One Size No Longer Fits Everyone! 11:30 - 12:30

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Non-Walked Fields Mexican Library Education
Opportunities"One Size No Longer Fits Everyone"
- Panel Judith Field, Jesús Lau, and Ken
HaycockTransborder Library Forum, February 22,
2007 Thursday 1130-1230www.asu.edu/lib/foro
Jesús Lau, Ph.D. jlau_at_uv.mx / www.jesuslau.com Dir
ector, USBI-VER Library, and Coordinator, UV
Virtual Library Universidad Veracruzana /
DGB Veracruz, México
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Topics

• General Introduction
• Library school challenges
• Employment market
• Transborder hiring of librarians
• LIS school opportunities

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Mexican Snapshot

• 100 million inhabitants
• Largest Spanish-speaking country
• A quarter of the US territory
• 14th world economy GDP
• 7th in tourism
• Largest immigration output to US
• Middle income country
• With the largest library system in Latin America

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Library Statistics
INEGI, 2006 / SEP 1999

• Public. 7,200
• Academic...1,200
• School.5,400
• Special230
• Librarians4,000
• Library Schools10

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Library Education History

• Dates back to 1924
• Oldest LIS school 1945
• There were only two schools located in Mexico
  City until 1970
• There has been a good growth in the last five
  years
• Library education is mostly traditional
• Except distance LIS education (2 programs)

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US Library Role

• Library theory and practice are based on US
  cannons
• Foreign library degrees are from US universities
• There was a special library scholarship program
  in the 1970s-1980s for US universities
• US Franklin library played an important
• promotional role

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Graduates Profile

• Strength Bibliographic skills
• Material organization oriented
• Limited skills in
• Management
• English
• Computer use
• Communication oral and written

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Schools Need to

• Change teaching methods
• Update curricula
• Broaden programs to cover more employment markets
• Attract more competent students
• Increase their budgets
• Integrate IT to the curriculum

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Librarians Challenges

• Transform libraries into learning organizations
• Face constant demand change
• Adopt new organizational strategies
• Offer new and more relevant services
• Offer distant learning information services

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Crossborder Hiring of Librarians

• Mexican librarians come to US to work
• Their degrees are not fully recognized
• There is a need for an international
  accreditation scheme
• Programs may need to be homologated
• A good pattern is the European Bologna project

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Foreign Degrees Are not Recognized

• Degrees from abroad universities are not
  officially recognized
• There is a lengthy, almost impossible, process to
  get government recognition
• However, in practice, it does not matter much
• The annoyances are usually for government
  paperwork

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Accreditation

• There are no specific library accredited programs
  yet, unlike other fields
• The country has a general evaluation system
• Those who pass the evaluation can get better
  federal funding
• Mexican Library Association (AMBAC) does not play
  a role in this process
• There is a degree-holding guild who could play
  the legal role of accreditation (Colegio Nacional
  de Bibliotecarios)

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Actors in the Library Scene

• Only 22 academic directors have a library degree
• Public and school libraries have almost no
  librarians
• Libraries mostly directed by professionals with
  other backgrounds

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Universities and Special Hire More Librarians

• Most advanced libraries
• Best budgets
• Lead in technology
• Higher salaries
• More professional development opportunities

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Society's Library Concept

• A place for lending books
• An administrative department
• A place for students
• Anyone can work at the library
• A service that can be replaced by Internet
• Salaries are low, more than in other professions

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Personal Hiring Experience

• Attract candidates from miles away
• Recruiting is difficult and slow
• Insufficient number of candidates
• They prefer to work in their hometowns
• Family culture ties them to their homes
• Institutional contracting procedure is time
  limited

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UV Requirements

• Vision
• Self management
• Service oriented
• Communication skills
• Master English
• Information technology skills

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Conclusions

• There is a need for more librarians
• New education roads have to be created to
  non-library working professionals
• Distance postgraduate education is good
• A NAFTA library education accreditation scheme is
  needed
• LIS schools have the great opportunity to meet
  the market demand in quality and quantity