Situation of Primary School Library under the Office of the Basic Education Commission (OBEC) in Thailand

Abstract

This research aimed to explore situation of primary school libraries under the Office of the Basic Education Commission in Thailand. The questionnaire was used to collect data from 378 school libraries in 6 regions in Thailand according to the standard framework (5 categories     17 standards) of school library under the Office of the Basic Education Commission 2013.     The research findings revealed that most school administrators had a policy to use libraries to promote reading habits of students, teachers, educational staffs, and communities (96.80%), provided communities to access to library services for learning 80.27% and 93.60% of them had reading habit, seeking for knowledge, and continually self-improving. Most school libraries provided environment and atmosphere to facilitate teaching and learning management (94.93%), information resources related to teaching and learning and the curriculum (82.13%) as well as the library regulations (95.20%), library-based learning activities (94.13%), and continually reading and studying services and reading promotion activities to cultivate reading habits (92.00%). Most teachers or educational staffs were in charge of school librarians who were self-educated and had reading habit (96.53%), organized various reading promotion activities for learning objectives they were responsible to (93.33%). Most students had morality and ethics in using information resources (89.87%) and used the library regularly (92.53%). In terms of information resources, most school libraries provided reference books (94.13%), non-fiction books, fiction books, books in foreign languages, journals, magazines, newspapers (82.67%) but had no electronic books (67.73%) and online lessons (65.07%). Most school libraries did not provide training on library information technology (74.93%) and also had no online social network to promote the use of information resources (74.67%). Moreover, most school libraries provided space and atmosphere for reading and learning (94.40%) and had the suitable equipment for library size and the amount of users (74.13 %).