The recent revocation of academic status for librarians in the Texas A & M system is an interesting case:
"Nearly 30 librarians at Texas A&M University have lost either tenured or tenure-track status after the administration opted to reorganize the system’s 10 libraries. Administrators had previously asked librarians to move to a new department to keep tenure or relinquish it.
In all, 24 librarians moved to other academic departments, thus maintaining tenure, while 53 converted to staff status. Of those 53 librarians, 19 waived tenure and another nine gave up their tenure-track status, according to The Houston Chronicle."...administrators say the reorganization was designed to streamline and simplify library operations and emphasize student needs over librarians’ research, according to The Houston Chronicle.
In my long career of teaching LIS I have seen the faculty teaching in accredited schools move further from LIS. we have interviewed candidates for faculty positions with PhDs in what were once library schools who have no interest in library practice, no engagement with libraries or no participation in national or state library associations. Try this. Go to the website of wherever you did your LIS degree and see how education for the LIS is presented--if you can even find it.
Until recently the Association of Library and Science Education met after ALA Midwinter and those of us in LIS Ed then attended MW. Now that ALISE has ended that practice and ALA has ended MW the opportunities for interaction have lessened.
I agree that the courses offered in LIS programs have little connection with the field. Most field-based courses are taught by extraordinarily excellent adjuncts or retired faculty from the era when faculty and the profession were connected more closely.
I will look up my school later today! I appreciate your feedback as I attended "library school" thirty years ago and haven't kept up with developments. I also had no idea there was an Association of Library Science Education.
Okay so I looked up my grad program at UT/Austin, where I received a Master's of Library and Information Science degree in 1992. I did not keep up with changes there, but according to Wikipedia, the name of the degree changed to Master of Science in Information Studies in 2000 and the name of the school was changed to School of Information in 2002. It seems that its primary focus is informatics now and I don't recognize anything in the curriculum other than "Materials for Children and Young Adults" and "Collection Management."
So this throws a whole new wrinkle into my argument. Perhaps we are not even teaching traditional library practices/ethics any more, in which case, why would the degree be needed to work as a librarian in a public or academic library? Good question.
In the coursework listed, I also see a "social justice" angle and depending on your definition of "informatics" that can also lean heavily toward "improving society." And I saw something about "misinformation." Nothing about intellectual freedom.
So I am getting the gist.
I will say we spent an entire day on how to purchase projectors in my "Developing Media Class," so there was a lot of fluff back then that could be learned on the job, but I still think some of the core classes were worthwhile and I hope still exist in some programs.
Given the current state of things, I guess if I had my druthers it would be to make traditional library studies-- collection development/ intellectual freedom, intro to reference (maybe more generically research now), intro to cataloging-- a "minor" to another graduate degree, which could be an MBA for people wanting to go into library administration, or an arts or sciences field for people wanting to be research librarians, or something more techie.
I think you make a good case. Few faculty connect now to the ALA. Even fewer to state library associations. I recently looked at a lot of resumes of new PhDs and noticed this. Once those of us in library education (a term hardly used now) were deeply connected to ALA. The last ALA president to come from LIS education was Lorienne Roy in 2007-2008.
I think that most have become iSchools with less emphasis on libraries. I would need to look at every school's curriculum, but the new PhDs who are educated at mainly the iSchools have far less focus on libraries these days. Data is the buzz.
I do think my piece should be followed up with a "part 2" on the content of LIS programs. I would be interested to know how many schools still have a more traditional "library science" focus. If nobody else wants to write it I will get back to it eventually.
"Unlike the fields of chemistry, economics, and medicine, that are broad in scope, yet have clear ties to the fundamental concerns of the field, library and information science does not elicit that kind of conceptual coherence."--https://www.librarysciencedegrees.org/programs/library-information-science
I liked the focus on GLS. I attended that School and I have worked on the Wikipedia article about its history. The connections of GLS to public librarianship was epic (as Joyce has written). We do not see this today.
As for DEI. It's been a long, long time that LIS has worked on DEI issues. In the 1980s I worked with Margaret Myers of ALA OLPR on a project called "Each One Reach One" for minority recruitment. The larger institutions are asking for more and more DEI commitment but in LIS with the ethnic affiliates (I'm a life member of REFORMA) and SPECTRUM there is a history of commitment.
That does not seem to have altered the overall demographics much. When I visited many HBCUs to recruit I was unsuccessful because of low salaries in the field. I did a small study of 2018 grads and found that Asian and Hispanic graduation rates have increased, but not Black graduates. [(Yoon, JungWon and McCook, Kathleen de la Peña. 2021. “Diversity of LIS School Students: Trends Over the Past 30 Years.” Journal of Education for Library & Information Science 62 (2): 109–18.]
It used to be that School websites were proud of ALA accreditation and noted this on their landing pages.. Often that fact is now buried on the websites of iSchools. ALISE (Association for Library and Information Science Education ) was long ago part of ALA then evolved to be its own organization. It is now less connected to ALA. https://www.alise.org/
ALA still oversees accreditation and serving on external panels helps us:
Personally, I like the idea of maintaining the master's degree level for those who want to work in archives, meta-data, catalog management, collection development, library management, etc., and have a bachelor's degree level for those who love to plan and implement programming and other activities at the branch level but have little interest in the more reference side of library work.
Important essay and I will respond more later today.
Looking forward to your thoughts!
You first, Kathleen. Joyce
The recent revocation of academic status for librarians in the Texas A & M system is an interesting case:
"Nearly 30 librarians at Texas A&M University have lost either tenured or tenure-track status after the administration opted to reorganize the system’s 10 libraries. Administrators had previously asked librarians to move to a new department to keep tenure or relinquish it.
In all, 24 librarians moved to other academic departments, thus maintaining tenure, while 53 converted to staff status. Of those 53 librarians, 19 waived tenure and another nine gave up their tenure-track status, according to The Houston Chronicle."...administrators say the reorganization was designed to streamline and simplify library operations and emphasize student needs over librarians’ research, according to The Houston Chronicle.
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2022/05/25/texas-am-librarians-lose-tenure-reorganization-plan
I don't know the inside details of this but it certainly throws open academic status in academic libraries.
Thanks, I had not heard about that.
In my long career of teaching LIS I have seen the faculty teaching in accredited schools move further from LIS. we have interviewed candidates for faculty positions with PhDs in what were once library schools who have no interest in library practice, no engagement with libraries or no participation in national or state library associations. Try this. Go to the website of wherever you did your LIS degree and see how education for the LIS is presented--if you can even find it.
Until recently the Association of Library and Science Education met after ALA Midwinter and those of us in LIS Ed then attended MW. Now that ALISE has ended that practice and ALA has ended MW the opportunities for interaction have lessened.
I agree that the courses offered in LIS programs have little connection with the field. Most field-based courses are taught by extraordinarily excellent adjuncts or retired faculty from the era when faculty and the profession were connected more closely.
I will look up my school later today! I appreciate your feedback as I attended "library school" thirty years ago and haven't kept up with developments. I also had no idea there was an Association of Library Science Education.
Okay so I looked up my grad program at UT/Austin, where I received a Master's of Library and Information Science degree in 1992. I did not keep up with changes there, but according to Wikipedia, the name of the degree changed to Master of Science in Information Studies in 2000 and the name of the school was changed to School of Information in 2002. It seems that its primary focus is informatics now and I don't recognize anything in the curriculum other than "Materials for Children and Young Adults" and "Collection Management."
So this throws a whole new wrinkle into my argument. Perhaps we are not even teaching traditional library practices/ethics any more, in which case, why would the degree be needed to work as a librarian in a public or academic library? Good question.
In the coursework listed, I also see a "social justice" angle and depending on your definition of "informatics" that can also lean heavily toward "improving society." And I saw something about "misinformation." Nothing about intellectual freedom.
So I am getting the gist.
I will say we spent an entire day on how to purchase projectors in my "Developing Media Class," so there was a lot of fluff back then that could be learned on the job, but I still think some of the core classes were worthwhile and I hope still exist in some programs.
Given the current state of things, I guess if I had my druthers it would be to make traditional library studies-- collection development/ intellectual freedom, intro to reference (maybe more generically research now), intro to cataloging-- a "minor" to another graduate degree, which could be an MBA for people wanting to go into library administration, or an arts or sciences field for people wanting to be research librarians, or something more techie.
I think you make a good case. Few faculty connect now to the ALA. Even fewer to state library associations. I recently looked at a lot of resumes of new PhDs and noticed this. Once those of us in library education (a term hardly used now) were deeply connected to ALA. The last ALA president to come from LIS education was Lorienne Roy in 2007-2008.
I would also be curious to know if all library schools have moved in this new direction.
I think that most have become iSchools with less emphasis on libraries. I would need to look at every school's curriculum, but the new PhDs who are educated at mainly the iSchools have far less focus on libraries these days. Data is the buzz.
And data doesn't always equate well with "privacy" either.
I do think my piece should be followed up with a "part 2" on the content of LIS programs. I would be interested to know how many schools still have a more traditional "library science" focus. If nobody else wants to write it I will get back to it eventually.
"Unlike the fields of chemistry, economics, and medicine, that are broad in scope, yet have clear ties to the fundamental concerns of the field, library and information science does not elicit that kind of conceptual coherence."--https://www.librarysciencedegrees.org/programs/library-information-science
This is a great idea. MPOW is undergoing accreditation review.
Here is a list of the accredited programs.
https://www.ala.org/educationcareers/accreditedprograms/directory
What does MPOW stand for?
ha ha "My Place of Work."
I liked the focus on GLS. I attended that School and I have worked on the Wikipedia article about its history. The connections of GLS to public librarianship was epic (as Joyce has written). We do not see this today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Chicago_Graduate_Library_School
As for DEI. It's been a long, long time that LIS has worked on DEI issues. In the 1980s I worked with Margaret Myers of ALA OLPR on a project called "Each One Reach One" for minority recruitment. The larger institutions are asking for more and more DEI commitment but in LIS with the ethnic affiliates (I'm a life member of REFORMA) and SPECTRUM there is a history of commitment.
That does not seem to have altered the overall demographics much. When I visited many HBCUs to recruit I was unsuccessful because of low salaries in the field. I did a small study of 2018 grads and found that Asian and Hispanic graduation rates have increased, but not Black graduates. [(Yoon, JungWon and McCook, Kathleen de la Peña. 2021. “Diversity of LIS School Students: Trends Over the Past 30 Years.” Journal of Education for Library & Information Science 62 (2): 109–18.]
It used to be that School websites were proud of ALA accreditation and noted this on their landing pages.. Often that fact is now buried on the websites of iSchools. ALISE (Association for Library and Information Science Education ) was long ago part of ALA then evolved to be its own organization. It is now less connected to ALA. https://www.alise.org/
ALA still oversees accreditation and serving on external panels helps us:
https://www.ala.org/educationcareers/accreditedprograms/resourcesforerp
It sounds like the topic of changes in LIS education could be its own Substack post!
Personally, I like the idea of maintaining the master's degree level for those who want to work in archives, meta-data, catalog management, collection development, library management, etc., and have a bachelor's degree level for those who love to plan and implement programming and other activities at the branch level but have little interest in the more reference side of library work.
I had no idea that the long-anticipated librarian shortage had begun, but in light of that, I think it is an even better idea.