The management of public libraries in Japan faced a big change in 2003. Public institutions had been privatized in the world from the 1970s, but privatization of public institutions was late in Japan. Public institutions came to be privatized in Japan in the 1980s, and the public library finally became a target of the privatization in the 2000s. The numbers of libraries which introduced the privatization increases year by year. Research in the arena of library information science had been accomplished about arguments of privatization in Japanese public libraries. However, most of studies were sets of opinions to object to privatization. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to examine opinions of various stakeholders about privatization of public libraries by content analysis. The authors succeeded in collecting opinions of stakeholders from newspapers. They clarified characteristics of privatization and present arguments in Japan
