There is currently a dearth of research on African American college students and their interactions in academic libraries. The purpose of this quantitative study is to investigate whether African American college students view academic libraries as welcoming places and to identify factors that are most influential in their perceptions of welcomeness. Adopting the theoretical lens of “library in the life of the user,” we administered a national online survey questionnaire to 160 black college students attending non-historically black colleges and universities in the United States. The survey data were analyzed by employing correlation coefficient and multiple regression analysis to test our hypotheses. The analytical results showed that participants felt welcomed in academic libraries, and library as place and information needs were significant factors that affected students’ perceptions of welcomeness. Our findings suggest that library patrons are important actors in constituting the atmospheric character of the library.

中文翻译：

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高校图书馆的种族氛围和包容性：黑人大学生的欢迎感

当前缺乏关于非裔美国大学生及其在大学图书馆中的互动的研究。这项定量研究的目的是调查非裔美国大学生是否将大学图书馆视为受欢迎的场所，并找出最能影响他们的欢迎感的因素。通过采用“用户生活中的图书馆”的理论视角，我们为160名在美国非历史性黑人学院和大学就读的黑人大学生管理了一项全国性在线调查问卷。通过采用相关系数和多元回归分析来检验我们的假设，以分析调查数据。分析结果表明，参与者在大学图书馆受到欢迎，图书馆作为场所和信息需求是影响学生对欢迎感的重要因素。我们的发现表明，图书馆顾客是构成图书馆大气特征的重要角色。