QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE EXPERIENCE OF BORROWERS AND NON-BORROWERS OF BOOKS AT BANQ AND OTHER PUBLIC LIBRARIES

In their portrait of digital book (DB) borrowers within Biblioth & egrave;que et Archives nationales du Qu & eacute;bec (BAnQ), Lapointe, Luckerhoff and Niort (2023) compared them to physical book (PB) and hybrid borrowers. Through this exercise, they identified trends and raised questions such as: What is the experience of PB borrowers who made the transition to DB? What are their borrowing experiences like? What meaning do borrowers give to the library as a place? As part of the research reported in this article, we conducted over 70 individual and group interviews with borrowers and non-borrowers of BAnQ and other public libraries. Our objective was to better understand their experiences with PBs and DBs, with book venues like the public library-including BAnQ's Grande Biblioth & egrave;que-, their perceptions of these realities, as well as their borrowing experiences.