Author: Andrew Dillon

There have been many comments about the state of LIS education but most have, in my view, centered on the wrong issues. The need is not to revamp curricular offerings to ensure there is a course on cataloging taught to everyone (it’s actually already there in most programs), or to cast the world into the stereotypical division of of people-centric libraries versus technology, but to work harder on quality control throughout the LIS education world. You can download a PDF of a paper April Norris and I wrote on this for the Journal of Education in Library and Information Science if you care to read more by clicking here: Crying Wolf

There is some confusion about job titles that always comes up around information professionals (see!). Not content with being librarians or information scientists (well, you know what they say about any discipline that has ‘science’ in its name), people have reached further to become information architects, knowledge engineers, intelligence analysts, user experience designers, etc. Trouble is, these are all a bit clunky and liable to take the conversation down a path you would rather not follow. In an attempt to get us back to single word labels, the term ‘informationist’ has gained some currency. I have a difficult time swallowing this one but if it floats your boat….

Oddly, the push to one word is being confused by the co-occurence of this term in some places with Information Specialist in Context, shortened to ISIC. That an acronym which can only be pronounced “I sick” is being advocated by, of all groups, the Medical Library Association should have you checking the date — no it’s not April 1st — and it can only be a strategy to force you into accepting ‘Informationist’ as a better option. Why is life so complicated? See more at: http://www.mlanet.org/research/informationist

The ALISE conference in San Antonio this month was a distinct improvement over previous years on all levels. Not only did almost all the deans and directors from ALA accredited programs turn up for their session, but the level of enthusiasm about place was high. This is the hiring conference for LIS programs so interviewing was the order of the day for most schools and the informality of the event makes for great observation. If you want to make your ambitions public, this is the place.

I ended the trip with a session at the ALA Mid-Winter event listening to various views on what ails LIS education. The session was a little disorganized so it is not entirely fair to judge it by the 3 hours I spent in the room but it really was surprising to hear so many misinformed statements from professionals. Schools were accused of not teaching research, not offering practicum and internship opportunities, not teaching cataloging, etc. with the arguments bolstered by incorrect data and ‘evidence’ located by several speakers (and admitted without any hint of irony) from a quick search on Google! We were even told that we should make sure that our graduates could write! Next challenge for LIS schools? World hunger, surely……