Learning Resources Centers in Kuwait: Prospects for the Future

Abstract

Many countries have documented the impact of school learning resources centers (LRCs), serving students aged 6-18 years and pre-school, on the educational process and on student learning (Lonsdale, 2003), and have found that both human and material resources are essential to effective LRC operation. Kuwait has been blessed with an early educational public school system, which has been establishing a library in each school for over a course of more than seventy years. However, this early system has failed to keep pace with the latest advancement in the school library arena in terms of personnel, resource, and services that serve students, teachers and school administrators alike. Studying the current situation of school libraries in Kuwait is an important prerequisite to evaluating the situation in preparation for any reform. This paper is an analytical description of the current state of public school libraries in Kuwait, and it offers some suggestions for their reform.