t is commonly agreed that the responsibility for educating entry-level academic librarians is shared by three groups: library schools, hiring institutions, and the librarians themselves. Despite general consensus that each of these groups share responsibility for the educational process, the specific nature of their respective roles is vigorously debated.The library education debate in both the literature and at professional meetings has focused on the following questions : Should the curricula of library schools emphasize theory or practice, or, should both be given equal attention? Should library schools focus on preparing students for employment in specialized positions and environments, such as academic libraries, or might a general core program provide the basic preparation for library work?The roles of the hiring institution and the beginning librarian are similarly open to question. Should the employing library be expected to provide extensive on-thejob training, or simply orientation to its particular policies and procedures? And, how far does the responsibility of the beginning librarian extend? Should a beginning librarian identify the gaps in personal professional knowledge and assume the responsibility for filling those gaps through informal self-instruction or formal continuing education programs? Discussion of these questions has generally focused on how librarians should be educated, rather than how they are educated, and has rarely reflected the perceptions of entry-level librarians who have recently begun to use their education. Accordingly, we decided to ask a number of beginning academic librarians about their actual job responsibilities, and the manner in which they learned to perform their duties. Finally, we sought to elicit their opinions about how their job responsibilities should have been taught. Librarians employed by the State University of New York were selected for our study.
METHODOLOGYIn the fall of 1980 we sent introductory letters to the library directors of the four SUNY (State University of New York) university centers and the twelve SUNY fouryear colleges of arts and science ( excluding Empire State College which has no campus per se). The letters asked for the director's cooperation in distributing the questionnaires to librarians on their staffs who had received graduate degrees in 1976 or later. Three university center library directors and ten four-year college library directors cooperated. Questionnaires were distributed to sixty-seven academic librarians who met our criterion.
he view of research as a linear, highly structured, logical process has been challenged by studies which indicate that scholars work in ways which can best be described as cyclical, organic, and intuitive.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.