Librarian Training in Mexico: 1970s

In 1973, Vilentchuk, in a paper written for the National Center of Scientific and Technological Information in Tel Aviv, Israel, lamented the state of library technologist training. She noted that of the 6000 people working in libraries in 1973, only about 500, or 8%, have had library training of any type. Of those 500, only about 50, or 10% (1% of the total), are considered qualified librarians. Of those in that group with Master’s degrees, most earned them at American universities. Vilentchuk goes on to lay out a proposal for a two-part curriculum designed to train first library “technician assistants”, and second, library “technicians”, those interested in continuing their education and becoming the equivalent of full librarians.

The interesting background provided in the report includes some background as to the current state of library science education, and of several efforts that had been tried but had yielded very poor results. One example (1973, p. 4) was a Master’s program at the National University of Mexico, which only graduated eight students in five years!

The Curriculum: Appendix A

Par t 1 of the curriculum assumes that students will need to begin working in a library before completing the entire program, so it focuses on the basic skills needed to run a library: cataloging, acquisition, and lending procedures; administration skills; and basic reference knowledge.

Part 2 focuses on the skills and knowledge needed in an academic or special library: subject expertise, including knowledge of publications and their use in answering subject-specific reference questions; familiarity with the theory and practice of indexing, complex cataloging, and classification; knowledge of reader services; and knowledge of the types of literature (primary, secondary, and tertiary).
I’m interested in following up further on this paper to see if any of it was ever put into practice, and if so, what the outcomes were.

Reference

Vilentchuk, L. (1973). Basic Training Programme for Library Technicians in Mexico. Report: ED077526. 38pp. Mar.