Education for Information

A 6-month retraining program for Israel's Russian-speaking new immigrant librarians and information specialists is described. Because Israeli information professionals need to know Hebrew, the language of the country, an intensive language course, emphasizing professional terminology, was offered. Courses providing a basic knowledge of Jewish and Israeli history, literature and bibliography, as well as Hebrew cataloging and classification systems were also included. Finally, the gap in information technology between the former Soviet Union and the Western world was bridged by courses in library automation.

A survey of 732 students at twelve Departments of Information and Library Studies (DILSs) measured their experience in the office-automation skills of typing, word-processing, spreadsheets and databases, their assessment of their knowledge and confidence with computers, the level of Information Technology (IT) provision, their preferences in software and hardware and method to complete assignments, and whether their IT training was suitable for their future employment requirements.

DILSs are recommended to provide keyboarding learning facilities, and a more rigorous IT knowledge test to ascertain better their students' actual needs. The use of integrated packages may provide a more suitable level of IT training than industry-standard packages.

The development of Information Science in the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid is studied in relation to the history of the university department which is dedicated to matters related to this science1 ¹

In Spain we use “documentation” or “documentation science” as a synonym of “information science”.

When the university was created, a “service” was established with the responsibility of organizing the library and documentation functions of the Faculty of Sciences as well as the teaching of these. This “service” later became an interfaculty “department”, dependent on the Vice-Chancellor. Its teaching and research gradually increased whilst its tasks as an information-documentation service decreased.

The change in the university library system, from a central library, both administratively speaking and in terms of services, to a network of libraries in the different faculties and departments, coupled with a greater demand for information from the teaching and research staff, led to the creation of a specialized central service.

As a result of these two processes, the Department of Information Science has had a teaching and research dedication. When the University Reform Law was introduced, its name was changed from department to bureau.

Teaching tasks include the training of students as users, doctorate courses and up to date training. Research includes philosophical-scientific studies of information science, classification theory and thesaurus, terminology, systems science and the training and teaching of professionals and users.

Expressed like this, things seem relatively easy, but there have been difficult times and times of plenty. At present, and we might say at last, we are in a period of calm and prosperity.