Many thanks to Kathleen Koontz for leading our discussion on "Attracting Minority Students." I had been searching for a guest editor for such a topic for a long time. When Kathleen volunteered to be our guest editor for this topic, I jumped at the opportunity. We have had a fruitful discussion and thank Kathleen for being our guest editor. In view of the message traffic on this topic, we should visit it again in the future. Thanks again to Kathleen for assuming the job of guest editor.
We now turn to a discussion of "Accreditation." Several people suggested this topic during our open discussion period but none came forward immediately to lead the discussion. How pleased I was when Paul Doty volunteered to be our guest editor. Paul is no stranger to our CRISTAL-ED discussion. Last April he led a CRISTAL-Ed discussion on "Retrievers to Rhetoricians." Paul is the information literacy librarian at the University of Wisconsin-Superior. Over the last couple of years, his thinking on librarianship and technology has been molded by Sven Birkerts, Brenda Laurel, Neil Postman, and frequent walks along the shore of Lake Superior.
Please join us in a discussion of "Accreditation."
At this point and time one can question whether the American Library Association is responsive to this dynamic. While the 1992 Accreditation Standards speak to curriculums responding "to the needs of a rapidly changing technological and global society," the term "needs" is not defined. In a much more recent statement on library education, Executive Director of the ALA Elizabeth Martinez envisioned a "cybercentury" where librarians become "Internauts" ushering in a "Netopia." The ALA's role in this transition is "simulat(ing) a massive, national, collaborative program to educate librarians to become twenty-first century cybernauts." (see cites below)
While Gene Roddenberry might approve, this vision ignores political, economic, and commercial pressures that are in fact creating Cyberurbia. In reading this one has to assume that Ms. Martinez sees a seamless world of technology, while in fact it seems obvious to me that the technological future is going to be more of a jumble than the technological present. In this scenario, isn't the best information science program the one that produces graduates who can speak to Internet dreams while being prepared to manage the politics and economics of a corporate information world?
Given the speed at which political perception and corporate structure change within the information industry, is a slow accreditation process irrelevant? In times of unrelenting change, isn't the mark (and marketing) of a good program the resumes of the graduates who can manage the techno-mess into something people can use, and can ALA approval come in time to foster this end? Another conclusion one can draw from this mix of change is that instruction from across the curriculum needs to be the core of information science programs, not a nice addendum. Is ALA accreditation a reasonable platform to evaluate an Information Science program that is configured with economists, sociologists, communications scholars, and computer scientists? Is the real question, perhaps, about the composition of the committees that do the evaluation?
In a CRISTAL-ED post of January 27, 1997, James Sweetland noted that public perception of libraries can sift down through accreditation. Perhaps the accreditation process can become a public venue where an accurate composite of information professionals is made. It might be a method, for example, in educating people to why it is important for "library schools" to rename so as to drop the word "library." Perhaps even beyond "educating," should an emerging accreditation body take a more proactive role and use accreditation to develop specific guidelines that reward innovation, and, perhaps, discontinue programs that are intransigent?
I hope have struck a chord that can start a discussion. Other questions to consider might include:
Martinez, E. (1997) "Education of Librarians: What is ALA's Role?" American Libraries. January, p. 28.
American Library Association. (1992) "Standards for Accreditation of Master's Programs in Library and Information Studies." Online. Internet. Available: http://www.ala.org/accreditation.html. p. 10.
It is my view that librarianship, as practiced, now involves three mutually supportive, but substantially separate, "professions." These are:
The third, one might say, grew naturally out of the first as catalog books and files gave way to systems so complex as to require training in their own right.
These all, as a practical matter, are related but in my opinion are now so different that they can be regarded as separate professions. So I am not at all willing to believe that a standard can be written which incorporates elements of all three. My "bottom line" is that people whose training is spread too thin to be useful in any one area are hardly worth calling professionals, which makes hiring individuals with non-library degrees ever more attractive.
There may come a time when the technology is so "transparent" and "user-friendly" that the third "profession" is no longer particularly useful, but I agree with Paul that this isn't likely to be the case any time soon.
This is an interesting post of a recurring topic in LIS academic issues. Paul writes from perspectives which among others, highlight the change dynamic which is a given in the information technology industry, suggest some of the potential contradiction surrounding a "library" association accrediting programs which are increasingly attempting to be "information" focused with library applications as being just one of the many "information professional" avenues of engagement (and employment), and pinpoint certain issues which are thrown into this arena which are completely new (e.g. that of IT based distant ed. programs)
With historical circumstances regarding ALA accreditation a given, one must consider the following:
The problems here are severalfold and I will only accent but a few and offer but an idea or two.
http://sims.berkeley.edu/~vanhouse/panda.html
as well as what Thomas Galvin suggests in his 'Convergence or Divergence' article at:http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Aug-95/galvin.html
The authors speak about the interest in "information" and it's various commercial attractions which in turn, is provoking new interests by other non IS or LIS academic parties. All of this perhaps obvious and perhaps, albeit still reasonably new, old hat to some. They speak of a potential doom given certain trends, and yes, thankfully, fully heard by those such as UMich and Kellogg who are keen to these developments.
The upshot then is accrediting ambitions are trying to peg a moving target. Moreover they (accrediting bodies) are working from an old, albeit increasingly flexible structure. Sue Martin of Georgetown U. once suggested closer examination of certification issues in LIS education. We should not dismiss such perspective nor should we sell out to current market trends.
Rumor has it that a generic MBA is still more valuable than one specializing in a subset of the business administration education. We can learn from this example. Accreditation should value and evaluate those courses, programs etc. which are both time (and technologically) independent, as well as those which demonstrate the kind of dynamic flexibility and state of the art applications which Paul notes.
What I would ask, is that, with the great rush from the "L" word which Herb White so questioned sometime back in LJ, what is left in distinction from the growing sea of "information" training and programs of study? Moreover then, is a library association up to the challenge of extracting the "time tested" criteria worthy of retention and the rapidly changing IT arena to which we increasingly are trying to reclaim? Can we have it both ways?
Optimists would say "surely we can try," pessimists might say, "we'll see." I would suggest the former.
Thanks to Bob Watson and Robert Bauchspies for thoughtful and interesting posts in response to my Accreditation introduction. By way of kindling more discussion I would offer the following for consideration: information technology is sold to educators and state wide education agencies by promising to reduce cost and eliminate the "barrier of time and place" in learning. Now if these assertions are going to be treated as anything more than advertising rhetoric, "information professionals" should be trained to carry out cost effective implementation of technology, and to create distance learning research resources. It would seem like an opportunity then for the accreditation process to position itself to ensure that graduates of "Information Science" programs are conversant in analyzing the costs of running systems and planning for networked technologies. It follow from here that the accreditation committees would need to draw from faculty in several disciplines, individuals from the software industry, librarians involved in planning and distance education, and students to make an accurate assessment on whether a program is indeed preparing people to carry out these goals.
I hope CRISTAL-ED subscribers see a thread in this assertion worth a comment.
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