The Future of Undergraduate Librarianship Degrees  

Oleh:

Goulding, Anne

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Journal of Librarianship and Information Science vol. 33 no. 4 (2008), page 165-167.
Fulltext: 165.pdf (162.73KB)

Isi artikel

Reflects on earlier editorials covering the development and condition of professional library education in the UK noting that the prospects for the undergraduate programmes that were discussed in these reviews and which provoked such controversy and anxiety at the time, today look rather depressing. When the debate about the graduate nature of the library and information science (LIS) profession raged through the 1970s, the Library Association was accused of trying to be fashionable and elitist. Those librarians who were ‘mere’ Associates of the Library Association (ALA) feared that they would have few career prospects, restricted salaries and be held in lower regard than graduates. Now that the graduate profession is taken for granted a new issue has arisen focusing on the question of the future of undergraduate programmes in librarianship. Library schools have reported a sharp decline in the numbers and quality of applicants for undergraduate programmes. Loughborough University has been forced to close its undergraduate librarianship programme following several years' sustained effort to reinvigorate it. One problem identified is the rising burden of student debt, with potential recruits emerging from their undergraduate degrees with over £5000 worth of debt and a reluctance to extend this debt further. This problem is exacerbated by the question of whether graduates will be satisfied by some of the low salaries offered to new professionals (some public and school library salaries starting as low as £12 000 pounds per year). Whilst some surveys suggest that employers do not care about the level of the qualification as long as the individual is right for the job, many will still only employ those with postgraduate level qualifications and by so doing will overlook many enthusiastic and dynamic potential recruits committed to a career in librarianship.

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