In the 1993 Report of the SILS Core Curriculum Task Force, the area identified as information technology and systems was very broad, consisting of systems analysis and design and a wide variety of tools and specific technologies, such as telecommunications, database management systems, client/server technology, workstations, integrated media, artificial intelligence, etc.
In the current SILS curriculum, we offer a 2-credit course entitled "Technologies for Information Management," which all students are required to take. Common themes and goals of this course have included:
a. Introduction to concepts and theories of computing, such as how computers work, their history, uses, and impacts on society,
and,
b. Practical experience with specific systems and software; originally, this gave students a view of the technological world which was very PC-based, but due to new acquisitions of technology in the past few years, has widened to consist of other platforms and technologies. Students originally were introduced to basic software for word processing, spreadsheets, and database management, but they are now using other software, including a number of internet resources.
The Information Technologies and Systems Task Force which has been formed as part of the CRISTAL-ED initiative is looking at further revisions of the core offering in information technology, and is specifically targeting innovative methods for lab-based instruction and more project-oriented work. An outline of this group's activities can be found through the Kellogg CRISTAL-ED home page.
We have identified the following initial questions which serve as an overall guide for our work:
a. What is the core of knowledge and skills which all students should possess in information technology and systems upon graduation?
b. What should be the role of information technology in an ILS curriculum? Should technology be a part of other courses (in the core) or be an offering on its own?
c. How are other schools teaching information technology and systems?
The conference announced below is not specifically directed toward curriculum concerns for the library and information sciences, but is intended to explore a significant and sometimes overlooked aspect of the emerging electronic library/information scene.
Preliminary announcement: second annual conference of the National Preservation Office (Australia)
*MULTIMEDIA PRESERVATION: CAPTURING THE RAINBOW*
27-30 November 1995
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
RATIONALE: Interactive multimedia are like rainbows -- perceptible but not tangible. The only way to reproduce them is understanding how they are produced. The Australian Government's cultural policy, Creative Nation, places considerable emphasis on using multimedia to disseminate information and culture. It also urges artists to use the new technologies to create artistic works. The policy also emphasizes the role of the Government in preserving our heritage.
As we move toward a global village where universal access to electronic information is breaking down the boundaries between traditional libraries, archives, museums and galleries, how will we ensure that the new form of culture is preserved for future generations?
How feasible is the idea of digitizing the collections of libraries and archives, and of producing interactive multi-media products to make accessible the collections in museums and galleries?
CONFERENCE TOPICS:
Among other issues the conference will address
CONFERENCE ACTIVITIES:
Museums Australia will be holding its annual conference in Brisbane the week before the National Preservation Office conference, 21-25 November 1995.
EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST:
If you are interested in receiving more information about this conference, please forward the following information to Katy Bellingham by email: kbelling@nla.gov.au, fax: +61-6-273-4493 or regular mail.
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Please indicate if you are interested in:
The term "information" has been used in library literature over the past decade to refer to specific facts, to theories, to ideas, to interpretations, to opinions, to an analysis of documents, to the access and to storage of texts, to units of organized knowledge, and to communications on topics which may instruct a recipient. It has also been used to refer to some unidentifiable "product" which is said to have economic value.
In the past, for librarians, "information" was associated primarily with the process of informing their users about what books to read, about bibliographic data they required, and where the bathroom was located. Today it is being used as a term to designate everything under the sun, including all texts found in libraries such as poetry and children's literature. An incunabula has now become an information container; a poem by Byron is equated to an engineering formula -- just another piece of "information." When used as an adjective to modify general nouns, vague and seldom defined phrases such as "information professional," "information society," and "information environment" abound. Usages of the term "information" in other disciplines cover the function of genetic structures; current "information" relating to political events; and as technical/scientific data within a particular area of knowledge. Another meaning attached to the term relates to intelligence-gathering activities. In current computer science and business literature, the term "information" is almost always associated with electronic-based computer manipulation (handling) of data. Any text that can be manipulated or rearranged by computers is defined as "information." Thus, by a gradual process of verbal osmosis, anything at all that is handled by computers (arbitrarily defined as "information technology"), becomes "information." There exists a large body of thought that questions such semantic perturbations; I have room for only a few examples. According to Alvin Schrader the term "information" is fuzzy and elicits dissensus rather than consensus in the scholarly community. Robert Fairthorne argued that "information" was not a universal essence which could be squeezed out of a text as water could out of a sponge, referring to such notions as the "phlogiston theory of information". Hans Wellich identified 39 different definitions of the term extant in literature between 1959 and 1971, and concluded that "...the concept of "information" itself... is also highly ambiguous and ill-defined." Herbert S. White, past president of A.S.I.S. acknowledged that "...we have not been able to achieve any sort of consensus on the meaning of information, let alone information science." And finally, Fritz Machlup, the pioneer student of the economics of knowledge, objected strongly to the fact that the word "information" referred to something different each time it is used, even within the same passage. In day-to-day conversation precision of understanding is not crucial; one deduces the general meaning of terms from their context. But when discussing the content of education for the library profession, and most particularly when advising our students about their future job prospects, using the term "information", without specifying exactly what one is referring to, becomes irresponsible, to say the least.
The term's ambiguity is based largely on semantic confusion. The first cause are polysemous terms -- words which are spelled as well as pronounced identically, but which have different referents. Questions can legitimately arise as to whether the same thing, or several different things, are being referred to by such a term. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that multiple meanings allow the transfer of the attributes of one signification of a term to a totally different meaning. A second cause is that different disciplines often use the same term to designate quite different referents, with each discipline assuming that its particular usage is the universal one. A third cause is that general terms such as "transportation" or "information" represent high levels of abstraction. The more abstract a term, the more obliterated are the differences between the various sub-categories of this term, as well as between skills each requires. The higher the order of abstraction, the more specific meaning is lost; "information" loses the distinction between receiving communication in the form of a poetic experience and an array of numerical data; an expert bibliographer and an accountant both become "information professionals."
There are numerous types of "information": from knowledge about the kind of books stored in a particular library, to espionage-based material about an enemy's weapons. These different types of "information" are handled typically by very different professions: accounting, dispatching, actuarial, empirical experimentation and research, journalistic, educational, et cetera. All of these types of "information" activities require a different set of skills, and only a few require the skills provided by current curriculae in library and "information" science schools. To claim that in one post-graduate year of study at a library/information school (in the U.S.), it is possible to train someone for all of these skills is absurd. But if we admit that it is impossible to train an individual in all of these different "information professions", then what becomes the meaning of this designation, this professional skill category? This equation of librarianship with a concept as abstract and vague as "information" leads to several highly undesirable consequences.
FIRST, it suggests that every service performed by librarians which cannot sensibly be subsumed under the "handling of information", (children's story-telling, readers' advisory and teaching how to use the library is to be either ignored, or, as Roma Harris points out, relegated to a subsidiary role. Thus, such typical library activities as those concerned with recreation, education, and conservation, are either subsumed under a generalized rubric of "informational activity", which is absurd on the face of it or are considered to be old-fashioned and therefore irrelevant for "modern" librarians. This attitude has led to a serious underrating of the activities which occupy the vast majority of the working time of most librarians: selection, conservation, education and recreation -- i.e. service to the average citizen, the school children and the college students who, unlike scientists, technologists, businessman and bureaucrat use their school, public and undergraduate academic library for many other purposes besides obtaining "information." (Much as today's technological high-fliers might disagree, libraries today and yesterday (tomorrow we shall all be dead), have one principal mission which society deems important enough to finance. And that is to collect, organize, preserve and make available to the general public books, periodicals, and other graphic records of humankind, that no one individual could possibly afford to own.)
SECONDLY, an illusion is created that M.L.I.S. degree holders can handle, with equal competence, the whole vast gamut of informative activities required by our post-industrial society, whereas they are, in fact, primarily educated to work with only a sub-set of these activities: the handling of artifacts containing text or graphic representations. This false perception is created by spin-doctoring the "I" word so as to exaggerate the ability of librarians to handle a great many types of "informative activities."
In short, the misuse of the "I" word lays the groundwork for the emergence of the Information Paradigm, an emerging set of intellectual premises and propositions which serve to conflates the work of ALL librarians with that of SOME (usually Special) librararians.
THIRDLY, the compacting of librarianship into a single category with information science makes it difficult to differentiate among the academic qualifications and practical skills that various types of informative services require. On the one hand, the capability of the M.L.I.S. degree holders to handle various types of "information" is overstated; on the other, an erroneous description is given of what most librarians actually do. Such distortion is particularly unfortunate when it impacts library school students: they receive a totally unrealistic picture of the alternatives available to them in their professional career.
A FOURTH consequence of this all-too obvious (and at times self-serving), misuse of the "I" word by some colleagues negatively affects the credibility of librarianship in the eyes of outside observers.
Underneath this tangled growth of imprecision of communication emerge three main, and quite incompatible, notions of how it would be most useful to define the term "information." These are provided by Michael Buckland's in his seminal discussion of the problem. The first way is to treat the term "information" as being equivalent to "knowledge." This was clearly the preference of Fritz Machlup. But in so doing, one effectively obviates the need to say "information" when one wants to say "knowledge." The second alternative is to restrict the usage of the term to the original meaning of information, an act of informing someone. Here the term becomes the by-product of the communication process, during which individuals undergo a transformation of their cognitive or emotional states. Understood in this manner, "non-informative information" becomes a logical absurdity. As a mental by-produce of the communication process "information" becomes quite distinct from a "thing," a book or a text. (A communication PROCESS can not logically be equated with the CHANNEL through which it takes place.) The third common usage (or rather misusage), of the term "information" is what Buckland calls "information-as-thing." The problem of extending the meaning of "information" to a thing, a book, a text, is that then the term loses all specificity and becomes a portmanteau word that denotes anything and everything in the universe, from a gene to a manuscript, to an antelope -- and therefore loses all meaning. (A book, a text, can at best be a "potentially informative text" or a "potentially informative object." Libraries typically store massive amounts of texts that contain facts and recorded knowledge, and museums store stuffed antelopes. These objects may or may not be "informative", since they may or may not be understood, (unknown language, too advanced a concept, too unfamiliar a shape), by users of libraries or museums. To refer to a book in a library as "information" is clearly to impose a different meaning to the term than when one refers to "an informative book," or "an uninformative book."
The beginning of a solution for our profession would be to stop trying to rely on manipulative semantic techniques to enhance our status, and to accept the fact that there are many different types of activities that inform, each requiring a different set of skills and different tools, and that not all of these activities, not even the majority, involve the handling of textual material which, despite some twenty years of Lancaster's lugubrious predictions about the imminent doom of books and libraries, still remain the principal domain of thousands and thousands of librarians the world over.
The first question is also closely related to the second -- my answer to which would be "Yes" to both: we need to incorporate consideration of the relevant technology into all courses that need it, and we need to devote time to a consideration of the more fundamental aspects of IT as technology. Thus, courses in information resources (reference, networked information resources, on-line, or whatever you call it) clearly need to deal with IT, similarly, a basic understanding of how computers function is needed for IR courses that deal with computer methods. However, everyone also needs how to use word-processors, spreadsheets, databases, and comms. packages in the modern world and, currently, they need it at PG level, although the world is changing rapidly in this respect.
As for c) -- Well, all I can talk about is what we do here (The MA librarianship courses in common are shown below by * and the common electives by **). Our MSc in Information Management has the following required IT-related courses in Semester 1: IT for Information Management*; Information Storage and Retrieval*; Information Systems Modelling; and Practical Computing 1*. In Semester 2, Practical Computing II* is required, and there are electives in Chemical Structure Information, Database Design**, Information Retrieval Research, Multimedia Information Systems** and PASCAL Programming.
A new MSc in Textual Computing, run jointly with the Department of Computer Science starts this autumn -- it is a research-related degree sharing some of the same courses but having, in addition, Natural Language Processing, Language and Logic, Reasoning and AI, and Research Topics in Language, Speech and Hearing.
>b. What should be the role of information technology in an ILS curriculum? Should technology be a part of other courses (in the core) or be an offering on its own?
>c. How are other schools teaching information technology and systems?
Regarding question a, the National Library' of Medicine's long range planning panel on the education and training of health sciences librarians addressed this topic in a report issued in September 1994. The panel's report recommends that library schools include in their curricula information technology knowledge and skills such as the following, laid out in the Medical Library Association's Platform for Change: basic principles of automated systems, including record and file construction, computer hardware and software, telecommunications and networking, database management software, systems analysis and artificial intelligence and expert systems; design, use and evaluation of information systems; acquisition, use and evaluation of information technologies; integration of systems/technologies into the long-term information management needs and plans of the institution.
Another approach to question a is to scrutinize current initiatives within our client groups to see what information technology expertise they are learning during professional training. For example, for the last decade, medical schools have worked to define information/computer literacy requirements for their students. I list below the set of competencies recently approved by the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry as requirements for graduation. Because medical librarians often have significant roles in the development and implementation of programs like these, one could say that our core of info tech knowledge & skills must provide us with the expertise to do our jobs.
A. Computer Literacy
Goal: To be able to work more efficiently through the use of computer systems and representative general purpose application programs.
Objective 1: Developing Introductory Skill s with Graphical User Interfaces
Objective 2: Developing Skills in the use of Personal Productivity Tools
Objective 3: Understanding Basic Computer Management Issues
B. Communications
Goal: To be able to communicate with others more efficiently, and have timely access to biomedical information resources.
Objective 1: Developing Facility with Electronic Mail
Objective 2: Developing an Understanding of the Parameters Required for
Successful Communication Sessions
Objective 3: Developing Basic Internet Operating Skills
C. Information Management
Goal: to effectively search, retrieve, organize and manage biomedical information using computing and communication technologies
Objective 1: Developing Skills for Locating and Acquiring Information
Objective 2: Developing Search and Management Skills
D. Computer-Aided Learning
Goal: To meet personal goals in self-directed learning by using computer-based learning programs
Objective 1: Develop Awareness of Computer-Based Learning Alternatives
E. Patient Care Management [IN DEVELOPMENT]
Goal: To be able to use clinical information systems to promote better patient management in both the outpatient and inpatient settings.
Objective 1. Ability to build and use a comprehensive longitudinal patient record.
Objective 2. Online ordering and results reporting of tests and procedures.
Objective 3. Ability to use decision support tools and knowledge-based systems effectively
Objective 4. Ability to administer practice systems, whether outpatient or inpatient, including the scheduling, monitoring (and billing) of patient visits.
Our librarians will be involved in designing, delivering and recording progress on these goals. The preferred setting for the required activities and instruction is within the context of existing classes at 'natural' or 'teachable' moments. I anticipate that this approach will require several years to implement fully, since formal, required instruction time is almost as highly prized as architectural space in most medical schools.
You're surprised that people are slow to answer this one? ;-) I'm not. There was an *excellent* discussion on this topic last year on a short-term discussion list that the LITA Education Committee sponsored. I made the full text of the archived list required reading for my SLIS class on Information Technologies this summer; if there's interest, I'd be happy to put it up on my web site for others to browse. (It's a *big* file, but with excellent content.) One of the things that concerns me about this discussion is that it seems to me we're constantly reinventing the wheel. How many people have actually read through the materials from the LITAEDU list? How many debates on this topic have been held on PACS-L, JESSE, DOCDIS, and other library education lists? How many programs on this topic have been offered at ALISE and ALA meetings? If we don't make an effort to develop a collective memory on these issues, there's not much point in debating them over and over again.=20
>c. How are other schools teaching information technology and systems?
This one is easier to answer. :-) At Alabama, one of our 6 core curriculum classes is a 3-credit Information Technologies class, which I've taught twice; summer 1993 and summer 1994. It's intended to cover a little bit of everything, and to serve a very diverse audience. As a result, I end up with students who have never turned on a computer before, and those who have been doing programming for years. I cover basic computer hardware and OS concepts (what's a hard drive? what's memory? what does an OS do?), focusing on DOS/Windows and UNIX since that's primarily what we've got in our labs. We cover basics of WP, spreadsheets, and databases, spend a few days on Internet basics (they do an "Internet Hunt" as a group project) talk about library automation systems and issues, and about the future of technology in libraries. Personally, I think it's crazy to try to do all of those things in one class, but it's the only required technology class they've got, so I try to "do it all," even if it's only little bits of each. We also incorporate technology skills into Cataloging, Reference, and other classes. This semester, for the first time, we're offering a class about the Internet, for which I've required both the Info Tech class and the basic Cataloging/Org of Info class. The syllabus is online at the URL http://www.itcs.com/ls590/
>a. What is the core of knowledge and skills which all students should possess in information technology and systems upon graduation?
It is a moving target -- difficult to answer today without being obsolete tomorrow. We(at the University of Illinois) require all students--before they enter the program -- to be competent in what seems a bare minimum: ftp, word processing, database management (simple!), spreadsheet (simple!), using OCLC and online catalogs, email and a few other basics. I should mention that we are indebted first to Candy Schwartz, Professor at Simmons, who let us build on the teaching modules she has developed. They are excellent. A grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation has been critical to our expanding and developing such modules for our own use and reworking the curriculum.
>b. What should be the role of information technology in an ILS curriculum? Should technology be a part of other courses (in the core) or be an offering on its own?
Technology is just that -- a way of doing things. Ideally "appropriate" technologies are embedded in the teaching. Our real struggles are getting all of us old faculty up to speed so we know how to embed these technologies and dealing with an almost bimodal distribution of technological competence in our students. The fact that we do have increasing numbers of students with extraordinarily high technological competencies but also an ever present group of very good folks with no such background is the short term, but real, challenge.
>c. How are other schools teaching information technology and systems?
Illinois' model is suggested above. We hope to continue to increase the integration of technology with teaching throughout the curriculum. We will be staffing our lab with a full-time educational support person and are trying to figure out how to build the skills of the less technologically sophisticated students "off-line."
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 most useful approach in the real world to IT skills is as a *tool* -- that is, IT is a tool for acquiring, managing, and disseminating information. Electronic technologies is really a better word, I think, as well, since they cover communication and knowledge as well as information.
Therefore, the core knowledge and skills in an ILS program might include: the hardwares, softwares, and applications of networking (including library networks, Internet, BBS); the hardwares, softwares, and applications of databases (online catalogs, statistical packages, MISs, CD-ROMs, CD-Is); and the hardwares, softwares, and applications of electronic publishing.
I think it's interesting that there's been so little response from the library field to this topic, while "organization of knowledge" really got people going. In the future, I believe that using the technology tools for the organization application is what will be vital. Keeping them separate is a dead end.
My respect for the ILS curriculum is based partly on hearing from a freshly-minted ILS graduate that she had gone immediately into a hospital-medical school, where she set up a customized, integrated system which provides an appropriate mix of:
I am not sure how effective this is, but by teaching the enduring principles I think the course is worthy of a graduate program and will last at least a good way into a career. I do think that labs where students learn a particular software package or an online system is necessary to illustrate the principles, the real learning of systems is done by using them for a specific task. I would like comments on this approach.
In my first two jobs, I worked at large libraries on campuses with library schools and in both cases I never got a sense that their faculties mattered to the world of library practice in any concrete way. In one case, the library invited one faculty member to give us a talk on library automation and was amazed at how out-of-date most of his information was. In particular, I remember him defining a minicomputer in terms it being about the size of a small refrigerator. Not only is this a strange way to define a computer --what about capability? -- but IBM had already introduced a line of desktop model minicomputers several months before.
While in my current position, my girlfriend enrolled in a local library program and I was very discouraged to see the material she was given in her computing-related classes -- very out-of-date, very IBM-mainframe oriented, and an offhanded dismissal of Macintosh. Worse, I thought that students were made to learn a lot of programming type of information that not only is pretty useless but presents a very unrealistic and discouraging view of what computing is about these days.
These experiences have really made me wonder about the old saw "those that can, do..." It isn't that library school faculty are inept, but I have to wonder what an academic approach does to a subject that is essentially hands-on and practical. If we had to wait for information to be codified and published before we could do anything in this field, nothing would happen. "The map isn't the territory." Anyone who is doing anything new is doing it without a guidebook. That will always be a limitation to classroom learning.
I still think that the strength of the MLS is in the book-learning. Mastering the concepts will help you understand and adapt to the shifting information technologies. Nothing you learning in library school will be current for very long. You need a foundation that will help you make decisions about the future. But library schools have also tried to instill practical skills and they are doing more harm than good if they are not up-to-date with the technology. Teaching people about CMS and VAX is as useless as teaching older editions of AACR.
As something of an answer, I'd say that the best way for library schools to provide up-to-date and relevant information on the new information technologies is to develop opportunities for hands-on experience. Either develop a co-op program where the students are working in the field for some portion of their program or setup more-or-less real-world situations in the school. They used to have a cataloging lab in my library school with problem sets of materials to catalog and all the necessary tools. Why not an erector set-type of computer lab where prospective librarians could get some hands-on time installing CD-ROM hardware and software, network a few computers, and create a WWW server? Just as subject-focused classes used to include a project to create a pathfinder to the subject, why not include a WWW page assignment instead?
>a. What is the core of knowledge and skills which all students should possess in information technology and systems upon graduation?
All the ILS theory in the world is useless unless ILS students have solid skills in dealing with day-to-day technology challenges. If one of your graduates does not know how to unpack and set up a new computer workstation, in that respect they would be as useful to our library as a high school library page. In the real world, practical system administration and trouble-shooting skills are critical.
A our library, the budget for training is severely limited, so when evaluating potential employees, we look for people with solid practical skills in addition to the usual ILS theory knowledge.
>b. What should be the role of information technology in an ILS curriculum? Should technology be a part of other courses (in the core) or be an offering on its own?
Both. Where technology is used in the field, the technology should be included in the ILS curriculum. Solid technology-centered coursework is good too.
>c. How are other schools teaching information technology and systems?
Sorry, I don't have that information here -- but I could direct you to some other good resources. (OK reference instructors, did I answer that one in the correct manner?) :-)
Well, the bottom line is, that we hope to recruit a new graduate for this position who will be comfortable with both library resources and IT. The question is, will any library school have prepared someone for the job. I certainly hope so.
It is my experience that schools of library and information science are training professionals for a world of relatively static information which is added to relatively slowly in an orderly process. This world would allow continued use of descriptive tools designed to encapsulate all knowledge in (more or less) neat categories for future use. The gating factor in this world is the fact that only a privileged few have access to the scarce good of publication.
Well, that doesn't bear much relation to the world I live in -- I live in a world where every information consumer can be a publisher, where the patterns of communication and information are changing extremely rapidly, where links which worked yesterday are gone today, and where nobody is sure what authorship or copyright really means, much less what cataloging tools are applicable.
In my world, I rely on my preferred information professional (who happens to be the person in charge of our campus web site: http://www.washington.edu) to be my intelligent agent in the net - to present to me pointers to things I need to know as they evolve, filtering for just the good stuff. I think more and more the task of an information professional will be that of a guide through the mire. What I look for is trusted, knowledgeable point of view -- not an objective cataloger. So I expect new information professionals to be technology savvy -- not in how to use today's hot application, but in the base level of technology -- how protocols work, how the network fits together, who's doing exciting things in various topic areas. Very few schools are teaching these skills, and it's a rare student who emerges with the skills that makes me want to hire them.
Sorry this got so long.
I have been following this LISTSERV with GREAT interest. I am currently a full time student in an MLS program.
I feel that I must respond to the comments made by the instructors. Lee Jaffe's remarks were very much on target.
I spent sometime enrolled in a technological school, prior to this program. My reason was to "learn to become computer literate." The school in question, Rensselaer Polytech., more than met my expectations. I was made to take a course "Computing for Humanities" and was taught FROM SCRATCH about computers.
We learned such essentials as the CPU, Machine Language, Assembler Lang., two programing languages for the "logic" aspects (Basic and Pascal), the history of the computer, current developments in computer research (optical circuits, fuzzy logic and limits on chip sizes), how to use Macs AND PCs, networks and LANS, debugging procedures and logic (how to rule things out), some DOS, and a little about mainframes, workstations, minicomputers and supercomputers and the appropriate applications for each.
Contrast this with my automation course in the MLS program. This course has given students absolutely NO information on the insides of the PCs and how they work. Nothing about the logic of machines has been taught in any depth. A great deal about the Internet and WWW has been spouted, but very little concerning useful applications like HTML has been given. How to create a home page or use HTML for example has NEVER been discussed. ( A major item right now in many academic libraries and business...)
The fact that most students will NEVER use a Vax or mainframe again has not been mentioned. Most students don't know a thing about modems or connection protocols, much less how to set them up. In short, they are woefully prepared to enter the "real" world.
I can't help but agree that a co-op is essential in this field. Learning by doing is far more effective with computers than any amount of lecturing or reading. Give students the CONFIDENCE that they understand the machine. Give them the TOOLS to be able to learn more by reading. Most students I know don't even know what a byte or a bit is! How can they read and learn more if they don't know the basics?
For institutions lucky enough to have computer instructors around, let them teach the subject. If you don't have in house technical support, then go OUTSIDE and find someone.
I believe all library schools should provide paid co-ops and should mandate ALL students take part in the co-op program. Schools should also realize that the basic concepts are more important than specific knowledge. "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for life."
Anyhow that is my two cents worth on this issue. I hope I have made some constructive suggestions. I look forward to seeing the responses to the posted comments.
One of the primary dangers in most technical fields is use of specialized jargon which is so specialized it no longer communicates information. One of the last remnants of the "humanities" in our fields ought to be awareness of this tendency, with, ideally, ability to avoid it. I know that currently "hot" technology tends to generate lots of new jargon (cf. the Citizen's Band craze in the seventies), but that doesn't make it a good thing.
On the current issue: the real problem is that we teachers are trying to do at least two things -- prepare people for something resembling a job, and preparing people for a career. Just as you can't truly learn about French culture without being able to understand the French language, you can't really understand about database structure without studying specific databases, etc. etc. I would therefore agree with Victor Rosenberg and have tried to do that in my own classes -- learn the theory and the principles, but do so while also using some real stuff which uses them. In five or ten years the real stuff will be obsolete, but the principles will still apply; if the teaching/learning process worked, you will know more about the principles and also know when the specific application is obsolete.
Analogy: consider learning about driving by studying mechanical engineering, highway construction, the mathematics of mass/velocity, and the history of transportation, without ever actually getting behind the wheel. I would be very wary of the automotive engineer who had never driven, and just as wary of the one who had never actually studied calculus, but was an expert stunt driver.
A thought from Ken Kesey's Electronic Kool-Ade Acid Test: since the average person's reaction time is about 1/3 to 1/2 second, everything we do is always based on out-dated information. True in one sense, but irrelevant in another -- let's not get too hung up on being absolutely au courant, but also let's not ignore change, either.
We think it important for these modules to have a component which gives students some skills in "programming." Programming is wide area and we have given our views in an article, "Computing Modules that Empower Students," Cox & Clark, Computers & Education, 23 - 4 pp 277-284. We outline a strategy that enables beginning students to do useful programming work and create applications that may be useful in their future careers. More importantly they learn how this is done. The key is in giving students relevant problem based activities so that the concepts make sense.
All "Student" needs to do to check up on good practice is to take a look at those Schools on the Web and check out their students' home pages or projects. S/He will get a very different impression by looking at, say UNC-Chapel Hill, Michigan, U of Texas at Austin, Arizona, and Indiana (a selective, top-of-the-head list) or, here in the U.K., Sheffield.
And, perhaps, it is a little unfair to expect too much in terms of instruction vis-a-vis the Web and HTML -- things have really only begun to hit the field in the past 12 months. For example, in the last academic year our students got very little instruction on the Internet in general -- now they are designing Web pages, using HTML, assessing different browsers and, for their dissertation projects in the summer, doing a great deal of Internet-related work (20 of them are working on Internet-related projects, most in conjunction with either departmental projects or outside agencies). We were fortunate in having an excellent computer manager and an enthusiastic group of Ph.D. students (acting as demonstrators in class) who enabled us to do a great deal more this year than last. We could also spend something close to $100,000 in upgrading equipment, etc. -- by my understanding this is a generous allotment for a department with 11 faculty and 150 full-time equivalent students (35 of whom are Ph.D. students).
For schools without the resources it may be that "co-ops" -- by which I understand what we would call "service teaching" by another department or school -- may be the answer, but I don't think that there is any real alternative to developing those resources -- physical and human -- "in-house."
I'm not sure where this leaves us with "Student", except to say that her/his experience may be common but there ARE others whose experience is very different. How about hearing from them?
Sometimes people ask if I need to know automotive engineering to drive a car. My answer is that we are training the engineers of information systems and besides when the car stalls in a remote area, it is useful to know a bit of engineering.
In my view what distinguishes the professional is the ability to make informed decisions. The more important the decision, generally the higher level and salary of the professional. To make informed decisions on information systems, or the design of new systems requires a deeper understanding of the technology and its context than just the ability to use a technology.
The idea of cooperative work experiences, paid or unpaid, is a great one, but again...where do you fit it into the already overflowing 36-credit curriculum?
We really can't have it both ways. We can't give a well-rounded education that incorporates both theory and practical aspects of technology, *and* try to accomplish that and all the other aspects of a professional education in the one-year master's degree.
On another topic, I seriously doubt that segregating the student voice from the discussions in progress would in any way benefit this list. Nor do I understand why, if we suffer from the same limited, partial views as our educators, that we should be the ones excluded! As students, we are directly affected by the decisions our professors make about what is important to teach and what is less so. Current students and recent graduates are probably in the best position to provide feedback about ramifications of these decisions. In fact, I would argue that our input is essential to this discussion, and to the whole process of curriculum revision now going on in so many library schools.
>input is essential to this discussion, and to the whole process of curriculum revision now going on in so many library schools.
UMich seems to have an active student organization and I was thinking that, perhaps, a list run by students for student input to CRISTAL-ED might attract more comment.
Recently, a member of my doctoral qualifying examining committee provided me the opportunity to reflect on "redesigning LIS curriculum" with particular attention to new technologies and to adult learning theory. The following summarizes of some of the thinking that resulted from that question and from recent comments within this forum.
Our field has a rich history of the efforts of LIS educators and their "stakeholders" to the design, to implement, and then redesign the curriculum The Cristal-ed forum has facilitated a global forum to continue to consider current LIS work and information environments along with issues relating to the rapid convergence of telecommunications, information, computing, and multimedia. To plan any major change project one must first ask, "Why change?" Contributors to this list and to both the electronic and print literature have offered a variety of compelling reasons to support the urgency for swift, but deliberate redirection of LIS education. The phenomenon of information is changing at a pace with which most of us cannot keep up. Even those of us with the skills and the time to make frequent forays onto the Internet fail to keep up. There are some patterns or trends that we consider in a curriculum redesign project.
First, it seems to me that many leaders in the profession call for a new kind of employee (our students? ourselves?) This "model LIS professional" must be equipped to confidently face the rapid pace of change. The LIS professional must be able to understand and to be inquisitive about changing views of the purposes and goals library activities and services. Additionally, the new information professional/librarian/cyberian must be able to "participate fully along side educators, researchers and publishers in the process of information transfer" (Malinconico, 1993). Is LIS education facilitating this kind of development?
As our understanding of the "library" itself continues to evolve. Where should the librarian-mediator-information professional-cyberian-advisor focus his or her time? Hale (1991) wrote that librarian's tasks should refocus from the collection (acquiring, organizing, managing) to the use of information by users. Dervin (1977) calls for new research goals for LIS professions. Instead of asking questions of how are we doing with existing activities, how many of our books are circulating? Instead of counting, measuring activities, LIS professionals should study the nature and use of information. How do library/information users access information? How can we, the librarian-cyberian-information professionals, participate in the information transfer process? Dervin urges that we change our library service model from a "persuasion model" (based no doubt on the missionary zeal of Dewey and Ortega y Gasset) to a model of intersection or intervention with the library client's use of information. As educators how do we construct a learning environment that provides our students with new ways not only to participate in the process of networked information, but also to prepare them to contribute to, shape, and recreate digital resources on the Internet. Are we currently preparing our students (or ourselves?) for this new age, called by Leebaert (1991) not "information-based" but "information-transfigured."
It appears to me that LIS educators must shape a curriculum that facilitates student development of specific skills. (I use deliberately the word skills, but not to spark a debate of "is it training or is it education?") The skills, in my humble opinion, should be cultivated from the perspective of a generalist: one who can understand and contribute to an information world where disciplinary and technological boundaries continue to blur. These skills also should equip students to become life-long learners; "generative learners" (creative, flexible, innovative, improvisational) rather than "adaptive learners" (coping).
Every course in LIS curriculum should contribute to the development of: skills -- practical, cognitive, theoretical or philosophical; and a perspective of both historical and contemporary issues. Technology and its inclusion in LIS curriculum must become both a tool for provision and operation of LIS services, but also an object of study and an opportunity for cognitive and conceptual development. Specific learning goals might include the following:
Practical skills might include how to:
My observation is that schools of library and information science have not fully recognized the significance of the off-campus phenomenon and have not developed preservice and continuing professional education to sensitize librarians to the special needs of faculty and students at remote sites. To explore the topic as a possible library education issue requiring implementation activities in the curriculum, a survey of all ALA accredited SLIS in the United States and Canada was conducted in 1991 to gather baseline data on the extent to which this emerging topic is currently represented in the curriculum of LIS. Findings from that study indicate that the topic is minimally represented and of low priority for most deans and directors.
Library support for distant learners raises issues for SLIS and would benefit from inclusion in this multifaceted discussion of library education.
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