Financial Sustenance of South Asian Library Schools: A Case Study of National Institute of Library and Information Sciences of Sri Lanka in Retrospect

The paper discusses the financial issues of the library schools residing in the public universities especially in the South Asian region. It specifies the particular issues faced by the library schools because of their small size, high proportion of women as staff and students, lack of research and their tendency to relate more to the professional world than the academic world. It provides a detailed SWOT analysis of the National Institute of Library and Information Sciences (NILIS). It also describes the Ansoff Matrix, which is a commonly used tool by the business organisations to develop market-product strategies. The paper analyses the education programmes commenced by the NILIS during 2003-2005 in the light of marketing-product strategy. It discusses the success of the endeavour using the Boston Matrix, which is a tool used to measure the success of the market-product strategy. The paper also highlights some threats posed by the environment, which hinder the successful implementation of the programmes and concludes that an authority to manage financial matters and qualified staff with a sound knowledge of f inancial regulat ions is essent ial for the success of the market-product strategies.