Ergonomic and anthropometric consideration for library furniture in an Iranian public university.

Background: In our competing educational world, students spend a considerable part of their daily life, studying at library furniture. Not surprisingly, due to lack of proper anthropometric databases, these products have typically been ill fitted for the intended user populations.

Objective: To verify the optimum anthropometric match of library furniture within an academic environment, through a combined qualitative and quantitative approach.

Methods: 267 (120 female and 147 male) students, were subjected to 11 standard anthropometric measurements. In line with the measurements, subjective evaluations were also considered through detailed fitting trials on selected groups of participants.

Results: Combinational equations defined the unacceptable furniture dimensions according to elbow and sitting popliteal heights, mainly for smaller and taller divisions of the studied population, which were systematically comparable along with subjective and objective outcomes. In brief, if we classified studied students into "small," "medium," and "tall" groups, the design dimensions should be altered by -5.1, -2.2, and +1.6 cm for chair seat height; and by -8.3, -5.4, and +1.1 cm for table height, for each student group, respectively.

Conclusion: The furniture size to be used by Iranian students should be changed to fit their anthropometric measures.