Abstract

This study aims to examine the current status of managing elementary school libraries in Busan and suggest the ways to improve it with the viewpoint of ‘the five laws of library science’. The scope of study was set as the elementary school libraries in Busan, and the operation status of 304 elementary school libraries was analyzed. And for in-depth investigation, D elementary school library was examined as a case. The operation status of elementary school libraries in Busan was analyzed with the analysis elements; existence of school library, placement of teacher librarian, library collection, annual use, budget, and library seats for 6 years from 2016 to 2021. As a result, especially the placement rate of full-time teacher librarians was only 10.5%, indicating that the problem of manpower shortage was serious. As case study, the current state of managing D elementary school library was deeply investigated with perspectives of the first law and the third law of library science among Ranganathan’s five laws of library science. With the first law, the investigation was divided into the aspects of open-shelf system, library location, library hours, furniture, and staff. With the third law, the investigation was done as the aspects of shelf arrangement, catalog, extended service, book selection. Especially, books with more than 50 copies for the program of reading one book each semester accounted for 4.8% of the total collection, showing the problem of unbalanced collection. As the result of this study, ‘expanding the placement of teacher librarians’, ‘making better reading environment through remodeling’, and ‘balanced collection development’ were suggested as the ways of developing school libraries.