Future LIS Education and Evolving Global Competency Requirements for the Digital Information Environment: An Epistemological Overview

Abstract

In the context of an evolving digitally-oriented library and/or information science (LIS) discipline and framed by Andrew Abbott’s Chaos of Disciplines theory, this article presents an epistemological overview of evolving competency requirements for a global digital information environment and the implications of this for future LIS education. In doing so it draws from both an international case study of ongoing research by the IFLA BSLISE (Building Strong LIS Education) Working Group into the development of an international framework for the assessment of quality standards in LIS education and a national (South African) case study involving the compilation of an LIS competency index in a highly digitally oriented information environment. The Chaos of Disciplines theory was originally conceptualized to demonstrate the evolution of disciplines in the social sciences. Its core principles of the interstitial character of a discipline and fractal distinctions in time are employed as a heuristic tool to connect the empirical evidence from these two purposively selected case studies to the inherent nature of the LIS discipline and the implications of this for competency requirements for professional practice in a highly digitized global information environment and for future LIS education responding to these competency exigencies.