The education of public librarians to serve leisure readers in the United States, Canada and Europe

Purpose - To provide a comparative review of the teaching of Readers' Advisory Services in schools of library and information science in selected schools in the USA, Canada and Europe. Design/methodology/approach - After reviewing the literature, schools are selected based on their known activity in providing readers' advisory service courses or on their national ranking (in the case of US schools) to provide a snapshot of current level of readers' advisory instruction. Findings - Instruction in readers' advisory services is a very small part of the total curriculum in schools examined. Librarians who wish to gain more insight to readers' advisory services must depend on continuing education opportunities, such as workshops and conference programs, not on courses in the curriculum of schools of library and information science. Originality/value - This paper raises questions as to the relationship between library and information science curricula and the needs of practicing librarians to provide services to leisure readers. It finds that, despite an increased interest in providing readers' advisory services in libraries, library education is not responding to that need and continuing education and training programs are essential to providing librarians who are well prepared to serve leisure readers. For schools which are contemplating adding coursework in these areas, the case studies detail courses as they are offered at other institutions.