We now turn to a new topic and wish to welcome Anna Noakes as our next CRISTAL-ED discussion leader for "Business Connections" as it relates to the ILS curriculum. She is a second-year master's student at the University of Michigan's School of Information. Since September 1994, she has been involved in a Department of Education sponsored research project concerned with providing intellectual access to online image collections. Her current interests include digital imaging, SGML structured documents, access to networked information, as well as nontraditional and emerging applications of ILS technologies, methods and expertise.
Anna raises several interesting questions that I am sure will provide for a stimulating discussion over the next two weeks.
It is now more apparent than ever that the ILS profession has a mandate to organize, manage and provide access to information in any environment where such information needs exist. However, as a profession we have been slow to move beyond the traditional domains that form our "comfort zone." My great concern is that unless decisive steps are taken now to embrace ILS applications in non-traditional or emerging domains, a wealth of opportunities will be lost to the profession.
One of the non-traditional domains of particular interest to me is that of business information systems and management. The ILS profession has enjoyed a long partnership with the business community through corporate libraries, business reference and document delivery. At present, there is enormous potential for ILS professionals to become involved in business information management at all levels of private enterprise -- as many ILS alums are already aware. However, very few of the top ILS schools in the United States are presently committed to exploring business information needs, which I consider to be a gross oversight.
For the next two weeks, I would like to invite you to share your views, questions and concerns about this topic, and to consider these and other questions:
Therefore, every LIS school or faculty has the duty to review and reshape its curriculum, preferably in its own way; this is a steady task. Every LIS school or faculty will have to break, at least partially, with its traditions, accept new values, develop own concepts and strengths.
In doing so, LIS schools and faculties compete among themselves in presenting different curricula; this gives the future students a choice.
By the way, communication engineering was introduced to library school programs as early as 1983-84. Of course, University of Pittsburgh has a separate Department of Information Science which introduced a degree in telecommunication about the same time.
I'd like to suggest that we leave aside the issue what schools choose to call themselves and focus on the heart of this topic which is forging business connections. I hope you'll share in my enthusiasm for these and other related questions.
I was recently at a project managers meeting for the Electronic Library Programme (eLib) which is attempting to change the culture in UK higher education regarding libraries and information service provision. Sixty individual projects involving 100 universities in Great Britain are developing subject gateways, training programmes, electronic journals, etc., and are trying to work as a whole to maximize the impact of the eLib programme. See URL for details.
A session at the workshop involved a culture change discussion. One participant pointed out that the changes that are required effect groups in differing ways. For most groups the changes do not include a change in values, but for librarians this is not true. There is a fundamental value change required and this may be why they have greater resistance to change than the groups forming end users of the information.
I thought that rang true.
Plans are well under way for the 1997 ALISE conference. This conference will be a venue for discussing current research and approaches to creating curricula for the increasingly wide range of information professionals. ALISE '97 will provide a venue for discussing how to prepare the new information professional.
Within this framework, I am pleased to announce a CALL FOR PAPERS for "ALISE '97: Reinventing the Information Professional," the annual conference of the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) to be held Feb. 12-14, 1997 in Washington, D.C.
The announcement BELOW is also available (with in a much more attractive format) on the WWW at the ALISE home page.
Thanks! We look forward to receiving first your abstracts and then your papers. See deadlines below.
Call For Papers -- ALISE 1997
Reinventing the Information Profession
Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE)
February 12-14, 1997
Washington, D.C.
The Association for Library and Information Science Education invites submissions for its 1997 annual meeting, on the theme of reinventing the information profession. The conference will examine the challenges associated with developing the knowledge, skills, and approaches needed to prepare a new generation of information professionals. The emerging information professional will play an increasingly vital role in empowering individuals, communities, and organizations to capture the promise of the information age. Put very broadly, the task for the future is to draw on the strengths of library and information science education, to forge new interdisciplinary links, define new services and incorporate relevant new knowledge that results from the merging of related fields. To quote from the aims of the Kellogg Foundation Human Resources for Information Systems Management Program, this involves increasing: "the ability of professional staff and public institutions to meet the human service demands expressed at the community level related to increased information, an expanding knowledge base, and new communication systems."
Papers should address one of the following themes:
1996 Deadlines:
As a result of this call for papers there will be various ways in which publication may result:
Instructions for Submitting Papers and Hypermedia Presentations
Papers must not have been previously presented or published, nor currently submitted for journal publication. Each manuscript will be subjected to a refereeing process involving at least four reviewers. Manuscripts should have a title page that includes the title of the paper, full name(s) of author(s), affiliation(s), complete postal and electronic mail address(es), telephone and FAX numbers, and a 500-word abstract of the paper; presentations should open with a screen conveying this information.
Submit your 500-word abstract of paper or presentation and then four copies of the paper and disk copy or URL of the presentation to the address below. Abstract submissions can be made in email form.
Geoffrey C. Bowker
Graduate School of Library and Information Science
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
501 E. Daniel
Champaign, IL 61820-6212
Fax: (217) 244-3302
 Home |
 Discussion |