It was hypothesized that differences in library governance influenced public library development.;Public libraries in all the states of Malaysia were selected to test the extent of contribution made by governance on the level of public library development. For this purpose, three hypotheses were tested: first, there was no significant difference in the level of public library development between the state administered system of governance (SS) and the municipality-council administered system of governance (MCS); secondly, there was no significant difference in the level of public library development between the state administered system of governance (SS) and the library board administered system of governance (LBS); and thirdly, there was no significant difference in the level of public library development between the library board administered system of governance (LBS) and the municipality-council administered system of governance (MCS). These hypotheses were tested by use of ANOVA and multiple regression techniques.;Factor analysis was employed to generate the public library development index. This index, composed of five library measures (expenditure, staff, circulation, registration and turnover rate), was the dependent variable in the empirical analysis. The unweighted index was formed by combining the raw scores of the five library measures.;The independent variable was the type of governance, of which there are three: first, the library board administered system; secondly, the state administered system; and thirdly, the municipality-council administered system.;Because of the possibility of spurious attributions of causality, extraneous variables (age, education, economnic ability and occupation) were controlled by stepwise regression procedures.;Analyses revealed that the first and second research of alternative hypotheses could be accepted, but failed to reject the third null hypothesis. These findings supported the thesis that there is a relationship between types of governance and the level of public library development. The findings also showed that the level of public library development in a state administered system of governance was greater than the level of public library development in a library board administered system or in a municipality-council administered system of governance. |
