🚀 go-pugleaf

Certainly some courses here at the U of Washington are better than others, and
some professor's levels of instructional ability are better than other's, but
on the whole I think our 6 quarter (63 credits) course addresses the issues
new librarians will face today.

Unfortunately, it does not address the issues that we will face next year, or
the year after.  I read in "Online" magazine recently (sorry, no citation) 
that some University President told a Library School Dean that the Library
School was occupying what was turning into some very valuable turf (meaning
IS), and that unless they got off their duffs, someone was going to take it 
from them.

I interpret this line of thinking to mean that the placid role of book
acquisition, circulation and shelving is one that will no
longer support a)current professional salaries and b)current professional 
education requirements, among other things.

It is very difficult to forecast just what will be required in this brave new
world; certainly in many settings the librarian as we know it will survive
because people will always want personal service from a non-digital source, but
is this a justification for turning out class after class of librarians who are
suited for nothing else?  I think a lot of future classes of librarians will
find themselves pushed aside by CS people developing expert sytems, teachers
in public schools teaching online searching to 7th & 8th graders, and indexing
and cataloging specialists developing more and more pertinent and easy-to-use
databases.

Librarians should be able to both be information specialists *and* fulfill 
their traditional community service roles.  A good start would be to require
some CS and IS undergrad coursework as a prerequisite to library school 
acceptance.

Mike Stallings
Compuserve 71204,1557
stalling@u.washington.edu