I strongly believe that it is a must to give so much emphasis to LIS Instruction because it is the birthplace of all librarians and information professionals. Full-time LIS Instructors should have a clear career progression so that we can focus more on the instruction. From what I can observe, some institutions would just appoint instructors from the library and these librarians have also other tasks and responsibilities which complicate everything. With that, the instruction could be compromised. There is a possibility that the course becomes the second option.
Here in our institution, we have full-time librarians but they also do part-time teaching and they receive extra payment per unit or as to the number of teaching hours. However, there are other institutions that have inconsiderable practices which lead to the librarians thinking that teaching is just a piece of extra baggage. As a remedy, I suggest that there should be a full-time BLIS Program head/chairperson to work closely for the program (specifically on the marketing and advocacy).
Unluckily, we don't have enough products to fill in the available job positions. Aside from LIS Instruction, there are lots and lots of opportunities (academic librarianship, school librarianship, public librarianship, special librarianship, archiving, records management, curation, and other related paths) but we lack librarians.
I just want to share this experience that I had during our Ph.D. class. We had this discussion about issues and concerns on the recruitment, selection, and placement process in DepEd schools. By the way, most of my classmates are DepEd teachers. Okay... let's continue... There was a chance that I have asked them if DepEd is hiring for librarians. They said that there are no applicants at all and they even encouraged me to apply! Imagine!? So... the bottom line here is that librarianship is in demand. It's just we lack future librarians.
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