The impact of information explosion and global competition on modern people grows everyday in knowledge economy society. It has became a critical issue about learning how to use information effectively and to be a lifelong learner. School libraries bridge the gap between library information science and education, and are responsible for integrating information into instruction and fostering lifelong learning skills. The value of school library associations is to promote the professional development of school libraries and to speak out for the librarians. Therefore the relationship between school library associations and school librarianship is very close. All contributions and efforts that school library associations made will exploit the development of library profession more vigorous.
The purpose of the study is to compare the operation, national standards, and library professional certificates of school library associations in American and Australian. The research was conducted by historical and comparative analysis. American and Australian national school library associations were chosen as the objects based on IASL’s conference papers published from 2003 to 2006.
The results of the research are summarized below:
1. American and Australian national school library associations are active organizations, they did a lot of research and provided school librarians precious information. 2. The cores of American and Australian national school library standard contents are changed from quantity to quality. 3. The American and Australian national school library standards cope with the contemporary educational trends. 4. American and Australian national school library associations has started to draw up information literacy standards since 1990. 5. American and Australian national school library associations are cooperative with other profession or associations to develop standards. 6. American and Australian national school library associations definitely make statements about school librarians who should be multi-roles. 7. American and Australian national school library associations definitely write down school library professionals and supporting staffs’ duties.
Based on the conclusion above, six suggestions for Taiwan’s school library association are proposed as follows: 1. Consciously preserving the association’s developmental information, and doing relative research. 2. Commanding the situations of school librarianship development and the school librarians’ concerns, and making useful suggestions to librarians. 3. Drawing up more detailed national school library standards, and revising regularly. 4. Building a set of national information literacy standards for students learning. 5. Planning school library staffs’ categories, and developing professional rating systems. 6. Promoting school library courses for teacher to raise more professional librarians.
