The beginning of American library education was the establishment of the
School of Library Economy by Melvil Dewey in Columbia College in1887. One
century later, there are more than sixty accredited programsoffered by schools of
library and information science. A college degree is an admission requirement. There
are also a number of doctoral programs-perhaps nineteen. The trend of library
education is the integration of "information science" into the basic professional
curriculum. Since 1978, over adozen library schools have been closed or had their
termination announced.This paper presents a brief history of American library
education and pointsout some of the problems.