Cataloging and reference, circulation and shelving: Public library users and university students' perceptions of librarianship

Public library users and university students responded to a series of questions about the work of librarians and lawyers. Overall, the public library users tended to have a more positive and accurate image of librarianship than did the university students even though both groups were frequent library users. Both groups of subjects held very traditional views of librarianshp and tended to underestimate librarians' level of involvement in administrative and nontraditional tasks. The male respondents were particularly likely to emphasize the clerical aspects of library work and to underestimate the educational requirements of librarianship. In general, the results suggest that the public continues to have difficulty distinguishing librarians from other library workers and that they hold librarianship in considerably lower esteem than law. They tended to greatly overestimate the starting salaries of newly graduated lawyers, described lawyers as more intelligent than librarians, and were less likely to describe librarianship as a profession. Unlike law, the occupational prestige of librarianship was found to be significantly correlated with the number of males estimated to be working in the field.