Abstract

Equitable access to information in diverse formats is essential if teachers and learners are to meet a variety of curriculum accomplishments. Adequate facilities, such as school libraries and science laboratories, are critical for learners to access relevant and quality reading materials to gain knowledge and for experimentation. Owing to the apartheid system prior to 1994, the education system in South Africa still reflects inequalities in terms of resource provision. It is remarkable that, even in post-apartheid South Africa, only 7 percent of government schools have well-stocked and staffed libraries. However, adequate educational resources are needed in schools, irrespective of the education paradigm in place to improve learner outcomes, which are currently dwindling in mostly rural provinces such as Limpopo and Eastern Cape. The purpose of the study was to investigate factors that serve as deterrents to the establishment and maintenance of library and information services (LIS) in disadvantaged rural schools in Limpopo Province. A qualitative research approach was adopted to gather data from five teacher-librarians who attended a school library workshop organized by the researcher as part of a community engagement project. The five participants were purposively selected. The study found a plethora of factors preventing disadvantaged rural schools from establishing and maintaining well-resourced and functional school libraries. The study recommends that the government and private sector companies need to work together to remove all the hindrances so that disadvantaged rural teachers and learners can have seamless access to library-based resources and, thereby, improve poor learner outcomes in mostly rural provinces.