Who Needs to Go to a Graduate Library School?

Abstract

THE FULL MEANING of the Library Education and Manpower statement does not yet seem to have been grasped, or, if it has been, perhaps a decade is needed to see its impact on library school curricula. I refer to the prescription that professional education programs the master's degree level should be for the preparation of librarians capable of anticipating and engineering the change and improvement required to move the profession forward. 1 If this recommendation were strictly followed, it would leave in the hands of library technicians, subject specialists, and those with general undergraduate degrees, those tasks that have been, to a great extent, the daily work of library school graduates. The Manpower statement establishes for this work the category of library associate (not librarian) . Lester Asheim makes this distinction clearly and points to the implications for library education when he says that the library associate's work is at the level of rather than that of policy making or planning or evaluation and is it heresy to say it? it is the level for which a great many of the graduates of today's library school programs are really being prepared. 2 In this paper, I place within the day-to-day operation of libraries, book selection, reference work, and much of the cataloging and classification now done by library school graduates as professionals. The role of the new professional librarian is seen as policy maker, evaluator, and planner. This does not mean a mixture

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