Librarianship in Northern Thailand

• Main Authors: Shih-Rong Chen, 陳詩絨
• Other Authors: Mei-Mei Wu
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/06314754061244835347

碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 圖書資訊學研究所 === 101 === The purpose of this study is to understand the librarianship in Northern Thailand from diverse aspects, including library development history in Northern Thailand, current status of librarianship n Northern Thailand, and library policy and librarianship development in Northern Thailand. This understanding would enhance the interests of future volunteers who would devote to library service in Northern Thailand. This study aims to answer the following three research questions. Firstly, what is the library development history in Northern Thailand? Secondly, what is the current status of librarianship in Northern Thailand? Thirdly, what is the library policy in Northern Thailand? This study takes qualitative research approach, including historical document analysis, filed observation, and focus group interview. Historical document analysis is applied to discover the development history of librarianship in Northern Thailand. Additionally, history document analysis, field observation, and focus group interview are adopted to collect and analyse materials to answer the current library status in Northern Thailand and to describe the situation of Thai government’s library policy and the development librarianship in Northern Thailand. These three research methods are used as three different sources for triangulation purpose to verify consistency and relevance within data to improve the quality of the study. The results of the study are as follows. Firstly, the development history in Northern Thailand could be tracked from Thailand’s library history, which reveals that the beginning of Thailand’s library history is from Northern Thailand. Except that, Thailand’s library history could be split into three developing periods: initial period, modern period, and policy period. Secondly, fewer types of libraries are found in Northern Thailand than in Central Thailand. Meanwhile, there are two universities in Northern Thailand both providing LIS bachelor and master degrees. And Thai Library Association (TLA) is considered as the official library representative of Thai government. Thirdly, Thai government’s educational policy effectively helped the librarianship in Northern Thailand. At present, however, there is no official library law in Thailand; this would make the librarianship in Northern Thailand to be in a disadvantage situation. Therefore, this study recommends that a library law for Thailand is suggested.