EDUCATION FOR LIBRARIANSHIP: THE BIG PICTURE Available to Purchase

The Council for National Academic Awards could be said to have been fathered by SPUTNIK I, the first space satellite launched in 1957 by the USSR. This signal achievement, a great shock to Western democracies hitherto convinced of their technical and cultural superiority, induced national soul searching particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. Inevitably such soul searching turned upon the higher education system. If SPUTNIK I was the progenitor of CNAA, Lord Robbins was its midwife. The so called Robbins Report, which examined the structure of higher education in the United Kingdom, concluded that there was need to expand significantly the cadres of qualified manpower available by the expansion of opportunities for university level education. It was recognised by Lord Robbins' Committee of Enquiry that in the areas of professional and specifically vocational higher education the United Kingdom had failed seriously to furnish itself appropriately by its existing patterns of higher education provision.