Abstract:

Formulating and implementing international standards in order to support high quality library and information services is an important work of IFLA. The international standards in IFLA were mainly formed in the western language/discourse system and professional context, so how to be used by the nonwestern area represented by China is an academic problem deserving to study further. This paper took the 2nd revised edition of the IFLA School Library Guidelines 2015(hereafter Guidelines) as an example, to research IFLA’s applicability. A semistructured questionnaire consisting of questions corresponding to the Guidelines is designed and this paper also interviewed the curator and the principal of 8 school libraries in Guangdong Province of South China. The findings are: 1) the general applicability of the Guidelines is not high, 2)the differences mainly occurs between the secondary school and elementary school, other factors have little significant impact on the applicability, 3) the secondary school libraries have higher applicability, 4) the Guidelines has higher applicability for future plan, 5) the universal value affirmed by IFLA does not consequentially be accepted or recognized universally, 6) different types of recommendations have different levels of applicability. With the survey findings, several suggestions are made at the end of the paper for further study.

Keywords: IFLA, International standards, School Library Guidelines, Secondary school libraries, Elementary school libraries