Category: Education of Info Professionals

Check out InfoSpeak, a podcast program from students at UW’s iSchool: http://www.infospeak.org/shows/show3/index.htm. You can listen to former dean and all round library-enthusiast Mike Eisenberg tell it like it is! As he says in the interview, it’s not an L world or an I world, it’s about people! The whole production is very high quality and a welcome addition to the world of information studies. If you are a radio fan like me, there is a real pleasure to be found in listening to interviews rather than just reading the words – in this case you need to hear Mike talk to feel his passion.

US News and World Reports issues its latest graduate school rankings which this year included LIS programs for only the second time. As always, those who do poorly dismiss the exercise but those who do well feel a little differently 🙂 The ranking is hardly scientific but it does indicate pretty accurately how the deans and senior staff at the various programs view each other (and we know that none of these people would ever try to grade their rivals inappropriately). For the record, Texas did well, moving up to #7 overall from #10 in the last ranking, and scoring notable sub-area rankings of #1 in Archives & Preservation, #3 in Legal Librarianship, and #11 in both Digital Libraries and in Information Systems, both of which are new concentrations for us. Here’s the listing of schools, with ranked score from 1-5 (5 being Outstanding):

1. University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign 4.5
University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill 4.5
3. Syracuse University (NY) 4.3
4. University of Washington 4.2
5. University of Michigan–Ann Arbor 4.0
6. Rutgers State University–New Brunswick (NJ) 3.9
7. Indiana University–Bloomington 3.8
University of Pittsburgh 3.8
University of Texas–Austin 3.8
10. Florida State University 3.7
11. Drexel University (PA) 3.6
University of Wisconsin–Madison 3.6
13. Simmons College (MA) 3.5
University of California–Los Angeles 3.5
University of Maryland–College Park 3.5
16. University of North Texas 3.0
University of Tennessee–Knoxville 3.0
18. Wayne State University (MI) 2.9
19. Kent State University (OH) 2.8
University at Buffalo–SUNY 2.8
University of South Carolina–Columbia 2.8
University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee 2.8
23. SUNY–Albany 2.7
24. Catholic University of America (DC) 2.6
Louisiana State University–Baton Rouge 2.6
University of Kentucky 2.6
University of Missouri–Columbia 2.6
University of Oklahoma 2.6
University of South Florida 2.6
30. San Jose State University (CA) 2.5
University of Alabama–Tuscaloosa 2.5
University of Hawaii–Manoa 2.5

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.

Just when you thought that nobody used libraries anymore because they were too busy with Google, the ALA announced its latest survey on public library use (www.ala.org/ala/ors/reports/2006KRCReport.pdf). The data are intriguing:

135 million adult Americans visited the library last year.
2/3 of the US adult population has a library card
7/10 users are highly satisfied with the service they received
6/10 people use the internet or computer when visiting the library
9/10 believe the library has a future in the digital age

All positive stuff but the report does contain the actual questions used and one might be forgiven for finding them a little leading. Clearly, the most common purpose for ever going to a library is ‘educational’ (32%), which reminds me of those studies on what people watched on TV which showed that we all watched PBS documentaries, all night! Everyone loves the fact that the library is ‘free’ but there are some oddities: 81% people who visit the library go to check out books but only 38% take out videos or DVDs. Amazingly, more than half of library users go there to consult with librarians, which is pretty surprising to us in Texas since many public libraries don’t even have a qualified librarian on staff (let’s not get into the Cuban variant on that please). Reading the questions as asked one gets the feeling that this survey would have benefited from a few alternative wordings to avoid the halo agreement effects that might be at work here.

I must really go to an odd branch because when I visit, the computer terminals are full, the stacks are empty and I hardly ever meet any members of the adult population whom I know. Luckily, more than half of those asked believed funding for public libraries should be increased from its paltry levels (about $25 per year per person in local tax support) to more than $40, which would make a difference. Though not mentioned in this report – the majority of public libraries in this country have an annual budget of less than $50 000 – not much scope for staff, collections and new DVD’s there (no wonder so few people take them out). Wouldn’t you think this service was good under the circumstances? I think it is close to miraculous. For a look at the ‘return on investment’ provided by public libraries see: http://www.oclc.org/roi/ or for a good overview of some of the financial issues libraries face, try the OCLC Environmental Scan, especially the economics section at: http://www.oclc.org/membership/escan/economic/

In sum, libraries are a national treasure but they are being left to decay by a lack of vision, a lack of investment and a lack of leadership. It will take more than a one-sided survey to change this but it’s clear that most people still care. Turning that goodwill into action is something we might expect from the ALA, just don’t go to their website looking for answers.

With all the talk of Yahoo filtering information access, tyou might miss a European story involving holocuast denial. David Irving, a British “historian” most famous for his claims that the holocaust did not happen, has been jailed in Austria for saying as much in a speech. He subsequently claims to have changed his mind on the basis of reviewing new information but that was too late for the court. Oddly, the comments he made were in a speech years ago, and his defense is partly based on his claim that ‘history is a growing tree’ and he now knows more than he did at the time of his comments. You can find an account of this here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4733820.stm but this will not give you the full picture. Irving’s work has been dissected by notable historians who have tended to view his scholarship as dubious (to put it mildly), and his attempt to sue others who have criticized him failed miserably in a British court a few years back. Disturbingly, the report above mentions that Irving receives 300 fan mails a week for his views, which I suppose would encourage anyone to keep talking. But this leaves us with some interesting dilemmas. Just where does freedom of expression end? And if countering an extremist view takes painstaking research, how can the information needed to gain a balanced view be more easily accessed? I suspect there will always be people who chose to hold an opinion no matter what the evidence but this story suggests that emotion drives people far more than rationality and I wonder just where we find room for that in discussions of information, reliability, and the record of human knowledge.

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……