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LIS Faculty Research and Expectations of the Academic Culture versus the Needs of the Practitioner

O'Connor, Daniel and Mulvaney, John Philip (1996) LIS Faculty Research and Expectations of the Academic Culture versus the Needs of the Practitioner. Journal of Education for Library and Information Science 37(4):pp. 306-316.

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Abstract

Library and information studies (LIS) education may be misreading the academic community's expectations. A program's viability may hinge on a counterintuitive premise, where the academic culture allows each discipline to create its own criteria for its own evaluation. LIS programs may have unwittingly assumed that adopting the scientific mode might gain them currency in the academic realm; yet there is little evidence that LIS programs had the prerequisite infrastructure to compete with a science discipline in terms of sustained funded research, teaching assistant and postdoctoral assistant services, laboratory equipment, and other resources. There is an irony that many LIS students and faculty do not come from the scientific disciplines, and this further inhibits their ability to compete in that arena. LIS program and faculty evaluators have used criteria from the sciences to measure LIS progress and to determine an individual's suitability for promotion. We contend that this application of inappropriate criteria has done unnecessary harm to LIS and the individuals in it. An examination of selected COA self-study responses and other sources indicates that LIS may misread the academic culture because LIS does not appear to be central to university governance. Finally, the waning of LIS's affiliation with libraries may do LIS irreparable harm. LIS's focus may need to be recentered on educating librarians.

EPrint Type:Journal Article (Paginated)
Keywords:Educator Communication Academic world
Subjects:Library and Information Science Education
ID Code:777
Deposited On:07 April 2005
Eprint Statistics:View statistics for this eprint
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1. C. P. Snow, The Two Cultures: And a Second Look: An Expanded Version of the Two Cultures and the Scientific Revo-lution (London: Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1965), 4.

2. Susan K. Martin, "Achieving the Vision: Rethinking Librarianship," Journal of Li-brary Administration 19 (1993): 216-17.

3. "Dean's List: 10 School Heads Debate the Future of Library Education," Library Journal 119 (1994): 62.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. Tefko Saracevic, "Closing of Library Schools in North America: What Role Accreditation?" Libri 44 (1994): 190-200.

7. Charles R. McClure and Carol A. Hert, "Specialization in Library/Information Science Education: Issues, Scenarios, and the Need for Action" (paper prepared for the Conference on Specialization in Library/Information Science Education, Ann Arbor, Mich., Nov. 1991), 9.

8. Roma M. Harris, Librarianship: The Erosion of a Woman's Profession (Norwood, N.J.: Ablex, 1992).

9. Herbert S. White, "Library Research and Government Funding—A Less than Ardent Romance," Publishing Research Quarterly 10 (Winter 1994/95): 30-37.

10. Margaret F. Stieg, Change and Challenge in Library and Information Science Education (Chicago: ALA, 1992), 9.

11. Jane Anne Hannigan, "A Feminist Standpoint for Library and Information Science Education," Journal of Education for Library and Information Science 35 (Fall 1994): 297-319.

12. McClure and Hert, "Specialization in Library/Information Science Education," 6.

13. Marion Paris, Library School Closings: Four Case Studies (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1988), 132.

14. Stieg, Change and Challenge, 66-67.

15. Hanna Ashar and Jonathan Z. Shapiro, "Measuring Centrality: A Note on Hackman's Resource-Allocation Theory," Administrative Science Quarterly 33 (1988): 275-83.

16. McClure and Hert, "Specialization in Library/Information Science Education," 1.

17. For further discussion, see Sheila Slaughter, "Retrenchment in the 1980s: The Politics of Prestige and Gender," Journal of Higher Education 64 (1993): 250-82.

18. Paris, Library School Closings.

19. Similar comments have appeared in print. Cf. Patricia Battin, "Developing University and Research Library Professionals: A Director's Perspective," American Libraries 14 (1983): 22-25:

Perhaps we have come to believe in our own publicity and have internalized the low esteem accorded by our society. It seems to me the fact of our poor public image has led us to set our sights much too low in defining our professional responsibilities and expectations, in accepting recruits into the profession, and in governing our judgment of adequate standards for graduation from our professional education programs (p. 22).

For those of us in universities which host both a library school and a research library, we can make a concerted, cooperative attempt to enlist the aid and support of our administrations in subsidizing the inevitable initial decline in enrollments during a transition period to higher standards and strengthened academic requirements (p. 24).

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