The May 2006 President’s Message in American Libraries, entitled “More on Library Education” presents further thoughts from Michael Gorman on the apparent crisis in library education. He doesn’t mention any names in particular but he argues that the claim made by some (myself included) that there is an agreed core curriculum delivered by most ALA-accredited programs is not supported by the data. At least, I think that is what he says. He then turns this around and argues that if it were true, what is the problem with having ALA ‘enforce its accredidation standards and insist that the programs they accredit both teach and do research in a prescribed set of subjects’.
Surely I am not the only one who sees a slight problem here, am I? Please tell me an external professional society, one committed to open access to information and the free exchange of ideas, would never chose to dictate what is and what is not acceptable research to the academic community. Maybe it’s just the tone and the language, but when words like ‘insist’ and ‘enforce’ are used, it hardly encourages open discussion between the various parties.
Of course this also leaves aside the rather thorny problem of where the lines are drawn. Just what is ‘research in a prescribed set of subjects’, to use his words? At what point is work on reading, comprehension, management, design, evaluation, categorization etc. relevent to and part of LIS and when is it not? I really would hate to have to draw such boundaries, but I would hate more for those with no direct connection to the culture of universities to attempt it on our behalf. Good research is often so because of the implications and lessons others can draw from it. To that end, for a field like LIS there is really no fixed boundary outside of which research is irrelevant since even the most obscure work can provide theoretical or conceptual insights to the right faculty. But I digress……the real issue is who gets to define a faculty member’s and a field’s research agenda? It’s clear that some outside of academia feel that this is their right and they are not shy about saying so. Accreditation as cookie-cutter? Enforced standardization of research and teaching agenda? Welcome to the brave new world of library education.
Research, I tend to agree. Ph.D training, I tend to agree. Teaching in a professional program? I’m afraid I do think relevant professional societies ought to have an input there. The alternative is “professionals” who are unemployable, and we’re uncomfortably close to that already.
I’m no G-rm-n fan, heaven knows. But I’m no fan of research-driven teaching in a nominally professional program, either; I suffered under enough of it in library school!
Thanks Dorothea –there’s input and there’s input…experience suggests that some professionals view the word as synonymous with ‘control’. And unemployable grads??? Maybe there are some but I wonder if ‘research-driven’ teaching is the cause of these or if the programs that produce them have a little quality control problem of their own.