Education for Academic Information Professionals
Many MLS programs have in recent years been organized as parts of schools that also offer degrees in information, communication, or education. This week brought news of the proposal that the Graduate School of Library and Informations Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign be revamped as the School of Information Sciences. In many cases, the programs are not blended strategically but rather managed largely separately. Library education programs typically offer a program of study that is designed for all possible professional directions, including school, public, academic, and special libraries. In an issue brief on education for research librarians Deanna Marcum pointed out that, as libraries move away from tangible collections as their organizing principle, the types of education that librarians need will vary more and more across these various professional environments. With this context, I wonder if there are other ways that should be considered to organize library education programs.
Another approach would be to create a program that educates information professionals for academia and in particular for research environments. In rough terms, this might include earlier phases that focus on academia and later phases that focus on information work in that sector.
The earlier phases’ focus on academia would teach about the higher education sector and its various sub-sectors, the governance and funding models that shape it and how they are shifting, the evolution in pedagogy currently underway, the fields of research and study that are waxing and waning, and the new directions that research practices and scholarly communication are taking. It would teach these concepts not from the perspective of the library but from that of the university and the higher education sector.
Some library programs may do a good job of covering some of these issues in an academic libraries course, but many programs provide too little education specific to the academic sector for their students. Library programs create librarians; university libraries need professionals who can serve as university citizens. For students with an interest in becoming information professionals for academia, I wonder if starting with a firm grounding in academia would be valuable.
In later phases of study, the program would focus on the information work that is needed and will be needed to support academia. This would include librarianship, of course, but might also provide an education needed to staff various roles in instructional technology, research support services, IT, and academic publishing. Imagine providing an education that would be equally valuable to a commercial publishing strategist or a scholarly communications librarian; equally valuable to a discovery and access librarian and a product manager for a discovery service; equally valuable to a GIS librarian and the GIS specialist in an academic department; equally valuable to textbook publishers and to OER providers; equally valuable to an assessment librarian or a business intelligence professional at a vendor; and equally valuable to an engineer/developer wherever they are working in these communities. There is commonality in educational needs across all these roles, and also a variety of specializations that could be provided.
Allowing students to defer determining whether they would be an academic “librarian” or another type of academic/scholarly information professional until they are in the program would entirely flip the nature of how the pipeline into academic libraries works. There are undoubtedly tradeoffs to this decision, but our current pipeline is the outcome of a variety of contingencies and it is worth examining how another pipeline might be different.
I suggest these ideas without intending them as a criticism of existing programs or their dedicated faculty members. I am really reflecting on the structural environment in which library education takes place, wondering if it could be improved in a way that would bring greater coherence to programs and greater value to academic employers, while empowering instructors and enriching students. What do you think?
There are also numerous practical considerations, from business models for such a new type of program to accreditation, many of which would not be simple to address. If there is interest, I will write additional posts about alternative structures and some of their challenges and limitations.
Comments
This is an interesting thought process. I think that switching the timeline for your proposed program would make for a better education experience for MLIS (and other variations) students. My concern is that by expecting students to focus on academia immediately upon starting their degree program, they may feel trapped in that field. Focusing first on the basics of information stewardship, research support, etc. in broader terms allows students the freedom to explore concentrations a bit (in my experience, most MLIS don't know exactly what sub-field of librarianship they're interested in before entering a program). I do like the idea of asking people to definitively choose a sub-field of librarianship at some point in the program and then training them on that field, it should just be a question of when do to that.
The last time I checked many LIS programs did not even have an academic librarianship course. Others that do have them taught by full-time faculty members who may have limited experience working in academic libraries. At one time I partnered with an LIS faculty member to propose a "blended librarian" track - a dual-degree program in LIS and Instructional Technology (where a separate masters program was offered in the college of education). The idea was to create the type of specialized professional - with career prospects in academic libraries - that you mention. Dual degree programs might offer another possibility though students may hesitate to spend even more time and money on their degrees. I taught the academic librarianship course for a number of years. What seemed most valuable to the students was the project that got them out into academic libraries, meeting and connecting with academic librarians - finding out what they did, the issues, etc. Perhaps there is a way to create that type of experience opportunity for LIS students who express an interest in the academic track. Beyond that, what I'd like to see all LIS programs doing is integrating more design thinking into their curriculum. More on that here: http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2014/11/opinion/steven-bell/mld-masters-in-library-design-not-science-from-the-bell-tower/
You really should read the University of Maryland's Re-Envisioning the MLS report based on their year-long initiative. Came out in August 2015 and you can find copies and more information at hackmls.umd.edu. While this post focuses specifically on Academic libraries, their report suggests revamping the entire degree. Worth a read.
I find the idea of specialized tracks in the LIS degree very problematic. Aside from the very real possibility of fragmenting a profession that too often seeks out cliches of like organizations or creating a tighter connection between librarians and institutional libraries it is based on a VERY dangerous assumption: all academic libraries are alike. I have a very hard time saying that a one-librarian community college library is more like Harvard than it is like a high school library. Or that a one person public library has more in common with New York Public than a community college. Already public libraries are supporting college students from online programs. Already academic libraries are supporting community outreach. The change in skills and competencies should be more about identifying and serving cultures and communities be those academic culture or municipal communities. The power of librarianship is to act as a "meta" knowledge profession. In academia that serves us well in that we can serve and connect faculty and students across stove piped disciplines. It also serves us well in working across library types. A push to move from specific skills training to larger conceptual approaches is a strength of LIS programs (and sure there are plenty of weaknesses). By teaching "information organization" versus "MARC cataloging," we had a profession ready to invent and move to linked data and the Dublin core. We need to think broader, not in divisions.
One last thought (ran out of room). By introducing more field work into the LIS curriculum we can allow the kind of specialization suggested without division at the professional level. Beyond internships, this could be real world labs writhing the core classes (take reference and as part of the class work in an academic setting on a reference practice assignment). We (LIS education) need to break the semester long 3 credit straight jacket and build field work into every class. I leave with one example of where the kind of tracks is hurting the field. An example I stole from on Scott Walter. Why do we have separate ideas of Information literacy at the higher education level that has been largely uninformed by at least 2 decades of information literacy development in school libraries. Do 18 year olds really change their entire way of learning over the summer between high school senior and college freshmen?
Interesting ideas--and the comments add a lot to the conversation. Although I haven't researched or given a lot of thought to LIS curricula, I have noticed some skills gaps in what we assert we can do and what it seems we've been prepared to do as a profession. These gaps include an awareness of different epistemologies and research methods both as they apply to our own work, and to supporting students and faculty in their research in academic environments. Steven Bell suggests exposure to design thinking, which I agree would be valuable. What about comparing and contrasting design thinking with anthropological methods such as work practice observation? As for the early tracking you suggest, I would be curious to know how many people know which sector they will be working in when they enter a program. I also think about a number of high profile people in the profession who have switched sectors during their careers. Perhaps the answer is to introduce people to what various sectors involve at the beginning and offer in-depth courses later in the curriculum for people who think they know where they will seek employment. The availability of post masters certificates in digital libraries recognizes the need for and value of additional education to develop proficiency in this specialization. I think the profession could benefit from a variety of post-masters certificate programs and perhaps a stronger expectation of continuing education or certification.
Thanks to Peter Brantley, the new Dir of Online Strategy at the UC Davis libraries, for sending out an alert with a link to this thread. Roger Schoenfeld is onto something with this idea about the need to try and produce librarians schooled in the ways of the research enterprise. But David Lanke’s concern about uniting rather than dividing is also legitimate, and there is a way to get these two seemingly opposing viewpoints together. Katherine Kott’s reference to anthropological method provides a clue of how this might be accomplished, since ethnography enables us to study cultures, and that’s what is at stake here. Schoenfeld’s view could be glossed as the idea that we need a way to get some prospective librarians knowledgeable about what we could call the culture of inquiry, or the world of systematic investigation, with its own range of subcultural styles. On the other hand, the culture of inquiry doesn’t exhaust the relevant spectrum, since there is a stretch of library use that falls outside of it. Call this, for the moment anyway, the culture of enrichment, a range broad enough to include the activities of general readers who read for amusement, and those who, while not pursuing scientific goals, nonetheless want to be broadly informed and challenged. Ethnography could provide the means that would enable librarians to study the styles of these different kinds of users.
The thought experiment here seems to be about UNITING the information professions in higher education. Many have commented on the problems of TRACKS in librarianship. But, there are also problems with having separate tracks in the information professions. Is there a way to UNITE academic librarianship with both the other information professionals in higher education and with librarianship serving other communities? If so, that seems to me the strongest approach. But, if not, then I agree wholeheartedly that we should discuss further which integration is better for the academic community that academic librarianship engages and whether education for academic librarianship should be re-thought. Given the number of academic librarians who pursue degrees in higher education, have attended Frye/Leadering Change, etc. - it appears that the need to integrate into higher education is felt by many.