Journal of Library and Information Sciences

Jamaican School Libraries Empowering Students with Life Skills: A Survey
Paulette L. Stewart

Abstract
Library activities have the potential to build in students life skills such as self-confidence, responsible citizenship and appropriate interpersonal skills. School librarians can either work collaboratively with classroom teachers to plan, implement and evaluate these library activities, or they can execute them single-handedly. A survey was carried out in several Jamaican school libraries to determine the activities that were pursued, the level of collaboration between school librarians and teachers, and students’ perception of how they have been impacted by these activities. The population consisted of 20 school librarians and 400 students. The findings show that the activities empowered many high school students to attain the targeted life skills. However, they also indicated that activities with the potential to develop these targeted life skills were not utilized by several school librarians and that a collaborative approach was not the norm.

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