Mr Mason has already referred in his paper to the three main streams of professional and semi‐professional training and education available to librarians and information scientists in this country. Although the distinction between these two so patently different types of animal has not been drawn with a sufficient degree of accuracy, it is nevertheless true that only one of these streams is specifically directed to the training of information scientists, and this is, quite rightly, directly or indirectly under the aegis of the Institute of Information Scientists.