Purpose: The purpose of this research is to investigate the role of public libraries in the social and economic empowerment of housewives, with an emphasis on the capacities of virtual space, especially social network sites.
Method: This is an applied research that was conducted with a qualitative approach using thematic analysis method. The
study population included librarians and officials of public libraries affiliated to the General Directorate of Public Libraries of
South Khorasan. A nonprobability (non-random), and a snowball sampling procedure was used and 21 persons were interviewed by telephone. The type of interview used was semi-structured.
Findings: Subjects requested by housewives from public libraries were categorized into practical (health, agriculture
and art) and theoretical (literary-religious and educational) categories, and the results showed that theoretical subjects were
almost as much as practical subjects of interest to housewives. Specifically, the findings of the research indicated that cooking,
novels, raising children, psychology and tailoring are among the main interests of this group. The programs through which
public libraries play a role in empowering housewives in social and economic areas were also grouped into two categories of
educational programs (educational-social and technical-economic) and cultural-promotional programs (educational, book-oriented, consultation-referral and employment-oriented). Cultural-promotional programs were more frequent. The educational
programs of public libraries in this field are mainly in the form of user empowerment workshops, among which workshops
on social harms and handicrafts were more frequent. Cultural-promotional programs of public libraries were also mainly bookoriented in this field. The services that can be provided to housewives in the virtual space were classified into two categories
of information (educational and resource-finding) and promotion (information and resource expansion), and the category of
promotional services with 20 primary codes was in a better position than the category of information services. Incentives for
the use of virtual space by public libraries to empower housewives were also classified into two promotional and functional
categories, and the functional incentives for using virtual space in the field of empowering housewives with 15 primary codes
were in a higher position than the promotional incentives. Obstacles in this area were divided into three categories: socio-economic, personal and technological, with more primary codes attributed to personal obstacles. The findings of the research indicated that the obstacles to using virtual space to empower housewives are much more than the existing incentives in this field.
Originality/value: The value of the problem of this research is that public libraries can use the facilities of virtual space,
especially virtual social networks, for the social and economic empowerment of housewives. In this case, in order to implement the library’s programs related to the empowerment of this group, there will be no need for their physical presence in the
library environment, and the desired programs can be implemented remotely using the facilities of virtual space. Of course,
there are serious obstacles in this area that require serious attention from public libraries. In order to remove these obstacles, it is
suggested that public libraries implement programs to improve their media literacy and information literacy before implementing empowerment programs for housewives.