Educating Bilingual and Multilingual Librarians: A Case of Library and Information Science Education in Rwanda

Abstract

The importance and need for bilingual librarians is steadily being felt, but most library and information science (LIS) schools do not incorporate bilingualism in instruction. Rwanda is in a unique and complex setting in which bilingualism is being used in its LIS program. Such an education is ideal if our libraries are to have bilingual or multhingual librarians. However, this approach has many challenges when it comes to implementation, especially when the two languages of instruction do not happen to be the first language (L1) of the learner. This paper sets out to show how the bilingualism policy in Rwanda is affecting the LIS program and how it is being implemented in the program.