Study on the perception of South Korean librarians of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the strategy to support libraries

Abstract

This study made an attempt to understand the level of South Korean librarians’ awareness of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and IFLA’s support strategy for the SDGs, the degree of implementation of the UN’s SDGs support strategy by individual libraries, and how much the librarians agree with IFLA’s support strategy. As a result, first, this study revealed that public librarians had little knowledge of the UN SDGs 2030 agenda or the fact that IFLA has proposed support strategies for the UN’s SDGs. Second, this study found a high level of agreement among librarians with IFLA’s support strategies set for libraries to achieve the UN SDGs . Reflecting the two results above, it can be understood that librarians, though they were not well aware of the agenda of the UN SDGs 2030 or the library’s support strategies set by IFLA for the agenda, highly agree that the library’s support strategies suggested by IFLA are the role of libraries. Therefore, widely promoting the library’s support strategies proposed by IFLA for the UN SDGs 2030 is highly likely to encourage many librarians to participate actively.