This article examines the Pakistani model of library and information science (LIS) education in the light of changes brought about by information and communication technology. Library and Information Science is a profession that is concerned with the attained knowledge and skills that support the collection, organization and utilization of the records of human communication.The education of library and information science at postgraduate level is being offered by ten public sector and three private sector universities of Pakistan. The LIS education during pre-partition period was started in Lahore in 1915 with a certificate course but this program came to an end after few years. After partition, the first diploma course started in 1956 from University of Karachi, which converted into a Master's degree program in 1962 and later on as a Ph.D. program. The other universities of Pakistan followed the traditions of University of Karachi and now a total 13 universities are offering the programs to professionally train the librarians. The courses taught in these universities are regularly revised to meet the demands of the society. Besides educating traditional librarianship, the curricula of all the universities impart modern education to train the future librarians accordingly. This paper completely covers the conventional as well as the modern-day courses being taught in these universities of Pakistan.

Education in Library & Information Science at postgraduate level in Pakistan is imparted by 12 universities including nine in public and three in private sector, whereas one public university has suspended the program in 2008. This paper aims to analyze the courses offered by the library schools of Pakistan. The study explores the number and type of courses being taught in a year/semester. The number of courses offered in each semester is more or less equal in all the universities except Peshawar University which is practicing annual system. All the universities offer core and technical courses which are the requirement of a professional degree. The specialized and elective courses are fairly different but majority of the courses are same. Most of the elective courses meet the local needs of the library schools. To fulfill the national and international demands, almost all the library schools are designing and offering more and more ICT-related courses. They are also paying special attention towards practical component of the courses while designing and developing curriculum. All library schools are trying their best to adopt modern teaching methods and facilities. All possible assessment techniques are applied to evaluate the students’ performance. Hence it can be said that the library education and the courses offered by the library schools in Pakistan are of superb quality and meeting the challenges of international market.

This paper explores the opinion of junior and senior library professionals working for various organizations in Pakistan on LIS curricula and seeks their suggestions to develop an effective and practicable curriculum. Survey research method was used to collect data from professionals through a structured questionnaire. The findings reveal that the LIS curricula offered by the library schools of Pakistan are not up to mark and flaws are observed everywhere, hence not meeting the challenges of the profession. But, to a large extent, the respondents were satisfied with the contents of the curricula with some reservations and apprehensions. They also gave some suggestions to modify and upgrade the curriculum to make it compatible with the market requirements. They also proposed to revise the curriculum periodically after taking the professionals working in the field in confidence.