Educating the Profession by Walter de Gruyter

Author:Walter de Gruyter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Published: 2016-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Current Impediments to LIS Education in the UAE

While there was great enthusiasm amongst employers for the development of good quality qualifications in the information field in the UAE however, there were also many who expressed reservations. One historical impediment to LIS development has been the poor role model offered by school libraries often experienced by Emirati students, leading to perceptions of poor status and lack of understanding of the potential role of libraries and information professionals. With tertiary education now being widely undertaken by Emirati students where professionally staffed, modern libraries support research and inquiry-based learning, this perception is slowly changing. At the school level, the development of “model” and “future” schools by ADEC and the Ministry of Education is resulting in exemplary school library facilities being visited by others, sharing a new vision of the future.

There is evidence of a lack of understanding regarding the information profession worldwide, and not just within the UAE, though perhaps stronger in the UAE because of lack of prior experience with widespread and effective library services. For example, it is concluded that among Australian students there is a lack of solid understanding concerning the nature of the field and professional opportunities open to them as graduates of an LIS programme (Partridge et al. 2011), and in the United States an admission that the profession is not perceived as glamorous in comparison to other professions (Ard et al. 2006).

Even within modern university management, the library and archival professions are not generally well understood, and as the study of information management is a multi-disciplinary and specialist field, it is often difficult to “position” within the academic structure. Master of Library Sciences (MLIS) courses internationally are often located in IT or Business colleges, but can also be within a Humanities or a Science college. Less often they are established as an independent institute or department, or located within a graduate studies office. In all cases, much of the curriculum necessitates teaching by specialist library/ archival/ data-management faculty.

There is world-wide recognition that the traditional professions of librarianship, archivist, or teacher librarianship are undergoing transformation into broader and non-traditional roles, such as research analyst, data coordinator, web designers, and information brokers and creators. Substantial research in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Europe documents a transition of the information professional impacted by technological and business model changes to include flexible and transferable skills, often with the need for specialist discipline knowledge, ability to collaborate, and skills in project management and technology applications which can take information resources remotely to wherever users are located (Abell et al. 2006; Abels et al. 2003; Ard et al. 2006; Choi and Rasmussen 2009; Dalton and Levinson 2001; Fisher 2004; Gerolimos 2009; Park and Lu 2009; Saw and Todd 2007; Smith, Hallam and Ghosh 2012).

Information professionals can be librarians, knowledge managers, information officers, information brokers, curators, archivists, consultants, or web developers. Pathways for employment will continue to broaden, and the need for graduates to be equipped with new transferrable skills will increase.

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