Educating and training library practitioners: a comparative history with trends and recommendations - includes appendix on history of library education

In our review of the literature, several themes emerge as consistent topics in all of library education, as do some current issues that need immediate attention by the field. Let us look first at some of these pervasive themes.

PERSISTENT THEMES

A review of the literature on library education reveals a number of current issues and several recurring or persistent themes. Eight themes that we wish to examine briefly are: (1) the need or place for a liberal education in library work, (2) the quality of students drawn to library work, (3) what it means to be "professional" in the library field, (4) the perception that something is wrong with library school, (5) the appropriate role of accreditation in library education, (6) the ongoing perception of budget constraints, (7) the need for distinctions between training and education, and (8) discussions of the role of information science in library education.

Liberal Education

Reece (1936) writes that "library work in any country previous to the nineteenth century would seem to have necessitated, as a rule, few qualifications that an educated man would not possess..." (p. 5). Libraries were small collections put together by and for those who wanted to share the intellectual benefits of access to those collections. Any needs for techniques and theories of librarianship were so miniscule as to be beneath notice. Reece continues: "What had to come before library work could be distinguished from other activities concerned with books and, consequently before it could be defined, was the realization that it is both intermediary and active....The librarian need not discover knowledge or create books, and his major reason for existence is that his efforts make the content of books more available and operative than otherwise it would be" (p. 5).

From the outset, then, we see the librarian working from a knowledge of content. Reece notes that this did not "narrow his function .... No limits are easily set upon his endeavors when he is called upon, after assembling books, to preserve them, to arrange them, to offer them to readers, and even to interpret them--all with reference to an ascertained want" (p. 5). Implicit here is the broad range of general knowledge out of which the librarian practices.

The sentiment holds through our major milestones to today. Lester Asheim restates it explicitly in 1971 in a discussion of the implications of Library Education and Manpower (ALA, 1970):

In other words, although the principles of librarianship can be stated

in terms that perhaps could be mastered at the level below that of

the graduate school, they have full professional import only when

they are related to a broad, background knowledge of other subject

matter. The librarian does not perform any of his skills in a

vacuum....Without the subject content, the application of techniques

is simply a matter of skills and training; technical, but not

professional. (p. 8)

Discussing the master's degree as the first professional degree, Jane Robbins (1990), a library school professor, states: