A study reported in 1976 of the 1974-75 bulletins of 62 ALA-accredited library school programs in North America showed that1 course in special librarianship was offered in 66% of the schools and a further 15% offer 2 courses in this area for a total of 81% of the schools offering 1 or more courses in special librarianship. (Source)
Ibid…. showed that26% of the schools offer formal programs in special librarianship. (Source)
Ibid…. showed thatthe 4 most common areas in which 1 or more courses for special librarianship were taught were: medical/health librarianship (37 or 60% schools), law librarianship (22 or 35% schools), music librarianship (13 or 21% schools), and art librarianship (5 or 8% schools). (Source)
A survey reported in 1983 of 249 special library respondents in 28 major firms (126 of the respondents had a master's degree in library science or the equivalent) showed thatthe 3 library school courses out of 9 ranked by the most respondents as “important” or “very important” were:
online searching (43% respondents took the course in library school; 83% rated it as “important” or “very important”);
specialized reference (93% respondents took the course in library school; 76% rated it as “important” or “very important”);
general reference (97% respondents took the course in library school; 69% rated it as “important” or “very important”). (Source)
Ibid…. showed thatthe 4 courses that the most respondents with library school degrees wished they had taken were (multiple responses allowed): programming (45 or 35.7% respondents), online searching (37 or 29.4% respondents), computer science (30 or 23.8% respondents), and management and business administration (22 or 17.5% respondents). (Source)
Ibid…. showed thatthose courses that special librarians rank most highly are not those that academic librarians rank highly. A comparison of course rankings by special librarians and by ARL library directors in terms of importance for subsequent job performance showed thatthe 5 courses that special librarians rank most highly receive only an average rank of 10.2 out of 19 by the ARL librarians. (Source)
