Education for Information

If library and information services are to make the maximum contribution to national development a strong and adequate cadre of professionally educated staff of high calibre is essential. They set, maintain and safeguard standards of service and provision and they create a sense of professional identity. In Yugoslavia they can make a special contribution in helping bring about the coordination of the library and information resources of the nation and the republics into an integrated, mutually supportive whole. Manpower planning is essential if Yugoslavia's present very small number of professionally qualified library/information personnel is to be rapidly increased. The major problems involved in creating adequate and appropriate professional education provision for Yugoslavia are considered. These include the choice between undergraduate and postgraduate provision; the number and location of the programmes to be offered; the leadership and coordination of postgraduate programmes which must draw staff from different faculties and departments; the part-time character of postgraduate courses; the lack of suitably qualified teaching staff; the consequent need for overseas training and interim use of expatriates; the language of instruction; the availability of professional literature; the need to establish academic respectability and to engage in research; course content.

[French, German, and Spanish translations of this abstract can be found at the end of this issue.]

The sub-professional occupies an important place in the library profession in developing countries. Many countries have established programmes for their education and training. Admission requirements, duration of courses and course content are discussed in this paper. More similarities can be seen in these programmes because they had first been based on European (mainly British) or American models. These programmes are not yet fully geared to local requirements. There are problems in teaching and also in the recruitment for jobs at paraprofessional level. Several suggestions have been made here to improve the teaching programmes and the career prospects of the sub-professional.

[French, German, and Spanish translations of this abstract can be found at the end of this issue.]

The aim of this bibliometric analysis is to contribute to on-going work on the revision of the postgraduate programme in Information Sciences at the University of Zagreb and to the empirical analysis of the development of both information sciences and information science education in Yugoslavia. The analysis covers 374 (96.6%) master theses (MTs) (5 in archivistics, 150 in librarianship, 56 in museology and 163 in information science) defended at the Centre for the Study of Librarianship, Documentation and Information Sciences (CSLDIS), University of Zagreb, from 1961 to 1984. The aim of the analysis is to provide quantitative indicators on, and an insight into, the topics covered by MTs, the shift in interest (if any) among and within the four disciplines, disciplines most closely related to information sciences, etc.; a comparison with world trends in information sciences as reflected through the cited literature, key domestic and foreign authors, etc.; regional and institutional demands for professionals in these fields in Yugoslavia as indicated by students' affiliations, etc.

[French, German, and Spanish translations of this abstract can be found at the end of this issue.]