Whither library education?

Abstract

This paper advances the idea that there is a crisis in library education, varying in severity from country to country and calls for a new (or resuscitated) model of library education that will meet the demands of libraries and librarianship in the years to come. Among the problems seen are that library schools have become hosts to information science and information studies faculty and curricula. These disciplines are, at best, peripheral to professional library work and, at worst, inimical to it. There is a growing gender divide in Library and Information Science (LIS) schools between “information science”‐oriented male teachers and library course‐oriented female teachers. Many of the topics regarded as central to a library education by would‐be employers are no longer central to, or even required by, today's LIS curricula. Modern communications technology has led many library educators to concentrate on that technology and dismiss anything about libraries that is not amenable to a technological solution. The gap between what is taught in many LIS schools and what is being practiced in libraries is wide and widening. This paper calls for a national core curriculum that would apply to all schools in a country.