Librarian’s roles on students who are hurt: A comparative study of two countries

Abstract

Librarians are re-discovering themselves in many functions that connects them to library users by playing critical roles in supporting the users. Investigating how librarians will help their users is now significant to school library services. This is a comparative study carried out in Nigeria and Indonesia to find out roles of librarians towards helping hurting library users.

The study investigates if librarians are aware of issues that makes their users hurts emotionally and if there are specific activities that are created in the libraries to enhance  users’ well-being. The librarians in these two countries were asked if they use readers’ advisory to recommend literature that could help users that are hurting. This study also examines wether librarians in these countries understands the concept of bibliotherapy.

Every librarian has the potential to help hurting library users once they recognise the efficacy of using the appropriate book to help. The 21st century library professionals need to learn more about their potentials to help and comfort users in the library space.