Professional associations are non-profit, independent and non-governmental organizations whose primary goal is not to make a profit, but to make positive changes in the community. Like-minded people gather within professional associations with the aim of strengthening and improving their field. Professional associations are founded by at least three founders and operate according to the principles of non-profit, independence, charity and autonomy. In this paper, some of the most important foreign and Croatian professional associations are presented. The aim of the research in this paper is to investigate how familiar students are with professional associations in library and information sciences, whether professional associations are sufficiently visible and promoted, and whether they agree that professional associations contribute to the development of librarianship and information sciences. For the purposes of the research, an anonymous survey was conducted among information science students in Zagreb, Zadar and Osijek, which was completed by a total of 129 students. The results of the research show that students are familiar with the associations that are mentioned more often during their studies and that they believe that the associations are extremely useful for librarianship and information sciences. Also, the results of the research indicated that students are hesitant in their intention to join a professional association and believe that the visibility of professional associations would improve if they were more promoted and advertised on social networks.