Higher Library Education in the Countries of Latin America

Abstract

The purpose of the article is look into historical features and to determine the formation stages and the current state of the library specialists’ education system and its level in Latin American countries.
 The methodology. There were used historical-genetic and systemic-structural approaches. It made it possible to establish the main stages periodization of the higher education levels in Library Studies’ origin and development in the leading countries of Latin America. The study proved the influence of North American and European traditions on the development of the training of highly qualified library personnel system in the founding countries of graduate library education on the continent. A comparative and content analysis of the bachelor’s, master’s and Doctoral Degrees’ educational programs in the specialty “Library and Information Sciences” provided by leading universities in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, made it possible to determine the general and specific aspects of the specialists training for the information industry, to establish the peculiarities of cognitive and institutional components of bachelor’s and master’s educational programs, justify the objective necessity of strengthening their interdisciplinarity and flexibility.
 The results. It has been established that Argentina was the first among Latin American countries to establish a training school for librarians in the structure of the Philosophy and Literature Faculty of the University of Buenos Aires back in 1922. In the 1940s and 1950s, universities opened Library Studies (Schools) in Panama (1941), Brazil (1942), Peru (1943), Uruguay (1943), Mexico (1945, 1956), Chile (1949), Costa Rica (1950) and Colombia (1956). The system of post-graduate library education began to take shape in the 1970s, when in 1972 the first post-graduate program in the field of “Library and Information Science” was opened in Brazil at the School of Communication and Arts of the University of São Paulo, and in 1980 — the doctoral program as well. Currently, in the countries of Latin America, only the leading metropolitan universities have educational programs of master’s and Doctoral levels. It is due to the low scientific qualification of graduate departments and the insufficient number of professors who can carry out qualified supervision of master’s and Doctoral thesis research.
 The current state of the library and information education system development on the Latin American continent is demonstrated by the following statistics: Brazil has 47 universities with their structure including schools or departments for the library specialists training, Argentina has 16 of such universities, Mexico — 13, Colombia — 6, Chile — 4, Cuba — 3, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Peru, Venezuela — 2 universities each, Bolivia, Ecuador, Panama, Paraguay, Uruguay, Jamaica — 1 university each.
 The scientific topicality. The formation of the higher library education levels system on the Latin American continent took place in several stages: the genesis stage (1920–1930s), the stage of active development (1940–1960s), the stage of starting post-graduate training of library specialists at the postgraduate level, and later — master’s and Doctoral studies (1970–1990s); the stage of strengthening the interdisciplinary integration of educational program profiles (2000 — present). The results of the educational programs (EPs) content analysis of various levels of training in the specialty “Library and Information Sciences” made it possible to establish a certain conservatism of their profiling, to determine that the promising directions for their modernization are interdisciplinary and strengthening of the digital and information and communication components with, for example, such relevant EPs as “Communication, organization, management of information and knowledge”, “Sociocultural, political and economic configurations of information”.
 The practical significance. The research results can be used by Ukrainian institutions of higher education in the process of improving master’s and Doctoral educational programs in the specialty 029 “Information, Library and Archival Affairs”. The introduction of the best foreign training practices of library specialists will improve their quality and competitiveness at the global information market.