From competence deficit to structural abandonment: Reconceptualising academic librarian supervisory practice in LIS internship programmes

The LIS practicum literature has consistently documented poor supervision quality in library internship programmes. This paper argues that it has also consistently misdiagnosed the cause. Drawing on a qualitative case study of 13 academic librarian supervisors across four Malaysian public universities, data were collected through semi-structured in-depth interviews and analysed thematically using ATLAS.ti, theorised through the Tandem Model of Clinical Supervision and Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory. The paper advances three arguments that reframe the supervision problem as structural rather than individual. First, workflow-centred planning is not a pedagogical failure: it is the rational output of a role that has been structurally abandoned by both institutions and LIS schools. Second, these supervisors enact a sophisticated instructional repertoire (narrative-based demonstration, inquiry facilitation, student-led task design) that cannot accumulate into programme quality because it lacks institutional language, recognition, and transfer mechanisms. Third, mentoring in LIS internships is not an affective supplement to supervision: it is the primary mechanism through which professional identity is formed, and the Tandem Model’s structural silence on it means the most consequential supervisory work is theoretically invisible. Together, these arguments require a fundamental reorientation, from training individuals to supervise better towards designing the structural conditions under which effective supervision becomes possible. The Practice Model of Effective Supervision in LIS Internships is proposed as a framework for that reorientation.