La imagen profesional del bibliotecario escolar: la percepción de los directivos y la autopercepción de los bibliotecarios de las escuelas primarias de la ciudad de Rafaela, Santa Fe

The objective of research is to analyze the professional education of the librarians, their society’s image, their present specific roles, their communication with the school directors, their interest in the school librarians’ function, their relationship with the educational community and the librarians’ policies in education that are related to the librarian tasks. This is a critical, descriptive and explaining study, with a quantitative focus and the deductive empirical method. Rafaela City is set to be the universe of this study and ten schools which have the official positions of librarians and its agents have the professional degree of librarians are set to be the population of this study. The conclusion is that the directors have a blurred image of the school librarians. The school authorities recognize the librarians’ professional skills to develop the librarian functions creatively as well as their pedagogical and cultural roles but they do not offer librarians the needed tools to put all their potential into practice. However, the librarians strengthen this weakened image by devaluating their profession in some aspects such as: declaring lack of teaching vocation, not attending the teachers and parents’ meetings, and not knowing the school library rules at an international level. Anyways, the instability in the librarians’ policies from the school institution and the lack of school librarians’ legal concept in the government do not give opportunities to reinforce the professional image of the school librarian