June 17, 1999

Stephen Perloff
Chief, Qualifications Standards Branch
Office of Personnel Management
1900 E. Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20415

Dear Mr. Perloff,

Your colleagues of the Federal Library and Information Center Committee (FLICC) Personnel Work Group appreciate your interest in assisting our efforts to recruit well qualified candidates for Federal librarian vacancies. In this regard, we are pleased to know that a letter from Ms. Janet Scheitle, Department of the Army, was helpful in clarifying the Department of the Army's practice of recruiting librarians with Masters in Library Science (MLS) degrees.

We are again writing to request your assistance with regard to improving recruitment for the 1410 series. As you may recall, in our last letter to you, dated March 2, 1998, we requested that you assist in this effort by 1) eliminating the OPM administered test used in qualifying candidates as librarians and 2) eliminating all references to the test within the current Qualifications Standard to include all of part C, which is intrinsically related to testing.

We appreciate your assistance with eliminating the test as an instrument to determine qualifications for people without a professional degree. However, from the many job postings by OPM that continue to refer to the test, it appears that personnel officers of Federal agencies are unaware that the test has been discontinued. We believe that the continued presence of notices that refer to the test create confusion among librarians, personnel specialists, and job applicants.

Accordingly, we request that you:

• Notify Federal personnel officers that the test is no longer a valid qualifying tool for librarians
• Edit vacancy announcements posted at the OPM site to eliminate references to the test
• Amend the Qualifications Standards by removing section C.

I also request that you call me at (202) 512-2010 ext. 30334 to inform me of your intended courses of action.

Sincerely,

Thomas A. Downing Chair, FLICC Personnel Work Group

cc: Susan Tarr, Executive Director, FLICC
FLICC Members, FLICC Personnel Work Group
Kathy Eighmey, FLICC
Anna Bohlin, FLICC