I have just been reading Professor Bruce Royan’s highly informative post about the Libraries of the Future event held in Oxford on 2nd April, and sponsored by JISC. Always alert to what is being say about library schools and our role in supporting the profession at these types of events, I was pleased to see Professor Royan’s comments on his contribution to the debate when the subject of ‘what aspects of library school courses would prepare students to be librarians of the future’. In response to a suggestion from one of the speakers, Professor Peter Murray-Rust of Cambridge University, that students might have more appropriate skills than teachers, Professor Royan suggested that ‘the role of the Library School is to impart the knowledge base and ethical foundations that will underpin any professional career’. Exactly. We do have to keep reminding everyone (including many within our own profession), that library and information management courses provide a wider knowledge base, which prepares future professionals for the changes and challenges they will meet during their careers, rather than just churning out students with particular sets of technical skills which are likely to be superceded very quickly.