Library & Information Science: An Evolving Profession

LIBRARY
&
INFORMATION SCIENCE:
A N E V O LV I N G P R O F E S S I O N
ABUBAKAR S. MAMA, RL, MLIS

FOCUS: THREE ASPECTS OF THE
PROFESSION
• The historical forces that shaped education for
librarianship
• Contemporary issues facing the field
• The challenges facing LIS professionals in the future

HISTORY OF LIBRARY EDUCATION AND THE
PREPARATION OF LIBRARIANS

THE DECLINE OF THE CLASSICAL ENGLISH AND
APPRENTICESHIP MODELS AND THE RISE OF THE
TECHNICAL EDUCATION MODEL
• British model - American education during the 19th century was
generally shaped by dominant immigrant population and
emphasize of education during this time was focused on classical
languages, religion, literature, and grammar.
• Apprenticeship model – design for training individual for craft;
only a few individuals could be trained at a time for specialized,
narrowly defined job.
• European technical education model – the emphasize of this
vocational model fit well with the needs of libraries.

MELVILLE DEWEY AND THE
PROFESSIONALIZATION OF
LIBRARIANSHIP
• The Dewey decimal classification system– developed in Amherst
College
• American Library Association–he was the guiding force to the
creation of the association on 1876 and serves as the association
secretary.
• American Library Journal– Dewey was also an instrumental in
creating the journal, the first major professional publication
devoted solely to the interest of the librarians.
• Library Education – The school of Library Economy, opened on
January 1, 1887, with a class of 20 students. The course study
includes selection, reader’s aids, and bibliography, repair of
materials, administration, and cataloging. Later transferred to
York State library at Albany as Dewey was the Library Director.

THE GROWTH OF LIBRARY SCHOOLS
the success of the Albany program inspired
additional programs. By 1900 there were four
major library schools:
• Pratt Institute– the school was established in 1880,
originally to trained staff for the Pratt Institute Library
• Mary Wright Plummer – a member of the first class and
one of the best students, became the director in 1895.
Under her leadership, the school broadened its purpose,
extended the program from 6 months, to 2 years, and
enriched the curriculum adding special courses in
bibliography, advance cataloging, and course on the
history of books, bindings, and engraving. She became the
2nd president of ALA.

–Drexel–
• Alice Kroeger – another Dewey protégé of the
Albany school, directed the Drexel library and
their training program. Kroeger’s program
mirrored Dewey and fairchild’s, including
coursework in cataloging, literature,
bibliography, the history of books, and library
management.

– Armour institute/University of Illinois –
The Armour Institute, established in 1893,
was the first library school in the
Midwest.
• Katherine Lucinda Sharp – another Dewey
graduate, the basic program took one year,
with the possibility of a second year of
advance work. The program was transferred
the University of Illinois, where she served as
director of the University Library, head of
school, and a full professor. This unique
position allowed the library students to use
the university library as a laboratory.

–Continued expansion of schools – by 1919, there were
fifteen programs, ten of them founded by women.
They varied by length of program, type of degree or
certificate awarded, and requirements for admission.

THE ROLE AND INFLUENCE OF THE ALA
COMMITTEE ON LIBRARY TRAINING
• as the numbers of library schools grew, ALA took a greater interest. By
that time, the library schools wanted ALA to recognized and endorse
then as the only appropriate forum for library training. This leads to the
creation of the “Standards for Library education” in 1903 and
subsequent standard were issued on 1905 and 1906. For the perspective
of the academic programs, ALA failed to make a commitment and kept
them at arm’s length. ALA’s reluctant to endorse the academic schools
as the only appropriate form of library education pushed the schools to
create their own organization, the association of American Library
Schools, in 1916.

THE WILLIAMSON REPORT
It was neither ALA nor the American Association of Library Scools that most
profoundly influenced the direction of the Library Education. Rahter, it was the
Carnegie Corporation, establsihed by Andrew Carnegie. The corporation
continued to fund library construction but suspected that the libraries were
often in adequately staffed and supported. In 1915, the corporation appointed
Alvin Saunders Johnson to investigate the status of Carnegie Libraries.
Johnson’s 1916 report revealed serious problems; in particular, he found the
library staff were often poorly trained. The corporation, concerned about
Johnson’s report, subsidized a major study directed solely toward library
education, and investigating library schools in particular.
The corporation appointed C.C. Williamson to undertake the study. Williamson is
was ideally suited for the task; he was a political economics, graduate of
Colombia and a professor of economics at Bryn Mawr and at the time of his
appointment was the head of the municipal reference library in New York.

1. There is a difference between clerical and professional work. Professional work deals with
theory and application of clear principles. It requires a broad education including 4 years
of college. Clerical work requires following rules and thus far less education. Library
schools should provide professional, rather than clerical, instruction.
2. the library schools didn’t agree on which subjects should be taught or emphasized;
certain schools devoted to much more time to particular subjects than to others.
3. The curricula must undergo constant reexamination so that the most current and
relevant practices can be taught rather than traditional practices.
4. The breath of content required for adequate professional preparation cannot be realized
in only one year education
5. There was considerable inconsistency in entrance requirements. Library schools should
require a college education for admission.
6. Many library schools instructors lacked college degrees themselves and were therefore
not adequatly prepared to teach college graduates. many lacked experience in teaching,
and nearly 1/3 had no library experienced

7. Instruction relied too much on lectures and there were too few good textbooks.
8. Faculty salaries were too low and must be adjusted to recruit teachers of good quality.
9. Schools must provide financial incentives for faculty to produced texts.
10. To recruit students, schools should maintain high educational standards and provide
fellowships and scholarships to make library training more attractive.
11. The library schools should be part of University, conforming with the model followed
by other professional schools.
12. Professional preparation should consist of two years of schooling. The first year
should follow a general program of study, the second year should be highly
specialized.
13. There was a little incentives for employed librarian to seek continuing education.
14. There were no standard for professional preparation
15. The ALA should create a system of voluntary certification of the librarians regulated
by national certification board, which also accredit library schools.

RESPONSE TO THE EFFECT OF
WILLIAMSON REPORT
• ALA responded to the Williamson report by creating the Temporary
Library Training Board in 1924, which soon became the Board of Education
for Librarianship (BEL). The BEL established additional standards for the
library education in 1925 and 1933, including the need for one year of post
graduate education in librarianship. By the early 1950s, most library schools
granted the fifth-year master’s degree.
• The Carnegie Corporation’s response to the report was even more
dramatic. There were obviously a considerable need for library schools to
improve, the Carnegie Corporation gave nearly $2 million to 17 library
schools. The corporation determine that the best solution was to support a
doctoral program for librarians. In response, the Graduate library schools
were established at the University of Chicago in 1926 and the doctoral
program began in 1928. Another response made by the corporation to the
Williamson Report was the establishment of the Hampton Institute Library
School in 1925, the first school specifically established to train African-
American librarians.

MODERN LIBRARY EDUCATION
– The 1950s and 1960s might be considered the heyday for library
schools. The expanding economy, the baby boom, and the important
federal legislation supporting the development of elementary,
secondary, and higher education institutions and their libraries all led
to a significant expansion of libraries and collections. This resulted to
hire more additional librarians, which, in turn, spawned new library
schools with the master programs in the United States and Canada.
– The next two decades produced a considerable ebb, including
closures of several library schools with substantial reputations. From
1999 there were only 56 ALA accredited library schools with master’s
program in the United States and Canada.

THE LIBRARY VERSUS INFORMATION
DEBATE
I-schools – information schools that address the
relationship between information, technology,
and the people. This is characterized by
commitment to learning and understanding the
role of information in human endeavors. The
faculty of ischools are generally drawn from many
disciplines including computer science, library
and information science, business, engineering,
and behavioral sciences. The increasing numbers
of i-schools gradually led to the creation of an
organization called the iSchools Caucus which
sponsors conferences devoted to i-schools issues.

DEBATE
• Two paradigms – some people characterized the library versus information
debate as a collision of two paradigm. The library service paradigm stems from
historical roots of the library as an educational institution. As Apostole and
Raymod (1997) commented “ in terms of larger social purpose, library perform
such socially necessary functions as encouraging reading, literacy, and the
diffusion of commonly held cultural values” represent a primary purpose of the
libraries. If one accepts the library service paradigm, it then follows that the LIS
curriculum should reflect an emphasis on educational theory, library service,
literacy, and reading. On the other hand, Apostole and Raymond (1997) noted,
the 20th century introduced increased industrialization, major scientific and
technological advances, and the growth of both business and government,
which in turn required significantly more information. This need spawned
special libraries.

DEBATE
–Finding common ground – Miksa (1992) analyzed the
debate from the perspectives of “library as an institution”
versus the “information movement as a system of human
communication” and found significant conceptual defects
in both. He argued that what is needed is “a more
essential approach to what is involved in the work of the
field, one that conceptualizes the process in a more
thoroughgoing but unitary manner” (paradigm shift in
science).

CONTINUING EDUCATION
• the higher education act of 1965 offered
funding for CE, which led to the
founding of the Continuing Library
Education Network and Exchange
(CLENE), whose purpose was to improve
the quality of CE. CLENE assessed the
needs for practicing librarians around the
country and provided opportunities for
CE. CLENE recently changed its name to
Learning RT.

DISTANCE EDUCATION
• with the developments in telecommunications, it now
possible to deliver high-quality LIS Education to remote
sites using interactive video and web-based instruction.
As of 2010, there were sixteen accredited LIS programs
offering a complete MLIS program via distance learning
and twelve additional that are primarily online. The
maturation of online LIS education was manifest with the
creation of the Web-Based Information Science Education
(WISE) consurtion in 2004.

COMPETENCIES AND EVOLVING LIS
CURRICULUM
Core competencies of Librarians (2009)
ALA’s core competencies of Librarianship: knowledge categories
1. Foundation of the profession, including history, ethics, and values
2. Information sources, including the life cycle of recorded knowledge; acquisition,
selection, and processing of materials; collection maintainance and management.
3. Organization of recorded knowledge and information, including the principles of
organization of recorded knowledge and systems of cataloging, metadata, and
classification.
4. Technological knowledge and skills, including information and communication
technologies and their application, and assessment and evaluation of technologies.
5. Reference and user services, including the principles and techniques of references
services, information retrieval and evaluation techniques, interpersonal skills,
information literacy, and assessment of user needs.
6. Research, including quantitative and qualitative methods and central research
findings of the field.
7. Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning, including the role of the library in
lifelong learning; learning theories and their application to libraries; and principles
related to teaching skills in seeking, evaluating, and using recorded knowledge.
8. Administration and Management, including planning, budgeting, human resources,
program evaluation, leadership, and collaboration.
Additional competences
Special library association
Medical library Association
Music Library Association
Society of American Archivist

THE ROLE OF MASTER’S DEGREE IN
LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE
• as the notion grew in the 20th century that substantial theoretical knowledge and
principles should form the foundation of professional practice, the importance of the
master’s of library and information science degree also grew. The American Library
Association (1996) recognize the importance of graduate education in one if its policy
statements:The American Library Association supports the provision of library services by professionally qualified personnel who have been
educated in graduate programs within institutions of higher education… The American Library Association supports the development
and continiuance of high quality graduate library/information science educational program of the quality, scope and availability
necessary to prepare individuals in the broad profession of information dessimination. The American Library Association supports
education for the preparation of progessionals in the field of library and information studies (LIS) as a university program at the masteral
level (p. 137)
This supporting statement is strong but no unequivocal. It doesn’t, for example, insist that all professional
librarians posses a master’s degree from an accredited program. Others asserted that the body of theoretical
knowledge was insufficient to require graduate academic training.

THE ROLE OF MASTER’S DEGREE IN
LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE
Hauptman (1987) stated:
There is not even any mandatory a priori knowledge necessary to function effectively as a librarian of any persuasion.
Any intelligent college graduate can begin working in a special, public, or academic library and quickly learn the skills
necessary to catalog, do reference work, manipulate overrated computer system, or even administered (pp. 252-253)
He also describe the work of librarian as 90 percent clerical and claimed that librarians created a systique regarding their
work; that patrons could often learn to perform some library functions in a short time.
Obviously, others disagreed. For them, library and information science, like many professions,
combines routine elements as well as considerable theoretical and conceptual knowledge
and judgment. As a profession, it provides essential social and political functions that
demand a broad understanding of the nature of: knowledge, of information, of people, and
of society. This type of understanding helps LIS professionals design information systems,
select areas of emphasis, and implement strategies that enable and encourage people to use
such systems. White (1986) noted that the master’s degree is a qualification not so much for
a particular position as for entry in the profession.

STANDARDS FOR LIS EDUCATION
– since 1950s, The ALA committee on
Accreditation has been the formal
mechanism for ensuring the quality in
professional preparation. Currently, six
there are areas considered essentials to a
quality program: mission, goals, and
objectives; curriculum; faculty; students;
administration and financial support; and
physical resources and facilities (ALA,
2010a)

CHANGING DEMOGRAPHICS
the numbers of individuals graduating with master’s
degree increased from 4,877 in 2000 to 6,502 in 2005. The
majority of students were female (79%) and white (76%). In
2005 nearly 18,271 students were enrolled in accredited
programs in the united states and Canada compared to
15,000 in 2002. Although 41% were between the ages 25
to 34, 43% percent were over the age of 35 and
approximately 11% were 50 and older (ALISE 2009).

LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE AS A
PROFESSION

PROFESSIONAL MODELS
1. THE TRAIT MODEL- the way to characterize a profession is by determining whether or not an
occupation exhibits a particular trait.
• Commitment to serve the interests of clients, in particular, and the welfare of society, in
general.
• A body of theory or special knowledge with its own principles of growth and
reorganization
• A specialized set of professional skills, practices, and performances unique to the
profession
• A capacity to render judgments with integrity under conditions of both technical and
ethical certainty
• An organized approach to learning from experience both individually and collectively,
thus growing new knowledge from the context of practice.
• A professional community responsible for the oversight and monitoring of quality in
both practice and professional education.

PROFESSIONAL MODELS
2. THE CONTROL MODEL an alternative approach for distinguishing
professions was suggested by Winter (1988), who use a control model based
on the work of several sociologist to characterized librarianship. In this view,
the distinguishing features of a profession are based on different degree of
power and the nature of control that each exercises. Professional control is
based on higher education degrees and intellectual and theoretical
knowledge in contrast to occupations that rely on work experience and
manual skills. He identified three ways librarian exert control:
• Classifying knowledge as means of organizing it
• Indexing knowledge so it can be accessed
• And understanding the formal and informal organization of various bodies
of knowledge.

PROFESSIONAL MODELS
3. THE VALUES MODEL – The librarians achieved their
status partly because the library itself was unique. It was,
after all, often the only publicly accessible place with a
substantial collection of well-organized materials and
people who knew to locate the desired materials. This type
of social status is sometimes referred to as asymmetry of
expertise, and describe the special trust that a client or
patron places in the knowledge of a professional.

PERCEPTION ABOUT LIBRARIANS
– Stereotypes – how librarians currently perceived, and do the perceptions
match the reality? Some female librarians believe that their image is
mostly negative: they are spinsters, wear their hair in a bun, look stern
(e.g. buy sensible shoes and glasses), act authoritarian and controlling,
and are ready to say “SHHH” at the slightest disturbance. Male librarians
have other concerns: they often assume that they are perceived to be
working in a “woman’s profession” and therefore fear being seen as
ineffectual or effeminate. Such stereotype about men and women in
librarianship can have pernicious effect; they impede recruitment into
the field and affect the status and growth of the profession as a whole.

PERCEPTION ABOUT LIBRARIANS
Personality types – the personalities of a librarians have been studied for
several years.
• Alice Bryan (1948) was part of a large study called “the public library
inquiry. She found that librarians were submissive and lacked qualities of
leadership
• Agada (1984, 1987) found that in general, both male and female librarians
exhibited personality traits in deference, passivity, and self-abasement
• Schredin (1994) suggested that most librarians fell into one of two
typologies: introversion, sensing, thinking, judging, introversion, intuitive.
• Fisher (1988) reviewed a number of these personality studies and
concluded that many of the personality tests were flawed, and over all
there was no one distinct personality types for librarians.

The role of Gender
• Female – are willing to work for low pay. Able to work
as a children’s librarian because of their care giving and
marital skills, and child raising skills, and nursing skills.
they were not perceived as potential leaders or heads
of the library.
• Male – perceived as heads of the office, more likely to
be called as information specialist rather than librarian

THE EDUCATION ROLE
since the mid-19th century, the library, whether public, school, or
academic, has been characterized as providing critical support not
only to students, but to individuals who desire to continue their
education formally. The intimate relationship of libraries with
learning, literacy, and reading remains strong, and public continues
to expect it. The librarian in 21st century will continue to promote the
fundamental values of reading and learning. Thus the LIS curriculum
will still require knowledge of learning theories for young people
and adults, skills to develop literacy and reading programs, and
strategies for building collections and providing services that meet
the learning needs of the community.

INFORMATIONAL ROLE
– Providing access to the information - some of the traditional roles
of the librarians will remain or expand while others will diminished.
Library journals reported that perceived their most significant
roles as instructing patrons in navigating the web, directing
patrons to appropriate information resources, evaluating
collections, organizing resources, creating programs, creating e-
resources, and establishing digital archives. The expert perceived
that the traditional library model would not be replaced by a
traditional one, but would undergo significant changes, especially
in regard to accessing information outside the library. Similarly,
they saw the role of LIS professional as increasingly user centered
rather than organization centered and that there was a greater
need to understand how individual seek and use information.

INFORMATIONAL ROLE
–Evaluating information
• Diagnosis – estimating the information need. The LIS professional
as diagnostician employs analytical interviewing techniques to
assess a patron’s personal abilities, the level of information
required, and the appropriate type of information package,
appropriate cost, and method of delivery.
• Prescription – organizing the information and processing it to
meet the patron’s need
• Evaluation – determining if the diagnosis and prescription were
effective.

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