An assessment of academic librarians' instructional performance in Sri Lanka

Purpose - The purpose of this research paper is to look at the overall instructional performance of academic librarians in Sri Lanka and shed light on the challenges and potential problems facing the implementation of quality information literacy (IL) in university libraries. Design/methodology/approach - Data were collected by means of a questionnaire, which was sent to all professional academic librarians working in Sri Lankan university libraries. The results were analyzed using frequency and percentage distributions. Findings - The results reveal that the organizational structures of academic libraries do not clearly acknowledge the academic librarians' role in library instruction. Though most academic libraries had formal instruction policies, the majority had not appointed instruction coordinators. Academic librarians were not satisfied with the assessment of their teaching by library administrators, even though most of them had teaching experience. Most of the user education programs which they practiced were not up-to-date. Academic librarians' interest and positive attitudes with regard to library instruction, particularly for IL was the other significant factor explored by the study. Research limitations/implications - The study focuses only on academic librarians. The exclusion of other university stakeholders such as teaching staff, students, administrators and others from the study poses a significant limitation. Originality/value - The results of this study can be generalized to academic libraries in Sri Lanka and to academic libraries in other developing countries.