Educating and training library practitioners: a comparative history with trends and recommendations - includes appendix on history of library education

4. Consideration was given to fifth-year master's degree programs.

5. Consideration was given to establishing additional doctoral and fifth-year programs.

6. Danton and the West Coast School's efforts were seen to reinforce scholarship.

7. It was seen as time to evaluate the state of undergraduate programs.

8. A core curriculum was seen as essential for librarian education.

9. Specialization training was disavowed as a responsibility of library schools, though they might include it.

10. Acknowledgment was given to the need for library education publication, the role of the board in education, and the need for attention from the entire profession (pp. 14-15).

During the 1940s, a number of significant surveys and reports came out which, taken together, influenced the direction of librarian schooling (see Nasri, 1972, pp. 424-25; Carroll, 1975, pp. 16-17). Among the major ones are the following: (1) Metcalf, Osborn, and Russell (1943) criticized the preparation of library instructors and the elementary, nature of the curriculum. They recommended stronger teaching of principles and philosophy and improved teaching techniques. (2) Wheeler (p. 42) summarized several criticisms of the time. He suggested that it would be better to have a few good strong schools than a lot of weak ones. He believed that many fundamentally weak schools were trying to expand. He also perceived the continuing struggle between the academic environment and the professional environment, acknowledging that striving for true graduate level scholarship would create conflict with employers wanting more attention to skill-level details. He recommended that library administration be given more emphasis. (3) Danton (1949) criticized overemphasis on details and an approach of being too general. He made the significant recommendation that the education for different types of library employees should be distinctly and clearly different. In particular, he recommended separate educational programs for library technicians, mid-level employees, and administrators. (4) Leigh (1950) reported on the results of his survey but did not push any particular agenda, as did some of the preceding reports. He reported that a new environment was emerging, that the post-bachelor master's degree was becoming the basic pre-professional training, and that the basic core of courses, minus some of the simpler elements, was becoming stable. He also addressed a number of economic influences, noting that many of the weaker library schools were too small and financially poor to withstand the imposition of better standards (p. 16).

Due in part to the influence of these various conferences and reports, a new set of standards for accreditation was adopted in 1951, with one significant change from the 1933 minimum requirements: the three types of library schools were dropped; only basic pre-professional education was addressed in accreditation. The emphasis now was placed on a general core that all employees would need, regardless of their specialties. This one program was expected to be a (typically five-year) master's program with a four-year degree as an entrance requirement. Thus accreditation came to center on one basic program; variations would be dealt with in different arenas.