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professionals are adapting well to these changing roles and will continue
to meet the challenges ahead.

ASSIGNMENTS

1. How is information professional’s job seen?
2. What do you know about role as part of the information transfer
chain?

3. What can make a difficult job much easier?
4. What changes have taken place in the roles of information
professionals?
5. Name three eras of information.

6. Can we say that all information professionals are educators? Why?
7. What do you know about the National Commission on Libraries and
Information Science (NCLIS)?

8. What do you know about the changing image of the information
professional?
9. What implications do these roles have for library and information

science educators?
10. Summarize the text.

Text 6

ST
CHALLENGES IN EDUCATING 21 -CENTURY
INFORMATION PROFESSIONALS
14
By John Unsworth
In a number of talks today, speakers have discussed the changes
that are coming, and that have come, to library and information science

education; some speakers have celebrated the changes they discuss, and
others have decried them; some have reminded us of important
knowledge from the past, and others of important challenges in the
future. So, to begin this talk on educating future librarians, I would like

to outline my general position on these issues. I believe it is necessary
for our discipline to evolve, but I want to point out that evolution is not
simply another word for change: evolution is a special case of

transformation, in which the past is carried forward in a form that
responds to changes in the environment. It’s true that not all

14 st
Unsworth J. Challenges in Educating 21 -Century Information Professionals / John
Unsworth. – Available at : http://people.lis.illinois.edu/~unsworth/wuhan.jmu.keynote.
short.pdf