Editorial: A quarter century of progress in library and information education

In September 1995 I took on additional duties as a warden of one of my University’s Halls of Residence which houses 280 students of agriculture and information and library studies. The students living there follow a variety of pre-degree, undergraduate, and postgraduate courses and range in age from their mid-teens to mid-forties. The administrative, pastoral, and disciplinary duties of a warden are not onerous, and are well compensated for by the benefits of free accommodation, meals, and domestic help. The occasional need to get up in the middle of the night to deal with drunken or depressed students, or pranks involving silage or sheep, can be set against the opportunity of developing friendships with a range of bright and intelligent young people. As a warden I will see a different side of their characters than I would normally have done as a lecturer, and I have got to know many students of my own discipline far better over the last academic year than ever before. I now have a clearer idea of the types and characteristics of those entering the information and library professions, and it has been with a mixture of pride and sadness over the summer that I have seen more and more of my student friends leave Aberystwyth and find jobs.

My own days as a full-time student of librarianship at Loughborough Technical College finished more than a quarter of a century ago, and looking back it becomes apparent just how many changes there have been to professional education and the student body. These relate not only to the academic courses studied and the working environments to which students will progress, but also in the types of person entering the professions, their motives for doing so, level of education, commitment, and professional expectations. I shall therefore use the opportunity afforded by this editorial to compare the Loughborough class of 1970, to which I belonged, with the Aberystwyth class of 1996, which I have just witnessed at fairly close quarters. I make no pretence of having carried out any systematic survey, but merely give my own impressions based upon memories and my recent observations.

Many of the more obvious differences relate to the courses being followed, the qualifications obtained and teaching staff employed. For example, the Library School at Loughborough was not part of a University institution, although the new department was on the point of opening. There were only two relatively homogenous groups of students - a smallish group studying for the Library Association Post-Graduate Diploma, and well over a hundred non-graduates on the LA two-year professional course leading to the Associateship. There were no undergraduates, research students, or part-time or distance learning courses. All of the courses taught were examined by the Library Association, and much of the teaching was practice based. There was an expectation that all students would have at least one year of practical experience working in a library, and almost the entire teaching staff had spent at least a part of their careers as practitioners.

At the University of Wales, Aberystwyth today all assessment’s are carried out by the University, although accredited by the relevant professional bodies. More than fifty per cent of the student body are following distance learning courses either at the undergraduate or masters degree level and will only visit the college to take part in study schools held during the traditional academic vacations. There are no longer any non-degree courses in information and library studies, (although these are available elsewhere). The largest full-time course is a masters’ degree, attracting about ninety students each year, together with smaller groups studying for a range of first degrees (either by single or joint honours) or else a postgraduate diploma in archive administration. There is also a healthy body of full-time and part-time research students studying for M.Phil or PhD degrees. Many of the undergraduate students will have no practical experience of library or information work, before starting their courses, although this will be compensated for either by compulsory periods of unpaid fieldwork or Year in Employment Schemes mid-way through their studies.

LIS teaching is still essentially vocational, but it is no longer as practically oriented as in the past, nor aimed as specifically at their first professional post. For example, practical cataloguing and classification is no longer taught in detail, (although there is still a demand for such courses from overseas libraries) but the principles of information retrieval will be, together with topics such as financial or human resource management. All courses are now modular with a larger degree of ‘optionality’ than before. Modules are completed and assessed at the end each semester, using a combination of formal examinations and course assessed work, meaning that academic pressures are now fairly evenly distributed throughout the year rather than concentrated at the end. In addition, all students will now complete a dissertation enabling them to go into some depth in a chosen topic, working largely on their own. The older members of the teaching staff will usually have spent a number of years in professional practice, and will have studied for their higher degrees part-time, but increasingly the younger generation of teachers have come from more traditional academic routes of a good first degree, research for a PhD, followed by a period of post-doctoral research.

Over the same period there have also been fundamental changes to the character of the student body, notably in their age ranges, their ethnic and social backgrounds and in the ratio of males to females. In 1970 the vast majority of my student colleagues were in their early to mid-twenties - products of the post-war baby boom. They tended to come from lower-middle class households, and approximately 85% were female. There were very few were mature students, or those from ethnic minorities, or from outside the United Kingdom.

Today the age profile of both full-time and distance-learning students is far more diverse and ranges between nineteen and the late forties (although in recent years we have had undergraduates in their mid-fifties). Although the majority of full-time students are still in their mid-twenties, there are now substantial numbers in their late twenties and early thirties. Many mature students have already had other careers and perhaps already hold other vocational qualifications. Some will be returning to higher education after having left school early and gained the necessary qualifications only after prolonged part-time study or attendance at access courses. Others will have found the need to enhance their existing qualificatiions. Frequently the decision to change career and return to study will be taken as part of an overall re-assessment of their life to date, either due to a general dissatisfaction with their working lives, or perhaps following an event such as redundancy, divorce, or the ending of family responsibilities. Others will have chosen to study for a higher degree because they did not know what they wanted to do on completion of their first degree and saw it as an alternative to unemployment or an unskilled job.

It would be unwise to make too many generalisations about the relative performance of students in different age ranges, although from my own observations I would suggest that mature undergraduate students tend to be more committed than their younger colleagues and therefore tend to perform better overall. Perhaps this is because they do not have as many emotional distractions to contend with? By their nature, postgraduate students are more mature and committed, and have far less time to cover the necessary ground than their undergraduate colleagues. They are required to work harder throughout their one-year course, and are better motivated. It would not be fair to say that the older students in this group necessarily perform better than those in their twenties.

It is difficult to say whether the overall quality of students entering the profession has improved over the last twenty-five years, and there are no truly objective measures, but I suspect it has. Certainly today’s students tend to be better qualified, are more intellectually adventurous and have better analytical skills. At the same time they are less literate, possibly have a shorter attention span and sometimes have poor grammatical skills. The greatest change however is in growth of new skills, notably computer literacy. A majority of students now arrive already equipped with computer skills and a curiosity to learn more, and indeed some of them already have extensive experience in this area. Yet there are also a sizeable minority that remain determinedly technologically illiterate, and indeed a few who entered the profession under the wholly mistaken impression that it would be a means of avoiding computers.

The proportion of males to females entering LIS courses appears to have more than doubled over the last quarter century to around 30%. At first sight this is a puzzling development since overall there are now far more women in higher education than there were in 1970. It may be that more women are now being attracted to other traditionally male dominated professions such as law, medicine or accountancy, rather than librarianship whereas the increased use of information technology in library and information work, makes it more attractive to technologically minded males. Between the mid-1970s and  the end of the 1980s there was a considerable growth in the number of overseas students of LIS studying in the UK and on some courses overseas students might constitute as much as 15-20% of the student body. However the very high fees now charged to non-UK students, increased competition from library schools established in other countries, and the use of distance learning or franchised alternatives have begun to reduce their numbers. Nevertheless there are still significant  more overseas students entering full-time courses, including those this year from Hong Kong, Grenada, Malaysia and the Gulf States, as well as a steady stream of research students from Africa, the Middle and Far East.

One very important difference lies in the increased diversity in the financial support given to students. In 1970 virtually everybody was in roughly the same financial situation, although in some cases reduced grants were topped up by allowances from more prosperous parents. A few students were supported through college by their employers, who guaranteed an appropriately qualified post for them on their return. The situation is now quite different, and financial support by employers has disappeared. UK undergraduate students are entitled to a basic grant, which covers tuition fees and a living allowance, but the maximum possible sum payable is till far short of the most basic requirements. At the postgraduate level there is a lottery whether a student receives any support at all or is entirely self-funded. A limited number of government studentships will be spread among many institutions and will only be awarded to the postgraduates with the highest qualifications. Some postgraduate funding may be available from alternative sources such as charities or the institution’s own funds. At the University of Wales, a significant number postgraduate studentships for Information and Library students comes from the European Social Fund, the qualifying rules for which may change from year to year. Yet many postgraduates are forced to rely upon their own or their families’ resources to pay for their tuition and accommodation, or else to take out substantial loans for the purpose.

As there is an increasing disparity between relatively prosperous and poverty stricken students. As a warden over the last year  I have witnessed both considerable extravagance by some students (often exhibited in the consumption of large quantities of alcohol) and also widespread poverty and the growing problems of debt. I have also witnessed an admirable determination by individuals to support themselves whilst continuing to study, frequently by taking on lowly paid and menial work at weekends and during the evenings. This is a work-force that local hotels and restaurants are only too willing to exploit.

But what of the students themselves, most of whom have grown up and been educated in the ‘materialistic’ 1980s rather than the ‘idealistic’ 1960s? I would suggest that they are now far more pragmatic and better focused upon their long term career objectives. They are also more flexible and realistic in their expectations than we were, and do not expect to walk into highly paid or responsible positions as soon as they leave college. They are also far more competitive among themselves, and are also ready to question authority of their lecturers or to challenge the grades given for their work.

Another important area of difference lies in the destinations of students completing the course. A large proportion of my colleagues left to take up work in traditional libraries, particularly in the public and academic sectors. Today the range of possible jobs is far higher and includes information related job in many areas of commerce and industry. There is no longer any expectation that they will remain with a single employer for a substantial period. The year 1970 came at the end of a prolonged period of full employment and there was never any question in the minds of my colleagues that they would not be able to find a position appropriate to their newly won qualifications. The employment situation in the early 1990s was quite different, and although the job market now appears to be more healthy than for several years there are still many differences. The vast majority of students are  now appointed to temporary positions or else they will register with one of a number of temporary employment agencies in this field. Twenty-five years ago this form of employment was virtually unheard of, and qualified staff would expect a permanent, pensionable contract and almost water-tight security of employment.

Finally, many more students today will see the need to enhance their graduate qualifications, or else take the decision to seek a career in LIS research rather than in practice. The Electronic Libraries Programme and other initiatives are providing a range of opportunities for the more academically gifted students, and there are far more taking research degrees than ever before, although funding continues to be a problem. Such opportunities were not generally available in 1970, although there was a feeling among the more ambitious of the non-graduate librarianship students that fundamental changes to the nature of professional education were about to take place and their existing qualifications might not prove to be sufficient in the longer term.

To sum up, I would say that the newly qualified information professional of 1996 will probably have a harder and more challenging working life than my contemporaries, but for the best and most committed there will also be many more opportunities. Having witnessed the latest Aberystwyth cohort at fairly close quarters, I am impressed by their intelligence, commitment, and cheerfulness, and have no doubt that the future of the infromation professions in this country will be in good hands.

David Stoker
September 1996