Adult education in South African public libraries: a profile of activities
Abstract
This paper reports on the ftndings of a research investigation into the role of South African public libraries in adult education]. A questionnaire was distributed to 1295 public libraries for the collection of statistical and qualitative information in an attempt to build national and provincial proftles of adult education activities. There was a good response rate of 45.5%. The survey was complemented by site visits to eleven public libraries in order to illuminate the issues facing libraries in this fteld The results show that most public libraries do not participate at all in any adult education initiatives: 76.9% do not participate while 23. I% do. A profile of activities is presented. A case study of a single anonymous library is presented to provide an opportunity to understand the lived experience of the activities from the perspective of the providers and of the learners. The paper concludes by speculating on the reasons for the low lev'el of engagement in an area that is theoretically espoused by the library community.Downloads
This journal is an open access journal, and the authors (copyright owners) should be properly acknowledged when works are cited. Authors retain publishing rights without any restrictions.
South African Journal of Libraries and Information Science is an Open Access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of Open Access.
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License