The control and direction of professional education

Abstract

The author begins by advancing several hypotheses regarding forces transforming schools of library and information science (LIS) into schools of information (SI). After applying the “social worlds” concepts of Anselm Strauss to the process, he addresses the amalgam of idealistic and self-serving motivations underlying faculty advocacy of the “information” model for LIS education. Among these motivations is a rational response to university norms for research. Less positively, the author discerns a now-stereotypical striving by “nonlibrary” faculty in professional schools to refashion programs to reflect their “home” disciplines. This latter strategy seeks to retain the stability in enrollment and restriction in competition for supplying certain library markets that results from American Library Association accreditation. It is stressed that the price for such “information” transformation is a further distancing of full-time faculty from the worlds of practice. The author also addresses the errors flowing from the misapplication of ecological theory to LIS professional education. As an alternative, he advocates an intensified interest in—as well as support of—all aspects of LIS education by the many worlds of LIS practice. He further argues that a cultural model of LIS better positions both the “library” and “information” professions for a new millennium.