Growing from Nothing

Since 2009, Taiwan's Ministry of Education has begun to add the post of teacher librarians in some elementary schools. Teachers who are enthusiastic about reading education become teacher librarians to take charge of managing school libraries and promoting reading after receiving short professional training. This study aims to probe into whether the system is helpful to the management of libraries in elementary schools and to the establishment of reading environment at school. Specifically speaking, this study aims to discuss whether there is any difference in the activities of school libraries and schools' attitudes toward reading between schools with teacher librarians and schools without ones. The study surveyed elementary schools in Taiwan with a questionnaire which was filled out by teacher librarians or general librarians at school. The questionnaire was tested with Cronbach’s α reliability, and a coefficient of 0.975 was obtained, which is considered excellent reliability. 742 copies of the questionnaire were retrieved, and 741 of them were considered valid after the elimination of one with incomplete answers. Among which, 213 copies were from schools with teacher librarians, and the rest 528 copies were from schools without teacher librarians. In addition, the fill rate of schools with teacher librarians reached 80%. The study found that schools with and without teacher librarians had significant differences in library management of their libraries and behavior and attitudes toward reading.