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Education for librarianship

Type of education

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Through Master's degree, South America and Electronic media

In the United States and Canada, the academic training for a librarian generally consists of a master's degree program in library science (formerly commonly known as librarianship). In Germany, the first step for an academic librarian is a PhD in a subject field, followed by additional training in librarianship. In Australia, the courses are called Master in Information Management or Master in Information Studies.

There are also bachelor's, associate, and certificate programs in library science, which provide formal training of paraprofessional library workers (aka library technicians), and clerks—as well as preparation for graduate study in library science. In Australia, the courses for library technicians is known as a Diploma of Library and Information Services.

Historical development

Until the 19th century, the librarian in charge of an academic collection was normally a scholar, often a university professor with a special interest in the library. There were no training programs, and the new librarian was expected to follow the practices of other similar libraries. (Popular libraries in the modern sense had not yet developed.) In the 19th century, although some librarians followed this older pattern, others prepared using the apprenticeship approach under the direction of established librarians.

Charles Churchwell wrote a history of education for librarians in the U.S. before 1975.

In Britain, the Library Association was the first body to conduct examinations and accredit librarians in this way, giving its first examinations in 1885. Successful students attained a Library Association degree in librarianship. Apart from the library-related subjects (encountered in the second set of examinations), students were tested in English grammar, arithmetic, history, geography, English literature, and another European literature, and had to demonstrate a working knowledge of at least three languages. Before the degree was granted, two years' experience of working in a library was also essential. Library schools did not exist, and there were no courses to help with preparation for the three levels of exams.

Library schools

A library school is an institution of higher learning specializing in the professional training of librarians. The first library school in the world was the Columbia College School of Library Economy, established by Melvil Dewey, creator of the Dewey decimal system, in 1887 in the United States; this initial institution subsequently became the Columbia University School of Library Service. Since then many library schools have been founded in the United States and Canada, with Canada's first formal librarianship program established at McGill University in 1904.

Inspired by Dewey's example at Columbia, several British librarians pushed for a formal system of education in the UK. The first step was the organisation of some summer schools in London between 1893 and 1897, with the first formal library science course at university level established in 1902 at the London School of Economics, which was interrupted by the First World War in 1914. The first formal library school was established in 1919 at the University of London. From these beginnings arose a split between public librarians, who for the most part took the Library Association examinations, and academic and special librarians, for the most parts the university graduates. Eight library schools were established around the country in the post-WW2 period, but it was not until 1964 that the LA stopped conducting exams and reduced its role to that of an accrediting body overseeing the quality of the courses given in library schools.

The development of library schools have followed different paths in the United Kingdom, compared with the US. The American Library Association was founded in 1876 and the (UK) Library Association in 1877, but they exercised completely different roles with regard to library education in their respective countries. US library schools developed independently of the national organization, and have always been able to set their own curriculum and examinations as well as what to call their degrees. While the ALA does perform the accreditation of the schools and plays a role in determining quality, the requirements are left up to the individual schools. In the UK, until the last decade of the 20th century, by which time all library schools were departments of universities, library education was dominated by the LA.

The development of library schools in other countries began when library schools were founded in Leipzig in 1914 and Barcelona in 1915 (the library school in Barcelona is currently under faculty of the Universitat de Barcelona). In Brazil, the National Library drew up in 1911 the first library science course in South America, under the guidance of director Manuel Cicero Peregrino da Silva, who was inspired by the École Nationale des Chartes of France; however, the class only began operating in 1915. In 1914, the University of the Philippines offered the first courses in Library education in the country. The University of the Philippines eventually established the first separate library school in that country in 1961; the Institute of Library Science, a former department of the now defunct College of Liberal Arts.

The University of Chicago Graduate Library School, established in 1928, became the first library school to confer a master's degree in library science, which is now the standard professional degree, and later became the first to give a doctoral degree in the field.

The Dean was Louis Round Wilson from 1932 to 1942. The pivotal role of the doctoral degree at Chicago from 1921 to 1951 has been analyzed by John Richardson in his study, The Spirit of Inquiry. Many faculty members at the Graduate Library School (1928–1979) including Wilson were at the forefront of the field's development in the twentieth century: Lester Asheim, Lee Pierce Butler, Leon Carnovsky, Herman H. Fussler, Frances E. Henne, Carleton B. Joeckel, Jesse Shera, Peggy Sullivan, Douglas Waples, Howard Winger, and Robert Wadsworth. The Library Quarterly was first published by the Graduate Library School in 1931.

The education of Black librarians in the United States was the focus of the 50th Anniversary Celebration of the School of Library and Information Sciences at North Carolina Central University. The Clark Atlanta University School of Library and Information Studies, the only HBCU program at a private university, closed in 2006.

Changes in courses and terminology

In recent decades, many schools offering librarianship education have changed their names to reflect the shift from print media to electronic media, and to information contained outside of traditional libraries. Some call themselves schools of library and information science (abbreviated to "SLIS", hence the term "SLISters" for their students), while others have dropped the word "library" altogether. This trend began as early as the 1960s with the recognition that information and access to it was shifting to electronic resources with the development of telecommunications and computer networks, and away from the traditional definition of librarianship. This shift led a number of library schools to change or broaden their mission to be more inclusive of information sciences across many disciplines, including library sciences, archives, computer sciences and more, and led to the development by a number of schools of an iSchool organization, to advance the field of information as a whole. It has been argued that LIS education should deconstruct the ideas of "vocational awe" and "neutrality".

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