Abstract:
Legitimacy is a key concept within institutional theory, yet it has received little attention within
Library and Information Science, particularly in the public library context. This quantitative
research study proposes a definition of public library legitimacy, and utilizes structural equation
modeling to analyze the relationship between library service variables, community
socioeconomic characteristics, and the outcome of public library legitimacy. The population for
this study is Kansas public libraries, and secondary data was procured from the 2018 Kansas
Public Library Survey & Annual Report and U.S. Census data.
