Nature or nurture? How do we prepare library staff for head, hart and hands tasks?

Between 1975 and 1987 the Netherlands library system was characterized by a large grow of public libraries and membership. A great number of children became member because of the fact that finally library membership was free of charge. Each municipality was forced by the law to open and support a public library. In those days LIS education was organized by a few Library and Documentation Academies where they taught librarianship for public libraries, school libraries, children libraries and libraries for other kind of institutions. It was a HBO education (Higher Professional Education), university studies did not exist. At the end of the 90’s the LIS education changed as almost all HBO education types needed to change, merge into larger institutes and more general education. The Public library area got lost more and more while the focus was more and more on information technology. At the same time the library organization in the Netherlands changed. The differentiation in tasks between librarians and administrative employees was formalized in front and back office duties. The administrative employees whom lacked a LIS education were more or less pushed into taking care of readers advisor jobs and similar activities. The back office team took care of developing programs that front office needed to perform. In this transition time several new forms of training staff were developed. The ins and outs of those classes, training programs will be presented in this paper.