Zajedničko i posebno u stručnoj naobrazbi bibliotekara, arhivista i muzeologa

Sažetak

The paper deals with the professional education of librarians, archivists and museum
studies experts at the university level. Since 1977 the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb has
been the only institution in Croatia which offers the university degree in librarianship.
Since 1986 a diploma in information Sciences with a major in librarianship has also been
awarded. Programmes in archive and museum studies have also been offered since 1986.
For some time now a need for a thorough revision of the programmes has been felt.
The expectations of the seventies and eighties, that the establishment and
consolidation of information Science will help library, archival and museum studies in
their own development as “true Sciences”, was not realized. In the nineties information
specialists turned to information retrieval as their legitimate field of research, probably
due to the influence of new information technology and new kinds of media. However,
information retrieval has been the main occupation of librarians and archivists for almost
three millennia. Therefore, professional education in the next millennium will again have
to take into account the activities of libraries, archives and museums as public institutions
with their own ospecific needs.
Possible objections aimed at the fact that knowledge about the activities of public
institutions cannot constitute a scientific discipline can be refuted if the interpretations of
postmodern scholars, such as M. Foucault and others, are taken into account, and/or if
comparisons with other disciplines in the humanities or social Sciences engaged in the
research of human activities and norms are made. The author believes that the priority of
the field should be further improvement of the professional language and the systematic
cumulation of research on particular topics.
Libraries, archives and museums as public institutions have common social tasks to
perform, they acquire and hold similar kinds of material and apply similar procedures in
Processing materials and organizing users’ Services. The introduction of new information
technologies has confronted them with the same problems as those related to the purchase
of new equipment, the selection of adequate materials, the digitalization of materials, the
introduction of new norms as well as the need for reeducating and training both the staff
and users. Also, they have to define their attitude towards user free access to the materials
they provide. The author emphasizes that experts in a great number of European countries
face the same problem of creating up-to-date educational programmes for librarians,
archivists and museum professionals. She quotes from a work of a French author published
in 1990. The author underlined the need for internationally acceptable programmes,
which would include not only the skills required to use new information technologies, but
also the knowledge on how to create new information products with added value and such
knowledge and skills which would ultimately enable students to accept new and
nontraditional jobs.