A Little Insight About LIS

First and foremost, library and information science (LIS) students do not memorize the location of the books and other materials in libraries; nor LIS professionals spend all the rest of their lives locating the books needed by the users. They are not your ordinary librarians who you stereotype as strict, snobbish old maids who restrict the use of books. Just as the era becomes more and more modern and the world is bombarded with information, the roles of librarians change so as to adapt with the changing needs of the humankind for the development of all areas of life. Accordingly, job titles of librarians vary depending on the roles they have in an institution. Librarians are also known as information specialists, information professionals, database administrator, multimedia facilitator, subject specialists and educational counselor (for academic libraries). Librarians promote reading and studying by promoting the use of libraries.

Librarians may acquire the power of recollecting the exact locations of library materials. Moreover, one unseen thing  by most random people is the fact that librarians develop and follow standards (international or specialized) on how books, serials, multimedia and AV materials are catalogued. International standards used in cataloguing are Library of Congress Classification, Anglo-American Cataloging Rules (AACR), Dewey Decimal Classification, Sear’s List, and Cutter numbers.

The School of Library and Information Science in the University of the Philippines Diliman is the first university that offered library science as a course in 1966. In 2002, the curriculum of the BLIS course was revised and four tracks in the course were included. These are health, law, Information technology, and archives and records management (ARM). Subjects in the ARM track concentrate on the management of records and preservation of records with enduring archival values. In the health track, students are familiarized with medical terms in medical and health libraries. In the law track, LIS students concentrate on legal practices that protect librarians and users of law libraries. IT track, on the other hand, concentrates on the development of databases and other programming subjects necessary on the automation of libraries.

The R. A. 9246 or the act modernizing the practice of librarianship in the Philippines, is the sole existing law in the country regarding the practice of librarianship, including the legal practices and scope of librarianship, creation of Philippine Regulatory Board for librarians, and the licensure examinations and registration.#