Working in a library with one employee usually involves a multitude of different and concurrent jobs that can be done successfully only by a person who has remarkable abilities to self-organize and communicate effectively with users and the management. The high level of professionalism, required in libraries with one employee, assumes proper time management skills of librarians in order to prevent their independence in work to become a professional insulation and their workload to lead to marginalization of these libraries within the parent institutions. Employees in school, higher education and special libraries as the most numerous representatives of the libraries with one employee are well aware of this general framework.

Nearly 1.600 school libraries, as well as 570.000 students in primary and secondary schools for whom those libraries are intended, are part of the general framework of the Republic of Serbia. Then, there is the fact that the school libraries are being part of the two systems – the school and the library and information system. In the legal and regulatory terms, they are dependent on the two laws: Law on the Foundations of the Education System and Law on the Library and Information Activities. Another part of the general framework is illustrated by the fact that almost all schools in Serbia have the internet access, yet even the two laws do not help more than a hundred schools to get it in their libraries, which would allow their students the use of electronic resources. Supported by the modest financial resources allocated by schools and enthusiasm of individuals, our school libraries are only exceptionally the gathering places of curious and talented students, places of their live collaboration with teachers and fruitful communication between the teachers and librarians. Examples of good practice that occur occasionally show how wide is the field of creativity and influence located in front of the school librarians.

How is a school library evaluated, what is its impact on the quality of educational process, why is it the ideal place for spread of media and information literacy, how is the area of school librarianship regulated in other countries and standardized at the international level, who are school librarians in a professional sense, how real is the prescribed scope of their work and how much is it valued – these are only some of the questions that we deal with in the latest issue of Čitalište.

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