More school changes

I just returned from a trip to the School of Information Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh (http://www.sis.pitt.edu/). Currently the home to two depts (one in LIS and the other in Information Science and Telecommunications), the school has now agreed to merge these departments into a single entity. I was pretty impressed with what I saw and I think the merger is exactly what is needed to create a more inclusive sense of an information school. The old disciplinary divisions that made sense in the 1970s probably do not work too well now and it’s important to note that intellectual fields shift and evolve — I doubt any name that is chosen now will remain with us forever. But if you are counting, the number of ALA-accredited degree programs which are issued by a school without the L word in its name has reached 18 out of 54, that’s one-third. Suddenly being an i-School has become quite normal.