Core Interests of School Library Practitioner in Asia and Pacific Region

SLAP (School Library Initiatives for Asia and Pacific) Forum 2013 Report

Abstract

Internationally, there are well-known school library models including the U.S. model, with its strong groups of professionals, the British model, dependent on school library services in the community, and the Australian model, which can be described as either a successor to or a middle way between these two models. However, no independent school library model has been established in Asia. In Japan, the Library and Information Professions and Educations Renewal (LIPER) project was established in 2003 to study reforms to and the reorganization of library and information science education, with the members of the Japan Society of Library and Information Science. The School Library Initiatives for Asia & Pacific (SLAP) Forum, an international meeting for school library practitioners, was held in Tokyo in January 2013, and even before then an initiative was conducted as part of the studies spun off from the LIPER’s third stage. This paper reports on these topics.