---

LIS education was introduced in Sri Lanka in 1961 but very few studies have been carried out upto now. Therefore a critical study of the current LIS education system in Sri Lanka with a comlimentary study on LIS education in the other South Asian countries was undertaken by the author. Findings of the study indicate that; a well structured LIS education system exists only in India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh of all South Asian countries. Issues concerning the curricula, teaching faculty,infrastructural facilities, training of teachers, the quality of the students, absence of manpower surveys, limited national planning and lack of recognition of librarianship as a profession and lack of relevance of the programmes to the emerging information trends are common issues that affect the LIS education systems of these countries. Nevertheless a variation exists in the attempts made by each country to address such issues. The study makes a special emphasis on several major issues concerning the LIS education system in Sri Lanka and over fifty recommendations are made to address these issues.

---

Dr. Wijetunge is presently the Head / Acquisitions of the Main library, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka and has nearly 25 years experience as an academic librarianand an LIS educator. She has contributed over 50 publications in LIS education, Knowledge Management, Information Literacy and several other LIS related themes.

---