Notwithstanding serious economic constraints in recent decades, the Vietnamese library sector has developed significantly, with the development of a wide network of libraries serving an avid readership at every level of society, the emergence of a core body of skilled professional library staff and the application of new technology in larger centres. Most significantly, it is apparent that decision-makers at every level of government are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of library activities to the proper development of modern Vietnamese society.

However, as noted above, the development of the public library network at local level remains seriously hampered by sub-standard premises and equipment, limited reading materials and inadequate operating budgets. Despite the linkage of provincial and municipal libraries to the National Library’s Wide Area Network (WAN), classification and cataloguing systems have yet to be standardised on a countrywide basis and there remains an urgent need for the creation of a national cataloguing code and a national MARC format. This issue, coupled with the continued reliance of most district and commune libraries on card catalogues and the lack of computer, foreign language and library management skills amongst the great majority of library staff, has thus far placed serious limitations on the capacity of provincial and municipal libraries to engage with new technology.

The paucity of physical conditions still poses a serious problem of preservation in many regional libraries, where storage facilities are often inadequate and high humidity encourages insect infestation and mould.

The Vietnamese library sector currently employs an estimated 10,000 full time staff, the bulk of whom were trained in post and have only the most rudimentary understanding of contemporary librarianship. Those who have studied at the country’s four librarianship training institutions complain that the courses offered there do not reflect contemporary trends in library management and technology and thus fail to equip students for work in a rapidly changing sector.

Meanwhile since both trained and untrained librarians are afforded relatively low status in Việt Nam, and at the time of writing there is still no national library association, relatively few Vietnamese library professionals are able to influence national library and information policy.