The field of library science as a career option for young people. Enrollment, practices and representations

Abstract

The low demand that Library Science as a career choice has among the young population, especially among those who finish secondary school, constitutes nowadays one of the main problems facing the social universe of librarians as a disciplinary field. On the basis of the current situation, in this paper we aim at, on the one hand, surveying the enrollment characteristics of the Library Science career at the National University of Córdoba (UNC) -Argentina-, by using as information sources the university statistical yearbooks of the period 2000-2014. On the other hand, through field work carried out in eleven secondary schools in the capital city of Córdoba, we address the practices and perceptions that young people who completed their secondary education in 2015 have about Library Science as a career and the library as an institution. The data collected allow us to infer that the low interest for studying Library Science might be related to this profession as a social universe not occupying a significant place in the perceptual horizon of young secondary school students.