Discussion from Topic 3
Candy Schwartz
Simmons College
CSCHWARTZ@VMSVAX.SIMMONS.EDU
New Topic: Identifying Components of a Core Curriculum for ILS Programs
Anyone on this list who is an educator in this field has probably
gone through the curriculum revision process, which always
includes examination of the core. This is especially true as
accreditation times approach. However, in my own private musings,
I approach it from a different point of view. I play the "now
that I know what I needed, what do I wish I had had in school"
game in my head. It is a Pygmalion-like conceit: If you gave me a
bright student with no background, what basics would I give that
person to outfit them for their future as an information
professional (apart from a second human language)? Of course, no
one part of any core curriculum should be viewed in isolation,
and there are problems in separating parts out into courses. For
instance, you can't really talk intelligently about retrieval
without knowing something about organization, and you can't talk
intelligently about organization without knowing something about
retrieval, and you can't really address either properly without
knowing something about users. It's a chicken-and-egg conundrum,
but we find ways to cope. Anyway, my answer usually goes
something like what you see below. It is not terribly radical,
but by and large I don't think we have all done such a terrible
job over the past century. It is not necessarily separate
courses, nor in any particular order, nor framed the way I would
for a formal presentation. I think of it as areas of knowledge
and competency sine qua non (and I have probably left something
out).
- Organization. This includes intellectual and algorithmic approaches to (primarily but not only) subject access to print, audiovisual, and electronic media, and an introduction to database management. It also looks at aspects of organization in different settings (i.e., libraries, archives, IRM, museums, etc.)
- Retrieval. This includes resource location and searching (for manual and machine-readable including networked resources). This might precede everything else and be used in everything else. It might also include elements of what we used to call collection development, but in the networked environment (URL development?).
- Technology. This gives experience across a wide variety of platforms, micro and larger, standalone and networked. The person who knows this has learned how to solve problems. S/he can bring up your gopher, create your home page, talk intelligently to your MIS staff, help design your multimedia presentation, resolve your IRQ problems, and generally walks on cyberwater.
- Users. This is your basic "people" stuff. It includes human cognition, user behavior, human computer interaction, human interaction, and so on. It includes a healthy amount of looking at the needs of different and diverse user populations.
- Management, for want of a better word. This helps the student understand how organizations work and helps develop political and leadership skills, interpersonal communication skills, as well as practical personnel management stuff. It also includes a dose of systems analysis and similar problem-solving activities, and information policy.
- Foundations. This is the history of the professions stuff. The names, movements, and philosophies of which no information professional should be ignorant. It also introduces current professional organizations, trends, and so on, and it exposes the student to the variety of career opportunities in the workplace.
- Research. This would depend on how much the incoming student already knew about qualitative and quantitative research. At the least the future information professional should be able to read and understand the applicability of the research literature.
This is my core (despite the fact that it looks like a whole
curriculum). It assumes a range of electives allowing for
specialization and for further development of topics raised in
the core. I would like to teach 1) and 2) above (and I do in
parts), and I would love to take 3).
Charles Curran
N400019@UNIVSCVM.CSD.SCAROLINA.EDU
Here is an answer to the dean's "Is there a core . . .?" question.
Yes.
"Yes" is the correct answer because "No" is the incorrect answer.
What becomes core, however, is and will be the result of a politicopedalogical compromise crafted in the context of environments specific to the LIS programs wherein the compromises are crafted.
Ralph Blasingame once said, after hearing a dean wax hopeful about a new curriculum and an innovative LIS education experiment, "Tell me your faculty, and I'll tell you your curriculum."
Blasingame's comment was not a testimony in praise of rigidity, it was an
acknowledgement of a certain reality. Faculty craft the curricula in which
they believe and they teach the way they want to teach. That's why LIS
schools should employ good faculty who can spot trends, adjust courses, and
teach well.
Yes, it is possible to identify the core concepts LIS workers may need to know,
but those core concepts may differ from locale to locale, and a core crafted
today will need adjustment tomorrow. And professors will have to agree to
something, which may be the biggest challenge.
If there is a core, it is probably substantially different from what you and I
may now think. But the fact is: The core is what we say it is. Let's hope we
get it right. For now. And for tomorrow, too.
Tom Abeles
chaos02@tmn.com
As a chemist with background in anthro, small biz, finance and others, I
am an ex-academic in the private sector. I can offer the following points
- Think of the occupation as a verb and not a noun. It is dynamic and not static. The curriculum which might be offered this minute may be different the next semester. One has to totally rethink what a person's skills are because the job which one will do is also dynamic. Therefore, job descriptions and great catalog descriptions in university publications are old stuff. One has to adopt a totally differing mind set.
Myths often outlive the facts and the definitional era for jobs is one of the facts left over.
- The information technology is evolving rapidly. Xerox PARC has a new "browser" in the works which will integrate Mosaic like systems with conferencing, searching and other integrative technologies. A small
community in Minnesota -- under 500 -- has each home completely wired with multiport services. So, as Carlos Fuentes has said, "Remember the future is the past."
- There is a company here in Minnesota, works internationally, which conducts informational searches, interactively, with persons in remote locations. They not only search for data but experts, equipment and you name it.
My children in K-12 have access to full T-1 and Web services in their
school and access these from their home to do homework assignments.
The key here is to provide the most important technology yet not put into
an electronic box the human biocomputer. We are back to the era of the generalists and that is difficult for experts to understand.
For example to say that I am a librarian or an information librarian by
way of explaining to a potential employer your capabilities tells them
absolutely nothing about what you can do for an organization. Several
corporations, in fact have said to a biz school: Forget the certification,
we will do that on the job
So to define a curriculum and a certification program for a librarian and
for that individual to take that catalog description and put it on the
table and expect that to be meaningful is as senseless as trying to build a
static job description.
This entire arena needs to be rethought.
(with apologies to Rcardo Aronjas' song, Jesu verbo, no es sustantivo)
Gordon Conable
gconable@monroe.lib.mi.us>
> In winter 1993, our dean gave the following charge to a task force of
> faculty in the School of Information and Library Studies at the University
> of Michigan: "Is there a core of concepts, theory, skills, knowledge,
> experience, which provides the basis for a broader array of
> future-oriented professional practice in information systems and services,
> including but not limited to current forms of libraries?"
I have been waiting in vain for any mention of INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM to
surface in this symposium, but intellectual freedom principles, which are
certainly not technology bound or limited to current forms of libraries,
surely lie at the core of librarians' professionalism. These principles
are much broader in their cope and implications than *merely* defending
individual expressive works from censorship, and the inform librarians'
approaches to a whole range of other issues including access rights,
copyright and intellectual property rights, preservation, the integrity
of intellectual property, the application of the First Amendment in
electronic technology -- particularly that which is privately controlled, etc., etc.
Kevin Cox
City University of Hong Kong
cscoxk@cityu.edu.hk
This is addressing the question of what should be in a "librarians course."
Like so much in education it seems to me to be the wrong question. It is not
a question of what knowledge should be in a librarians course. The question
is what should our librarian be able to do when they have finished their
course. This has been discussed previously and if you look at the lists of
things to know you will just gaze and wonder. Personally I don't think all
these things are necessary. If they are necessary then they may only be
necessary for a few librarians at some specific time in order to do a once
in a lifetime task.
As I understand it the initiators of this discussion are trying to figure
out how to structure and what to put into their courses for information
systems professionals. It seems that again they are asking the wrong
question. Perhaps the question they should ask is -- what and how can we
provide information to professional librarians who are working to better
help them do their jobs. Most people in the profession have gaps in their
knowledge particularly as the things they need to know have changed
significantly from the days of their training.
It is my belief (backed by some pretty damning evidence) that most academic
institutions who try to teach do not do a very good job at having students
learn. Learning takes place when people do things and learning is
contextualized. The best way is still the master/apprenticeship model. Now
we know we can't do that but what we can do is simulate it. I would suggest
that the developers of the course think along these lines.
- What do professional librarians now do?
- What do many of these practicing professional librarians want and need to know now? (i.e. What "bundles" of training or instruction would help them today?)
- How could I give this training or instruction to them from my institute via the internet? Now buy or create bundles that fit this form of delivery or can be put on a CD-ROM.
- Now offer this training or instruction to librarians throughout the world- for a fee -- and perhaps give them credit towards another award when they complete the "bundle."
- Take the most successful and useful bundles, put them together with an environment for your students which simulates many possible environments in which librarians might find themselves (problem based learning) and get your students to solve problems by not only learning what they need to know but also learning how to find it.
Doing this you do not have to agonise over what to put in your curriculum.
You have discovered what was useful to professional information workers (and made yourselves a mint of money in the process). You have an automatic
mechanism for updating and revising your course curriculum. Your students
will love your courses and your graduates will be immediately employable
(and will keep coming back to you for more "bundles").
Note that many of the bundles you use will be useful to most of the
information workers in the world and this is a growing number. If any
librarian school is troubled for funds perhaps this might be one way to help
obtain funds.
Note also that the model will fit most professions.
If you (or someone else) decides to do it then let me know as I would like
to participate as a "bundle" maker or as a "bundle user."
Tony Barry
Centre for Networked Information and Publishing
Centre for Networked Access to Scholarly Information
Australian National University Library
Canberra ACT 0200, Australia
Telephone +61 6 249 4632 Fax +61 6 279 8120
tony@info.anu.edu.au
Karen.Drabenstott@sils.umich.edu wrote:
>It is February 16 and time to turn to our third major topic of discussion
>- -- identifying the core curriculum for a new academic program that will
>produce the leaders to create, organize, manage, and apply new forms of
>libraries and information resources.
>How would you reply to such a charge?
Without even trying to make a complete list and avoiding traditional areas
but just giving an observation on what I have found lacking in Library
graduates (and myself):
- Fundamentals of theoretical statistics in particular parametric and no
- n-parametric tests.
- Elementary operations research techniques which so often model library processes reasonably well.
- Document formatting languages. Some knowledge of SGML, Tex, Latex and detailed knowledge of HTML.
- Structure of databases, SQL
- Familiarity at user level with Windows and Mac environments and a smattering of Unix - command level and X-Windows.
- Basics of typography
- Familiarity with the basic internet publishing tools and protocols on
- Windows and Mac - ftp, gopher, z39.50 and most of all WWW and those things that back them up like MIME.
- Knowledge of basic graphics formats and the tools to transform from one to another.
- The results of the last 20 years research into recall/precision testing of automatic indexing and it's comparison with manual indexing.
- The major full text indexing products and their limitations.
- Alternative sources of supply for bibliographical data services (NOT cataloguing services!) and document supply.
Valerie Florance, Ph.D.
Director, Edward G. Miner Library
University of Rochester Medical Center
601 Elmwood Avenue
Rochester, NY 14642
(716)275-3364 fax (716) 275-4799
vf@medinfo.rochester.edu
Core Curriculum
I like Candy Schwartz's outline of the curriculum core. From a practice
point of view (i.e., as a library director looking for people to hire),
there are at least two additional 'pieces' I would propose. One is the
ability to design and deliver instruction. Whether in individual
one-on-one sessions in person or across the network, or in classrooms,
there is a continuing aspect of our work that involves educating others.
Recognizing this and preparing students to do it, rather than hoping that
they'll remember the best of what they've experienced, is a worthwhile
exercise. The other is the ability to design and execute applied research.
You can call this 'evaluation' or 'applied research' or "management by
information", but it is an important part of program development and
management and of professional practice. Candy's "research" section
suggests that students be good connoisseurs of research, but I think they
should be artful practitioners, too.
Drew Racine
General Libraries, PO Box P
University of Texas
Austin, TX 78713-8916
(512) 495-4350
(512) 495-4347 (Fax)
D.Racine@mail.utexas.edu
Core Curriculum
Obviously this is a difficult question to answer. My answer would be sort
of roundabout.Drew Racine
Library Schools (this is merely a shorthand term given the range of names
some of these schools or departments have) exist on campuses. On these
campuses, there are faculty who are experts in many areas of study that
are necessary for making libraries work (again, "libraries" is shorthand
for the multitude of institutional, corporate, entrepreneurial, etc. sites
where librarians work. I guess "librarians" is also shorthand for
information workers whatever they will be called tomorrow): library
science, information science, education, economics, business, public
administration, computer science, telecommunications, marketing, law, and
many others. While librarians have learned these subjects in library
schools, the professors who taught these courses were not always experts
in these areas (though some were and are, of course). It seems to me that
a MLS degree program (again, shorthand) should be designed using the
entire college catalog, not just the library school portion. The faculty
advisor, the dean (???), and the student should be able to design a
program for the future the student wishes to map. Library school students
should take courses from whatever schools, colleges, or departments that
offer relevant courses, and students from these other schools, college,
and departments should take courses from the library school when relevant
to their programs. Faculty in library schools need to know faculty in
other departments with similar research interests so the
non-library-school faculty can direct their students to library school
courses, and vice versa.
The obvious question here is what about students who don't have a
specialty in mind at the beginning of library school. I don't know. I
don't really believe that a generalist program is very effectual in these
times in a library of any size. Plus you really have a problem designing
a curriculum. Either the student must take one specialty track or
another, or some schools could have a generalist program aimed probably at
the school library or small public library career.
Which still leaves the question: "Is there an identifiable core of library
science courses" at the heart of every library school student's program?"
I think the answer is a qualified no. "No" because there is no single
core. (That said, I have identified a small core below.) Qualified
because there are perhaps several cores depending on the area of
librarianship (more shorthand) in which the student is interested. Each
school may identify 3-4 cores depending on the specialty involved.
For a person interested in cataloging, core courses should teach different
methods for dividing knowledge (theoretical and practical), research
behavior, indexing schemes (this includes Ranganathan and LC, but also
WAIS, and World Wide Web), electronic information retrieval methodology,
and similar courses so the graduate will have a deep understanding of the
purposes for and methods of organizing knowledge and providing access to
knowledge. This graduate will also understand how these mechanical ideas
relate to the research behavior of real researchers. This, it seems to
me, is a better background than a cataloging course that teaches the Dewey
Decimal Classification system and LC subject headings.
For a person interested in legal librarianship, the core might be
completely different. For a someone who truly wants to be a children's
librarian, there is still a core, but it is different. A systems
librarian will have a different core. For a subject specialist in
business, a dual MLS-MBA degree might be the best way, and there may be
two cores, one in the business school and one in the library school.
But are there certain courses that every library school student should have
in common in addition to a specialist core? Here are my suggestions.
- I would like to see an "introduction to the profession" course that outlines the different kinds of work that librarians can do, that identifies specialties that one should develop to work in these areas, that talks about the different kinds of working conditions (e.g., tenure for many academic librarians; certification for school librarians, etc.), that requires each student to set up a sort of blueprint for lifelong learning, that teaches the student the "tricks" to getting ahead (e.g., join New Members Round Table in ALA and be active to develop contacts), that requires all students to have a practicum helping undergraduates at a reference desk (either paid or volunteer), and that teaches some basic library history. (One full course with additional credit for the practicum.)
- I would like to see a course that all students must take that covers production, preservation, regulation, and uses of knowledge: the scholarly information system, the publishing world, the rare book world, the economics of information, copyright, licenses, federal information policy (or lack thereof), freedom of information, universal access, censorship, basic preservation of knowledge, and other such matters. (Another very full course.) [After these two courses, students should have a basic foundation in matters that people expect librarians to know something about. I got out of library school and knew nothing about publishing, information policy, rare books, copyright, etc. I was a great cataloger and I knew a good deal more about automation than most of the librarians in the place I first worked, but I missed this basic grounding. In interacting with non-librarians during my career, I have found that most believe that all librarians should know something about publishing, the book trade, copyright, etc. And I think we should.]
- All librarians should have knowledge of how computers work, how telecommunications work, what happens at the interface of users, information and computers, how software (especially database software) works with information, how the Internet works, what standards there are for computers and information (I guess I mean electronic as opposed to paper), pros and cons of different kinds of hardware and software for delivering information, and other such topics. No matter what career track librarians take, they cannot avoid having to know this stuff. (This may be a couple of courses.)
- All librarians should take courses that teaches skills librarians need to manage libraries (lots of shorthand in that sentence). This should include basic management skills, basic personnel skills, financial management and accounting (rudiments at least), some marketing, working in teams, and skills that might be described as "personal-improvement skills" such as creativity, leadership, risk taking, entrepreneurship, etc. (Probably a couple of courses.)
I am not sure there is more to a core. I suppose there are those who want
their graduates to know how to actually do some work when they hit the
libraries. I guess I don't think very much of that belongs in a masters
level program. If library schools also want to add a technical degree
(bachelors or associate) in library procedures (with the result being a
certified library technician or a certified preservation technician), that
is something else again.
The kind of analysis you are doing is great. I wish you luck and I will
try to keep up with list now. If this is not helpful, please let me know.
Thanks for sharing your task with the world.
Diane Nahl
Assistant Professor
School of Library and Information Studies
University of Hawaii
Honolulu, HI 96822
(808) 956-5809
(808) 956-5835 (Fax)
nahl@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu
Candy Schwartz listed users as the fourth area in her proposed core: user
needs, community assessment, cognition, behavior, interpersonal
communication, human-computer interaction. This area could become the
organizing concept for the entire core. Each part of the core could be
dealt with primarily in relation to user factors.
Users are challenged in new ways in the networked information environments
that are rapidly developing. Users' needs will continue to diversify,
thus LIS professionals must continue to diversify their knowledge and
abilities. I envision LIS professionals working more closely with users,
particularly in instructional and facilitating roles, in a wide variety of
information contexts, especially working with people remotely.
Over-the-shoulder assistance and consultation, whether in-person or
remotely, will become a significant feature of the information landscape.
Re-orienting the core to focus on user factors will strengthen the role
LIS professionals can play.
Miriam Drake
Dean and Director of Libraries
Georgia Institute of Technology
miriam.drake@ibid.library.gatech.edu
Competencies
Karen's scenarios look good. As an employer I am looking for people who
want to work with people in problem solving, information finding, etc.
Some people will want instruction on access. Others will want librarians
to provide information content that has been evaluated. etc. Tom Abeles
is "right on." We need people who can gather, evaluate, analyze and
synthesize information and communicate the results effectively. We need
librarians who can tailor services to the needs of individuals. One size
does not fit all, especially on the net. Tailored services require
ability to judge accuracy, timeliness and reliability.
I have been frustrated by staff who cannot relate what they read in
the newspapers and professional journals to their current positions. They
need to keep up with technology, business, etc and be able to relate what
they read and learn 'to improving services.
In the special libraries world and understanding of business,
business issues and the work of the company is essential. Many corporate
librarians have this knowledge. Some academics do not have it. Since
universities are large, business like organizations an understanding of
the organization and its issues are important.
A course in business policy or business issues would help.
Librarians in universities and companies are likely become more
involved with continuing education and distance learning. They may be
dealing with students of all ages who are taking courses remotely.
It might be useful to think in terms of some specialized areas, such
as preservation, records management, archives as well as information and
learning services.
Margaret Slusser
SLUSSERM@MUSIC.LIB.MATC.EDU
Core Curriculum
Taking off on Miriam Drake's comment re:staff who can not see how to
relate what they read in professional journals and newspapers as applying
to their current positions, then tying it to the core curriculum I would
like to call attention to the new issue of Byte magazine which has a
section "7 new ways to ..learn." They summarize new innovative ways to use
multimedia in education. A project of Carnegie-Mellon University of
developing topical media CD's is an updated version of the multi-media
kits of the 1970's BUT learning how to assemble a pkg. like this for use
in instruction and reference is certainly relevant to the type of
packaging that Kevin Cox has mentioned.
Mike Roberts
EDUCOM
mmr@darwin.ptvy.ca.us
Core Curriculum, etc.
The postings to the list still seem to dodge around a bit on the issue of
whom are we educating and what are we educating them for.
I'd like to offer a few comments from the perspective of someone who has
been a practitioner in computing since the '60s. For a long time,
academics saw computing as a branch of mathematics indulged in by
individuals with a strange attraction for calculating machines. In my area
of computing associated with business, ordinary folk were characterized as
data processors, and if you were really smart and progressive, you were
involved with management information systems.
Today, computing is recognized as a legitimate field of scholarly inquiry,
and has many subspecialties. As our understanding of the complexity of
information in organizations has grown, terms such as data processing and
MIS have been given up, and are even considered derogatory by some.
Information science is beginning to be recognized as an independent field,
and not a step child of computing, as computing was once a step child of
mathematics.
As our understanding of the science of information grows, previous
specialties, such as librarianship, will be swept under its theoretical
umbrella.
Further, and more to the point of this note, there will be a rearrangement
of specializations and levels of specialization. For instance, if we look
at law, medicine or engineering, there is a range of professionalization
from amateur do-it yourself, to pre- and para- levels of expertise, to
licensed practitioners, to academic research and teaching.
The interaction with technology in all areas has grown, but the
distinction, I think, is that in every case, technology is the enabler and
not the causative principle. Ie, we aren't going to have a field of
information technology any more than we have a field of medical
technology, or engineering technology, etc.[Although there are and
certainly will be professional subspecialties associated with the
development and application of technological tools.] The core of
information science is associated with the range of how humans acquire,
store, manipulate and use information. As we do that in increasingly
complex ways, so does the need grow for understanding of the theoretical
foundations involved, and of the ways in which theoretical understanding
can be reduced to practice, to useful tools, and to benefit to society.
Although technology is an enabler, it is also a destroyer of old ways of
doing things and consequently of jobs and careers. As traditional
librarianship is both enabled and destroyed by technology and by greater
understanding of the theoretical foundations of information science, many
librarians will [are already] finding the results threatening. That, I
suspect, is an occupational hazard of our times that is not unique to
librarians. In the 1970's, I was involved in building up the corps of
COBOL programmers at my university to more than 100. Nationwide, there
was conventional wisdom that literally millions of COBOL programmers were
needed for new data processing applications. Today, less than 20 years
later, technology has passed all those jobs by, and the remaining
incumbents are scrambling for new skills and new positions.
The essence of what librarians do isn't disappearing, but it does have to
be reanalyzed and resituated in a new framework. And within that
framework, decisions have to be made about tailoring curricular options to
levels of individual talent and interest, and to the rapidly changing job
market.
I'd be interested in whether others on the list think we are evolving para
-- information science jobs that are distinguishable from first
professional degree information science jobs, and what the distinguishing
characteristics are. For instance, is a technical support person at
Oracle actually occupying a para - level job whose skills can be generally
described and taught? Likewise, are some of the experts working on
several of the leading preservation projects occupying professional level
slots that also can be characterized and individuals trained for?
Karen M. Drabenstott
Associate Professor, SILS
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1092 USA
Voice: 1-734-763-3581
Fax: 1-734-764-2475
karen.drabenstott@umich.edu
Tell Me Your Faculty...
I would like to react to a comment posted on February 17, 1995, by Charles
Curran: "Ralph Blasingame once said, after hearing a dean wax hopeful about
a new curriculum and an innovative LIS education experiment, 'Tell me your
faculty, and I'll tell you your curriculum.'"
Consider a future scenario in which computer-based tools beam the world's
experts into classrooms, homes, and workplaces, and enable such experts
and students to carry on a two- or multi-way dialogue. In fact, we could
consider building a distributed school in which faculty and students are
geographically dispersed but enlist technology to build a "virtual"
classroom. Distributed faculty could even deliver content through the
"bundles" that Kevin Cox describes in his post of February 18, 1995. If
there are "resident" faculty, they might be function as generalized
orchestrators of the distributed school who monitor trends, assess
developments, etc., in the course of updating and maintaining the
curriculum and distributed faculty.
Now that the faculty isn't a single body, bound to a particular institution
at a particular point in time, what would be your "dream core curriculum?"
Karen M. Drabenstott
Associate Professor, SILS
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1092 USA
Voice: 1-734-763-3581
Fax: 1-734-764-2475
karen.drabenstott@umich.edu
Core curriculum study at Michigan in 1993
I began this general discussion on core curriculum by telling how our dean
charged a faculty task force with the question, "Is there a core of
concepts, theory, skills, knowledge, experience, ..." A task force of SILS
faculty studied this question for several months in 1993 and arrived at the
following four core areas:
- Users and Access -- the study of user behavior including cognitive science, organizational theory, human communications theory; information needs, seeking, provision, and use; issues affecting access to information such as economics, freedom of information, information policy.
- Organization of Information -- principles of the organization; description, subject analysis, and retrieval of information resources in a variety of formats and environments; standards and systems for the creation, organization, maintenance, indexing, and retrieval of document surrogates in computer-based files.
- Evaluation -- the study of why, how, and where we evaluate information.
- Information Systems Analysis and Design/Delivery Tools -- systems analysis, design, and maintenance; knowledge and handling of tools such as data communication and networking, database management systems, client/server technology, workstations, integrated media, artificial intelligence; related issues (e.g., security, connectivity, organizational impact, integrity).
We identified a fifth area and called it "professional competence." It
consisted of basic skills that we wanted our students to obtain and values
that we wanted our students exposed to. Examples are:
a. Mental skills: creativity in problem solving, critical thinking and analysis, commitment to continual learning, tolerance for frustration and ambiguity.
b. Communication skills: ability to speak or present material persuasively in a variety of settings and situations, effective listening skills, professional image.
c. Interpersonal skills: team building, conflict management, group process skills.
d. Leadership skills: ability to create and articulate a vision, adapt to and live with change, take risks.
e. Knowledge of ILS culture and ethics -- historical and social context of information services, purposes, ethics, and values of the information profession.
Three SILS faculty have begun working on a first draft of our new core
curriculum. How much should they rely on the four areas outlined in this
1993 study? Should they throw out this early work, return to the drawing
board, and draft new core areas? Please share the experience of your school
in drafting a new core curriculum. How much do your content areas overlap
with the work of the 1993 SILS task force? To what extent should your
content areas overlap with our areas or the areas of other schools and
departments?
Leigh Estabrook
Dean
Graduate School of Library and Information Science
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
501 East Daniel, Champaign, IL 61820
The areas you describe match almost directly the areas the University of
Illinois has adopted for its new core curriculum, adopted this year.
They include (1) organization of and access to information; (2) design
and evaluation of information systems and services; and (3) a course on
ethical, professional issues. Concern for communication, research
competence, writing and analytic skills as well as technological
competence is embedded in the program. (We also have an entrance
"computer competency requirement.")
Jeanne Tifft
Senior Information Advisor
USAID Central Research & Reference Services
Academy for Educational Development
Telephone (703) 875-4813 Telefax (703) 875-5269
JTIFFT@USAID.GOV
Academy for Educational Development (AED)
1875 Connecticut Ave. NW, 9th floor
Washington DC 20009-1202
Telephone (202) 884-8096
Telefax (202) 884-8400
JTIFFT@AED.ORG
The discussions of core curricula so far posted concern me somewhat
because they aren't dealing with the issues that my experience has shown
are desperately needed. These are: (1) management and marketing
specifically of *services* and (2) methods of data collection, analysis,
and interviewing for capturing *information need* (ie of an actual or
potential user group).
The curricula I have seen in this discussion seem to me to focus rather
exclusively on "data driven" aspects of information work (to quote Robert
S. Taylor) and rather thinly, if at all, on the "user driven" aspects of
information work (Brenda Dervin's approach). It is the latter, in the
future, that are going to make the difference, after all! IMHO
Ling H. Jeng
Assistant Professor
School of Library and Information Science
University of Kentucky
502 King Library South
Lexington, KY 40506-0039
Voice (606) 257-5679
Fax (606) 257-4205
LHJENG00@UKCC.uky.edu
In response to Karen's four core areas of knowledge + one area
of professional competencies:
I believe the first two areas are the core knowledge of library
and information science, whereas Areas 3 & 4 are really one (not
two) area, dealing with not exactly knowledge but tools needed
to make the knowledge work in the real world.
Evaluation is an integral part of system design. The key point
here in system design and evaluation is to introduce students the
general system theories and system approach to looking at things,
to design and evaluation. Although it does not originate from LIS,
(and therefore not part of the core) it is crucial element in LIS
environment.
I guess Area 5 (professional competencies) has been included in many
LIS curricula to cover what is thought to be the foundation course.
In reality, professional competencies such as mental skills, communication
skills and leadership cannot be treated as course contents and taught
to students. They can only be successfully mentored and cultivated
into students' minds by their consistent presence throughout various
courses. They are the ones the FACULTY should learn to integrate
into their teaching styles, teaching methods, and assignments.
Cathy-Mae Karelse
School of Librarianship
University of Cape Town
Private Bag
Rondebosch 7700
Cape, South Africa
Telephone +21 650-2502
Fax +21 650-3489
CMK@education.uct.ac.za
In response to the postings in V3 #4 regarding internationalisation
and the changing nature of the core curriculum, on the basis of our
experience in South Africa, the following issues come to bear:
- How do we address the constant problem of unequal power relations; the maldistribution of resources and the fact that these conditions emanate from different social contexts which sometimes generate different social needs? To concretise this point: should we achieve the vision of cyberspace learning contexts for information science students, who would our teachers be? Would the technology for this kind of transmission be equally accessible to developed and developing countries? To what extent would the recipients (both the students and academic departments in developing countries) determine the content of courses? How do we achieve balance between what can be taught globally and what is educationally necessary locally in order to make the course relevant to its user-base? In other words, how do we overcome the North-South divide which has not gone away, and how do we avoid a situation of one culture and way of seeing being imposed on others? These unfortunate scenarios would have to be addressed at some point if we are indeed hoping to construct the fashionable and attractive option of rationalizing resources and improving partnerships and cooperation globally within the area of educating and training information graduates.
- With regard to the question of whether there is in fact the basis for a core curriculum. The notion of core curriculum while appealing because of its universality and the fact that there are presumably then some common denominators which can be expected in training and trained information workers, could at the same time be limiting and problematic if it bound academics to inappropriate courses. However, perhaps the issue as it's being posed is not one of what is compulsory but rather one of what is common given different settings and requirements. Our experience suggests that with increasing specialization in the information field, we would certainly place greater emphasis on Public Relations and the Promotions, Marketing, or Popularization of services. This area fits comfortably with the User Relations and User Research and with Evaluation when understood within a systems framework. It further reinforces the need for the "soft skills" -- inter-personal, communication skills -- referred to.
- The trend also indicates that there is perhaps a growing rift between the areas of records management and organization, and that of managing the human resource and information side of services/operations. So while storage, retrieval and information analysis issues are indeed still important, these are becoming specializations and not areas in which every information worker requires expertise.
- The scenario we might prefer then is one of packaging human resource (professional training); user studies; evaluation; information systems; and systems thinking skills in the context of an information training; as core curriculum areas. Alongside this, the information storage and retrieval and records management skills should be modularized. One might well ask whether this is providing training for information workers or simply for competent civil servants. It might be doing both, but we'll be graduating professionals who could work in a range of information related portfolios, who are able to take on challenges, who understand the way systems work and who are capacitated to change them. I don't believe that our courses ought to be congested with training people in classifying and cataloguing since these functions are increasingly being streamlined, centralized and performed by a small number of experts.
Karen Motylewski
Director of Field Service
Northeast Document Conservation Center
100 Brickstone Square
Andover, MA 01810
Telephone (508) 470-1010
Fax (508) 475-6021
nedcc@world.std.com (Use KM in subject field)
UMich Core Curriculum
In general the Michigan SILS core curriculum looks excellent, and I
particularly applaud the identification of critical skills. This real
base of excellence in library service is often unarticulated in developing
educational goals. I notice, though, that preservation is absent from the
curriculum, even under "issues affecting access," where it is a logical
topic and represents a distinct, specialized body of knowledge.
I will become the director of the Preservation and Conservation Studies
Program at the GSLIS at University of Texas, Austin, in mid April. On the
basis of my experience in preservation training in the library community
through NEDCC, I urge you to consider the specific inclusion of
preservation in the core curriculum. This is a critical element in any
library's ability to make information continuously available, whether in
print, microform, magnetic, digital, or other media. It has become clear
that if preservation is *not* integrated with other fundamental library
functions, access to information is compromised or lost. GSLIS core
curricula provide an opportunity to form the very foundation of such
integration.
Jennifer Krueger
Head, Information Services
The Science, Industry and Business Library
The New York Public Library
(212) 930-0775
jkrueger@nypl.org
In response to numerous comments about including management,
communication, marketing, analytical, and related skills in a core
curriculum, I would like to add a brief comment. As someone with both an
MLS and an MBA, I know I garnered most of those types of skills listed
above as part of the MBA program. (Although I did get a good introduction
to basic management theory.) Trying to cover adequately all the topics
listed in 3 semesters of an MLS program (the length of my program at
Simmons) AND cover information related topics as well seems too much. All
the skills are valuable, but how do we fit them all in?
Was Simmons' program shorter than most? Do we have to consider
lengthening the program or increasing course hours required in order fit
everything in?
I am enjoying all the discussion and hope to participate more fully. As a
member of an organization which is a recipient of a Kellogg grant as well,
focusing on providing skills to meet the changes in the information world
for librarians already in the workforce, I find it helpful to see what is
being debated in academic circles.
Lisa K. Hallberg
Library Assistant
Serials Acquisitions
Ellis Library
University of Missouri-Columbia
lhallber@bigcat.missouri.edu
To What Ends?
To the editor:
Unfortunately, due to time constraints at work, I haven't been
reading your list as closely as I might have, but it seemed to me that the
following thoughts or perspective hadn't been presented, as yet. My
apologies if I am duplicating anything already posted.
As I have been considering the queries and responses and the on-going
discussion on changes to curricula of library and information science, it
seems that there is a view point that's missing in your equations. I am a
library assistant with a BA in English, similar to many of my co-workers,
and I have been trying to figure out how to put a fairly useless degree
together with several years of library experience, add an interesting
master's degree and turn that all into a career. Much as I like
libraries, there is no appeal to working in a capacity similar to my
current position for the rest of my life. Needless to say, there is a
great appeal, both to myself and my peers, for the idea of a revamped
"library school." But, as someone who has been accepted into just such a
program (at Syracuse University, I'm afraid to say: I didn't find out
about Michigan's intentions until it was too late), I wonder if I will
ever actually work in a library again. If I have computer training,
information resources knowledge and a modicum of business sense, why would I want to work in a library? Don't get me wrong, I honestly like working in libraries, especially in academic libraries -- that is, until I run up
against the constant lack of money for staff, serials and technology, and
run up against the in-grained attitudes of the professional "librarians."
All the training that these new library schools will devise may not
create the librarians of the future. Instead, it may very well create a
new pool of well-trained information technologists for businesses to hire.
Two years down the road, I don't expect that libraries will have kept up
with changes in library curricula. Anyone in a library setting these days
knows that there's a lot of hot air flying around about the changes in
libraries, but the changes are happening too slowly, when they're
happening at all. It would take a great deal of selflessness on the part
of these new library students to want to take on the establishment of the
old library and bring it kicking and screaming into the present, with
thoughts towards the future. I, for one, am not certain that I have the
stamina.
So, my point is this: what will be your students' goals when they
enter your program and when they complete it? Will they have the training
to go back to the old library and change it? Or will they strike a
different path, or perhaps even create a new one? As someone looking into
the library school, either the new or the old, from the outside, I feel
that you might benefit from a glimpse at my perspective.
Margaret Slusser
SLUSSERM@MUSIC.LIB.MATC.EDU
Lisa Hallberg's comments on the relevance of suggested training brings up a point which has been slighted until now. What kinds of organizations will your future graduates work in? Will they have to go create their own because the classic institutions are too rigid and unflexible?
I began as a library assistant in a small public library and the attitude of "professional" librarians drove many users to seek information at nearby academic institutions. In their attempts to be a model of their community's moral standards, they worked well with children but often produced an atmosphere foreign to information seeking. How does the proposed new curriculum proposal bring about a change in the organizational climate within the classic institution? Can it incorporate out-reach and work with existing organizations so that this learning does not occur in a vacuum but produces an interchange of ideas? Graduates who reflect theory and have no demonstrable experience in dealing with real-world situations only convince older professionals that the ideas are "hog wash."
