The Role of Iran Public Libraries in Development and Promoting of Tourism Services

چکیده مقاله

People get to know and recognize the culture of nations with a help of tourism. At the same time, the revenue generated by the tourism industry is highly significant. Public libraries are knowledge-based organizations that could be effective in providing tourist attractions through their resources and services. This systematic review of tourism studies within the library sciences is an effort to identify the role of libraries in development of tourism services and identify the research gap for future studies. To this end, the related studies were searched and identified in 10 national and international databases (1999 to 2019), out of which nine most related studies were used. The results of our study indicate that libraries are capable of developing tourism services in field of cultural tourism and development of cultural identity and heritage, information literacy and tourism approach, collaboration and cooperation with other institutions, organizations and tourism approaches based on market orientation. We highlight the necessity to conduct more practical studies on libraries so that their final product could lead to promotion of quality tourism services and consequently, profit achievement and promotion of a nation’s cultural identity.