Progress toward Subject Specialization in Korean Academic Libraries

Interest in subject specialists in academic libraries has recently been increasing. After being a trend in the West in the 1960s, interest declined in this method of service provision in academic libraries until its recent return to prominence in the last decade. The purpose of this article is to introduce the current movement of Korean librarianship toward subject specialization in academic libraries, and the efforts that are being undertaken to support that movement. The findings are taken from a large project report funded by The National Library of Korea during 2008. When the project was underway it was very difficult to find articles about trends in non-English speaking countries. With this in mind, we authors decided to publish and share our experiences. This article is expected to be a helpful source for similar research or projects in other countries, and to provide an opportunity to share experiences and communicate.