The purpose of this study is to explore the widespread information divide among the users of public libraries in urban and rural contexts and to test the hypotheses of whether the physical existence of public libraries and the actual use of these libraries benefits the accumulation of users information assets. Based on a user-centered perspective,this research aims to shed light on the functions and role of public libraries under the context of the information society.

    The present study selected The Scale of Individuals Information Worlds developed by Professor Yu Liangzhi et al. as the instrument and measured 754 residents in Dongguan city,Guangdong province and 990 residents in rural areas of Gansu province. Based on the questionnaire investigation,the present study conducted cluster analysis,independent samples t-test and regression analysis to meet the research purpose.

    Findings of this research include:1)for the users of public libraries,potentially or actually,widespread information divides are existing among both urban and rural users. 2)There is no evidence to show that urban users have more advantages on the amount of information assets compared to their counterparts who live in rural areas no matter whether they are initially from the information rich or information poor group. 3)The physical existence of public libraries has a positive effect on the accumulation of information assets of users but should not be limited to a specific level of information rich/poor users,and there is no statistical difference demonstrated in either rural or urban users. And 4)actual use of public libraries has a positive effect on the amount of users information assets as well regardless of urban or rural context and this effect is also not limited to a specific level of information rich/poor users.

    The limitations of this research include remaining vagueness of the mechanism public libraries utilize to affect their users information worlds. Thus,we still require further investigation into the contribution of the socio-economic status of users of public libraries to their use of the library or whether information rich individuals tend to use libraries more frequently than information poor individuals.

    The practical implications of this research are as follow:Firstly,the present study provides sufficient evidence on the widespread existence of information divides among different groups of public library users. It indicates that library professionals should pay more attention to information divide issues. Secondly,we provide evidence for the necessity of building public libraries for specific groups of users in the context of the information society once again. Thirdly,people who are at different levels of information poverty will display different information behavior and thus,library professionals need to turn their perspective towards that of a user-centered one throughout their work.

    The present study identified the widespread information divide among different groups of public library users in China based on the measurement of their information world and confirmed a positive effect of public libraries on the users information wealth. Thus,we provide new perspectives and evidence for future research which may focus on the service style of public libraries under the context of the information society. 11 tabs. 24 refs.