LIS Education in the Spotlight

When I saw a conference titled, “The Future of Library Information Science Education,” taking place right in my backyard of New York City on November 5th, I had to attend!

Michael Gorman, president elect, ALA, opened the seminar with an introductory talk on his perspective of “a crisis in LIS education.” His primary concern was a gap between an academic, research-focused education and the actual day-to-day life of the librarian.

Mr.Gorman suggested a new set of criteria for ALA accreditation, including a set of required core courses which all LIS programs would have to offer. Core knowledge which Mr.Gorman hopes these courses would incorporate are:

Three panels responded to Mr. Gorman’s perspective and proposed solution.

Educators challenged the concept of a crisis. Each one defended his or her school’s program. Many added that internship programs were designed to address the main issue Mr. Gorman mentioned -- a gap between academia, research and library work. Many felt that their programs did offer core courses, but did not necessarily agree with Mr. Gormans assessment of core knowledge for all graduates.

Employers agreed more with the concept of a “crisis in LIS education” than the educators. Certain areas which lacked sufficient preparation for the workplace were mentioned in particular. One participant cited the difficulty she was having hiring subject specialists. Another mentioned the lack of communications and social skills, emphasizing that librarians have to deal with the public, with difficult people at times, and with challenging situations which they are not well prepared for by their education. In each case the suggestion was made that an internship, or even more helpful, a variety of short internships in various roles, would help to close the gap between education and reality.

LIS students and recent graduates, which made up the third panel, had their own unique perspective. While they agreed that the internship is an appropriate answer to the dilemma Mr. Gorman addressed -- successfully identifying and executing an internship is a challenge. One student spoke of her “internship” being summer library jobs which she found on her own and used to augment her education without receiving any class credit for the work. Another emphasized the difficulty of orchestrating class schedules with internships, while trying to identify a specific internship program that aligned with the student’s professional goals.

The two most inspired moments of the day came when a librarian and a student each shared their journey to the path of librarianship. Librarianship, in many cases, is more of a calling than other professions, and the circumstances that lead to that “call” can be very moving.

During breaks and after the program I took the opportunity to speak with students, professors, and librarians regarding Bowker’s LIS initiative. The feedback was very positive. With this type of feedback in hand we are very excited to be able to roll out a program to as many schools as we can in the next few months.

Please sign up to take part in Bowker's NEW Library School Support Program. You are also invited to join us at ALISE if you are attending. Bowker will sponsor a morning Break with Bowker on Thursday, January 13th at 10 am right after the morning’s Plenary session. Sign up to receive online access for professors and students in order to facilitate teaching Bowker’s library-centric online databases and collection evaluation tools. One lucky library school will win a beautiful, unique banner for their own library.

We at Bowker picture ourselves as a part of the future of LIS educational programs. Going forward we aspire to see students graduating with a hands-on knowledge of the powerful professional tools we’ve developed to help librarians every day. I believe this will help to accomplish Mr. Gorman’s goal: to align education with the realities of the workplace, while at the same time enabling a richer research experience.