What are the three most challenging issues facing library education today?
Funding, funding, and funding. This should be no surprise since academic libraries face the same pressures. Funding is needed to provide financial assistance to attract high quality students and soften the pressure of increasing tuition. Funding is needed to attract and retain high quality faculty and staff. Funding is needed to equip classrooms and labs with state of the art information technology. Low professional salaries make the field less attractive although the terrible economic situation of the moment makes our low salaries more attractive. When the economy is in good shape, professional salaries are too low to compensate for the costs of the MS degree. Fortunately, many of our students will make financial sacrifices because they love libraries and library work. Still, the profession will not move forward as quickly as we would like and we will not be able to recruit as many of the best and brightest as we would like in the face of salaries that require some sacrifice. Sacrific
