User attitude survey of usage, maintenance and preservation of major palm leaf manuscripts collections in Sri Lanka

This paper briefly introduces the user attitudes relating to the selected palm-leaf collections in the country and the survey has conducted as a part of the main survey. The objective of the study was to identify the user attitudes regarding the usage, maintenance and preservation of palm-leak in the 3 major collections of the country. Likert type attitude scale and 20 attitude questionnaire was distributed among the users and 75% were desponded Data analysis was done by using the analysis of variance (ANOVA). Based on the findings, there were no attitude differences between the three factors of the (NM) and (NA) repositories. There was a significant difference in the (UP} repository due to various physical reasons. The one factor analysis revealed that all the users were with positive attitudes of usage and maintenance. But the third factor of preservation have scored highest amount from the UP repository for the negative attitudes. Several steps were suggested to overcome the problems such as microfilming the collections, user awareness programmes for usage, applying oil treatment, provide training for personals, restrict to use fragile copies and encourage using manuscripts for research.

Key words: Attitude survey, usage, maintenance, preservation

doi: 10.4038/jula.v11i0.322

Journal of the University Librarians Association of Sri Lanka (Vol. 11) 2007 p.37-49