Page 33 - Volume_14

Jurnal PPM: Journal of Malaysian Librarians
Vol. 14, 2020

SCHOOL LIBRARY AND TEACHER LIBRARIANSHIP IN MALAYSIA

2
Shyh-Mee Tan and Shamila Mohamed Shahidan
1
1 Open University Malaysia, Malaysia
2 Faculty of Information Management, Universiti Teknologi MARA,
UiTM Puncak Perdana Campus, 40150 Shah Alam

shyhmeedr@oum.edu.my, shamila@uitm.edu.my

ABSTRACT
According to the IFLA School Library Guidelines 2015, a school librarian is to be
responsible for the school’s physical and digital learning space where reading, inquiry,
research, thinking, imagination and creativity are central to teaching and learning. In
Malaysia, school libraries are managed by library media teachers, who are also subject
teachers, academically qualified and professionally trained in the discipline of
education. They are entrusted to plan, manage and develop the school library for
teachers and students. They may also have full-time teaching responsibilities. Therefore,
this study aims to investigate the interests and needs of library media teachers and
librarians in Malaysia wishing to pursue a master’s degree in teacher librarianship.
This is a quantitative research, using a descriptive research design and survey research
technique. The survey utilizes Google Form which was shared through social media
networks in the Malaysian Library Media Teachers and Malaysian Librarians Facebook
group, from April till May 2019. It received 145 responses. The findings clearly indicate
that the field of teacher librarianship is relevant to the respondents’ interests. Both
library media teachers and librarians are interested to pursue and enrol in a teacher
librarianship master’s degree programme. They may need teacher librarianship
training in order to equip themselves in preparing future human capital for IR 4.0. This
programme also provides the educational aspects for librarians as well as pedagogical
knowledge which adds to their professional value. The study discovered a gap and a
completely new and vast market to tap as there may not be any local library schools in
higher education institutions that offer this programme. Thus, this study proposes to any
local library schools at higher education institutions to accept this recommendation.

Keywords: School library; School librarian; Teacher librarianship; Library media
teacher; Malaysia

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