Staking a Claim: The Transition of L to LIS Education in Australia

This article traces the transition of education for librarianship to library and information studies as it unfolded in Australia through the latter part of the twentieth century. It details changes in the course recognition requirements of the Library Association of Australia and its successor, the Australian Library and Information Association, that served as parameters for this curricular evolution. It also outlines Australian educators’ responses to the information science movement both in and outside of Australia, and to calls for the education of the ‘information professional’, which formed part of a broader push by elements of the library profession to both expand its base and promote libraries as central players in the emerging information world. It is argued that Australian educators’ efforts to develop information-centric curricula from the 1980s onwards were, however, driven as much by the need to find new markets following a proliferation of library schools in the 1970s, whose graduates soon flooded the library job market, as by theoretical considerations. The nature and outcomes of the curricular expansion are recounted and discussed, and a holistic approach to present-day LIS education proposed.