Educational Requirements for a Library-Oriented Career in Information Management

A NUMBER OF FACTORS have converged to compel a substantial reassessment of the educational requirements for library-orien ted careers in information management. These factors include: the role of technology and the convergence of domains that it has produced, the growth of special library and corporate employment, the growth of information industry employment, and the increased mobility of information professionals. The convergence phenomenon has eroded the boundaries between library and information science, and also the boundaries with business education; communications, journalism, and media; and computer science. One of the major consequences is a very dramatic, and, in many quarters, difficult to accept, polarity reversal for the field-i.e., a change in value systems in which a field that was perceived and perceived itself as primarily a service profession is now very much a part of the entrepreneurial market economy. The educational ramifications of these changes are considerable; there needs to be more orientation toward the corporate and information industry constituency; more emphasis on data and information structuring and the design of information systems; development of a more entrepreneurial and market orientation; development of a more international orientation; and the development of a core component that is general to the information professions and not specific to librarianship, in recognition of the great mobility among information professionals. Michael E. D. Kaenig, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Rosary College, River Forest, IL 60305 LIBRARY TRENDS, Vol. 42, No. 2, Fall 1993, pp. 277-89 8 1993 The Board of Trustees, University of Illinois 278 LIBRARY TRENDUFALL 1993