Abstract

This exploratory study examines the emotional support function of school libraries in alleviating the emotional distress experienced by post-COVID-19 adolescents, based on Bowlby’s (1988) concept of the ‘secure base’. For this, we categorized the secure base function of school libraries into spatial, human, and reading resource elements based on previous studies and conducted a survey of 142 middle and high school librarians across the country. The results of exploratory factor analysis and structural equation model analysis showed that librarians perceived the secure base function of school libraries as two dimensions, ‘emotional function’ and ‘spatial function’, rather than three elements. Of these, the ‘emotional function’ had a significant effect on the perceived value and perceived need for the secure base function of school libraries, while the ‘spatial function’ had no significant effect. These findings suggest that the secure base function of school libraries is a multifaceted factor realized through emotional interactions and experiences rather than the physical environment. This study is significant as the first exploratory attempt to structure and examine the emotional function of school libraries quantitatively according to the secure base concept.