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Introduction
Public libraries (together with school libraries) represent the most widely accessible type of libraries in Croatia. Consequently, their holdings and services should be well known to the general population. However, this is not always the case.
For generations, users have been coming to public libraries, places with a central role in providing information sources to the general population. At present, the internet has taken over the role of the main information provider especially among the young generations, changing their perspective and attitude towards libraries greatly. For [4] Mi and Nesta (2006), it happened because of the inclination of users towards search engines instead of library resources. Owing to the rapid growth of the popularity of the internet, public libraries need to re-evaluate their current marketing strategies and make their holdings and services more visible to current and potential users, who are now giving priority to electronic media as their primary sources of information.
Before the internet became popular and a widely accessible source of information, the entertainment industry had offered a wide variety of products that diverted a certain number of library users from visiting public libraries and from using their services. The demise of public libraries seemed imminent. Instead, public libraries managed to create new services by integrating their paper-based holdings and computer supported multimedia products. They also succeeded in keeping their positive public image of being institutions offering high quality content and services. An example is one of the best Croatian libraries - Zadar City Library (www.gkzd.hr), the library which is known in Croatia for its innovative approach in creating new services and attracting new users. The annual reports of the library (www.gkzd.hr/onama.php - in Croatian) indicate great interest of printed and electronic media in the work of this library as quality attracts attention.
As the internet became more available in the mid-1990s, the attention of library users shifted from libraries towards the world wide web. For librarians, this was a new challenge not only because of the new types of interactive services but also because of new user expectations, now quite different from expectations users had had towards a library catalogue or a bibliographic (or full text) database ([5] Nielsen, 2005). Public library users had the ability to access and use...