Search

It is time for us to collectively embrace the diversity of the library profession and encourage students and graduates to understand that great employment opportunities present themselves outside the traditional library space. Our traditional library skills will always be required, but to maintain our relevance we must provide a greater emphasis on non-traditional roles when teaching library-related qualifications. The scope and value of what our traditional skills can bring to other industries has been underestimated. A librarian’s job prospects are increasingly diverse, so our pre-service training and ongoing professional development should reflect this. Such practice would go a long way to safeguarding our profession for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a reprint of the article "Losing the Quality Battle in Australian Education for Librarianship" by Ross Harvey from the 2001 volume 50, number one issue of "The Australian Library Journal." The author covers problems facing librarianship education in Australian universities such as difficulty defining librarianship, not promoting the subject as the graduate level, and low problem-solving skills in librarians. Suggestions for improvement include influence from professional associations and developing subject cores and specialisms.

Through an analysis of the results of a survey of Australian employers of Library and Information Studies (LIS) graduates, this paper explores the current demand and future need for undergraduate LIS education in Australia. In the context of recent calls for adopting a purely postgraduate level of entry to the profession, the overwhelming majority of respondents to the survey clearly believe that the education provided in LIS programs in Australia does equip graduates with the attributes required of professional librarians in their organisation, and that this does not depend on the level of the qualification. Some further discussion of graduate attributes and curriculum issues indicates that there is a need for reform of LIS education--as well as a requirement to build the number of available graduates as the profession seeks to renew itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses issue articles on topics including challenges to Library and Information Science (LIS) education in Australia, library leadership in Great Britain, and religious information literacy.