More accreditation please?

ASIST and CLIR have organized a meeting this week to discuss possible new accreditation processes for graduate education in information. So, you might ask who, among the programs, would really want another accreditation process? Correct, nobody. But, there can be value in examining the process if it allows us to engage constructively and widely with those who seem to want to change the existing COA/ALA standards. Yes, an ex-president of ALA has taken charge of committee to do just that and, naturally, ignored all representation from the iSchools, to the point, as I’ve noted before, of ignoring the inputs of a more recent ALA president who happens to be a senior faculty member in such a school and might be thought to have valuable perspective here. There’s nothing quite like digging a hole in the ground and sticking your head in it for creating the impression that you care. No doubt there will be much feather-ruffling, name-calling and L-word/I-word barracking on a few lists and editorial pages in the months ahead. Pretty much business as usual then.