All together now?

New hopes for the transformation of South African schooling from the National Policy for Library and Information Services (NPLIS)

Abstract

The paper explores the meaning of the recently drafted National Policy for Library and Information Services (NPLIS) for school librarianship in South Africa. It argues that, after years of failed advocacy, a convergence of thinking across the LIS ecosystem enabled the policy project and gives new hope for the transformation of the school library sector. The investigations throughout 2017 sought to find out from a wide range of role-players what and whose behaviour they believed should be changed. The paper describes our evidence-gathering across the country and how the data were analysed into broad themes around which the policy was built. The paper pulls out the threads on school LIS policy but also highlights the principles that tie them to the overarching policy. Thus, the insistence on an ecosystems approach calls for innovative strategies to counter long-established silo-thinking. 

Key words: LIS policy, South Africa, school libraries