Practices and Challenges of the Professional Librarian Certification in Indonesia

The paper deals with the practices and challenges of the certification program for professional librarians in Indonesia. The certification is regarded as the policy and strategy to enhance skills and competencies of professional librarians to transform libraries. The study provides descriptive analysis to explain the implementation of certification program in Indonesia from 2013-2017. The results of study show that the total of 3.039 librarians in Indonesia, 891 librarians (29%) has participated in the certification program. Moreover, the findings indicate that 646 librarians (72.5 %) are certified as competent while 245 librarians are not certified yet or not competent. These results imply that there are the challenges to increase the awareness and the participation of librarians in the certification program, and to strengthen the professional development program in order to accelerate the library transformation in Indonesia