Celia Chaín-Navarro

LIS Education and Web Services in the Public Sector: the Case of Spain

This article deals with the need to define the public administration sector as a major provider of Web-based job-placement resources in the field of corporate information management for Spanish graduates in librarianship and information science. The Web as an instrument of information dissemination gives the citizen who uses it many advantages. Unlike other information services where the flow of information is targeted at a specific part of the population, the Public Administration Sector generates information that is, or should be, useful to any citizen, regardless of his or her situation or profession. Throughout life, one has to interact with local, regional, and national Public Administrative units. Sometimes the process is direct between a citizen and the staff of these units, but on other occasions the Administration itself has to structure the flow of information to the citizen. The Web has become an effective tool in this sense, but who are the professionals managing these information resources? The present work will show that Spanish universities offering courses in librarianship and information science have remained unaware of these new job opportunities that have arisen in recent years. Data used to support this conclusion are: 1) Spanish reports on the job market for librarianship and information science graduates, 2) study plans at the different levels of higher education in Spain (first, second, and third cycles of university), and 3) the educational qualifications of the website administrators of Spains provincial capitals, a typical sample of Spanish public administrative units.

Information science courses and the graduate job context in Spain

Received 1 September 2009Revised 21 December 2009This paper supports the appropriateness of the objectives of the Librarianship and Information Science(LIS) graduate university studies system in Spain. It identifies formulas to allow the construction ofinnovative study plans which are attractive within the information society. LIS university studies startedin Spain in the 190s although professional training has been available since the 19th century. This givesan historic perspective from which to analyse what has been done and the goals achieved using differentparameters. The authors have adopted a critical vision because they argue that the objectives defined forLIS programs have only marginally been achieved, and the new fields and work prospects have not beenvery well explored. As a result, an important fall in the registration of students in the LIS degree hasoccurred over recent years.