Introduction
The education system in India is based on the British system of education. The Government of
India lays stress on education for all. The directive principle contained in article 45 states that the state
has to provide free and compulsory education for all until the age of 14 years. According to 2001 census,
65% Indians are literate and almost every child has an access to school with around 95% of our rural
education having a primary school within one kilometer of their habitation. The school education in India
is at three levels-Primary (classes 1 to 5), Middle (classes 6 to 8) and Higher/Secondary (classes 9 to 12).
There are two categories of schools-government schools that are entirely funded by the government and
others being the public (private) schools. There are about 888 thousands educational institutions in the
country with an enrollment of about 179 millions. Elementary education system in India is the second
largest in the world with 149.4 millions children enrolled in the age-group of 6 to 14 years. All the states
and Union Territories of India have adopted a uniform structure of school education, i.e., the 10+2 system
of education. Higher education is provided by 237 universities, which include 34 agricultural universities,
15 medical institutions, 39 deemed to be universities and 11 institutions of national importance and 8
open universities in addition to 10600 colleges. Education in India is primarily the responsibility of the
state governments although the central government also plays an important role in higher education.
Though education is in the concurrent list of the constitution, the state governments play a major role in
the development of education particularly in the primary and secondary education. Para 11.4 of NPE
1986 states that the investment on education be gradually increased to reach a level of 6% of the national
income as early as possible. In spite of the resource constraints, the budgetary allocation on education
has increased over the years. As part of the mid-term Strategic Plan and the Millennium Development
Goals priorities, UNICEF India is also committed to ensuring quality education for all children.
Role of School Libraries
School is a gateway to knowledge and plays an important role in building up a love for reading.
The school library is integral to this educational process. Encouraged at the right age, the children are
sure to develop a love for books. “Catch 'em Young” is therefore the motto of the school libraries.
According to IFLA/UNESCO School Library Manifesto, “the school library provides information and ideas
that are fundamental to functioning successfully in today's information and knowledge-based society. The
school library equips students with life-long learning skills and develops the imagination enabling them to
live as responsible citizens”. It plays this role by selecting, acquiring and providing access to appropriate
sources of information. The school library offers books and other resources ranging from print to
electronic media for completion of various school projects and assignments, for acquisition of knowledge
about a topic taught in class, for finding information about a hobby or current events and news, etc. The
school librarian helps the students in finding the books/information on the topics of their interest. The
librarians along with the teachers work together to achieve higher levels of literacy. While highlighting the
role of the school library as the heart of school, Dr. Ranganathan stated that the school libraries should
act as laboratories for students and the librarians should function as guides to help the students in
learning and using the books for improvement of knowledge and scholarship.
Standards for School Libraries
The school library is essential for literacy, education and information provision as well as for
economic, social and cultural development of a nation. Hence, the school libraries must have adequate
and sustained funding for trained staff, materials, technologies and facilities. As the responsibility of local,
regional and national authorities, it must be supported by specific standards. Library standards are used
to measure and evaluate the condition of the libraries as well as the degree of their development. They
provide an outline for specific library activities and serve to define an ideal state of a library. The
standards, which are developed professionally, indicate a direction for the libraries as to what tasks and
objectives it should strive for. They provide school management with information on the management of
libraries. Standards can have an international, national and regional scope. Internationally, standards are
not only developed by the library organizations, such as IASL (International Association of School
Libraries) and IFLA, but also by UNESCO or ISO. Keeping in view the vital role a school library plays in
supporting the curriculum, such organizations have issued a School Library Manifesto whose 1998
version became a known text and is used by the school librarians all around the world. The manifesto
indicates the role of school library, its mission and the most important tasks as well as the exceptional
importance of a qualified school librarian. „School Librarians: Guidelines for Competency Requirements'
was published in the series- IFLA Profound Reports as number 41 in August 1995. The Library
Association (CILIP) has also published a completely revised edition of the guidelines for „school libraries
in secondary schools' in 2002. These standards usually describe the staff requirements, acquisitions of
collections, audiovisual and computer equipment as well as budgetary calculations.
School Libraries in the Current Environment
The school library is an essential partner in the local, regional and national library and information
network. The school librarian has to be professionally qualified because he is responsible for planning
and managing the library. Supported by the teachers, he not only inculcates love for reading amongst the
future citizens of the country but also helps in information literacy. The role of school librarian as a
teacher is to analyze the information needs of his clients for which he seeks help from the teachers. . He
must have good interpersonal skills and should be able to take on the decisional roles. The school
librarian need to know what teachers like to work with and what information they need for teaching.
Finally, the school librarian needs to know what is expected of the student and how and what are they
being taught. In fact, the school librarians have to move away from the role of keeper of books to that of
the information providers and support students in learning and using information regardless of its form
and format. In an increasingly networked environment when the students at the school level are using IT
skills for study, the school librarian must be competent in teaching different information handling skills
both to teachers and the students. They help the teachers to use a broader range of teaching strategies
and the students are helped in their project work, individual study, group research, reading and the
teaching of ICT, etc. It has been observed that when the teachers and the school librarians work together,
students achieve higher levels of literacy, reading, learning, problem solving and information and
communication technology skills . It has also been noted that the students in schools with good school
libraries learn more, get better grades, and score higher on standardized test scores than their peers in
schools without the libraries.
School library professionals in the developed countries are now engaged in some exciting
activities so as to remain effective in the midst of fast-moving technological changes. They are striving to
provide smart researching methodologies and information literacy skill sets to students. They are using
web 2.0 technologies including blogs to give updates on resources as well as to interact with users and
host collaborative discussions, are connecting their readers by creating pages on social networking sites
such as MySpace or Orkut, are offering RSS tools that allow users to subscribe to get new information as
it goes online, are using wikis to get staff and students involved in creating online library-related
resources, are using Podcasts and videocasts for the audio tours of the library , etc. As a result, school
libraries are now called "learning resource centres" and the school librarians as the „learning resource
centre managers'. 
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