Dr. sc. Jadranka Lasić-Lazić
jlazic@ffzg.hr

Dr. sc. Mihaela Banek Zorica
mbanek@ffzg.hr

Dr. sc. Sonja Špiranec
sspiran@ffzg.hr
The University of Zagreb, Croatia
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Department of Information Sciences

Education of Librarians in Croatia:
Structural and conceptual determinants

Library education is the main factor affecting the status and recognition of the library profession, its image, credibility and professional reputation. Still, library education has always been accompanied by various points of view that led the opposite approach and posed dilemmas that are still not unambiguously resolved; such as dilemmas between generalization and specialization (focus on the type of institution or content area of action); dilemma between theory and practice; terminology dilemmas an position within the wider field (librarianship, information science, librarians or information specialists) to the question of necessity of education of librarians on academic level.

The paper analyzes the structure and content preferences of library studies in Croatia, with an emphasis on programs of study of Information Science, Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb, showing the development of the concept of learning outcomes and competencies in the programs. The authors believe that the approach to designing programs based on student learning outcomes provides a strong advantage: on the one hand it contributes to students employability and on the other hand it increases their competitiveness in the labor market while strengthening the status and reputation of the profession.

Key words: library education, curriculum, Bologna process, learning outcomes, competencies