The reality of information services in school libraries in Kuwait from the point of view of librarians

The study examined the librarians’ point of view of information services presented at school libraries’ in the State of Kuwait, Ministry of Education. It discussed the extent to which school libraries succeeded in the educational process in providing information services and thus contributing to the development of education.
A questionnaire was distributed to both male and female librarians working at the public schools in the State of Kuwait during the academic year 2016/2017. The study revealed that because of the lack of integrated automated systems, the majority of school libraries provided traditional services (for example circulation, reference service, etc.). There was a lack of Internet access and of course social networking in most of these libraries; lack of computers for both employees and users; lack of advanced marketing activities; and there was no collaboration in library services among the school libraries in the Kuwait.
The study also found that the most important problems facing providing information services in school libraries in Kuwait were the lack of budget; lack of information network; lack of computers; and lack of training programs, which may negatively affect theses libraries in achieving their desired educational objectives.
Moreover, the study has examined a number of hypotheses and found the following results: there were statistically significant differences in the response of the sample of the study concerning problems facing the information services due to different variables such as gender, training courses participation and the qualification, while there were no statistically significant differences in the librarians’ specialization and job duties. The study recommended, among other recommendations, a comprehensive longitudinal study in the future to measure these variables and the extent to which the skills of school librarians have evolved.
Keywords: Information and communication technology skills, Information services, Kuwait, Librarians, School libraries.