---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 25 Nov 2012 15:19:15 -0500
From: Blanche Woolls <[log in to unmask]>


This conversation returns me to my early years in LS education when the
course "Education for Librarianship" was ably taught by Margaret Rufsvold
who had converted her BLS to an MLS and was presiding over my alma mater at
Indiana, both a school and an iSchool yet today or Haynes McMullen
(Graduate of the University of Chicago) who was the historian who taught me
that you should never try to write a biography about anyone who was not
dead enough. I'll be happy to discusss that definition with anyone another
time. The interesting thing was that the BLS was after the BA degree. I
hope this matches the information in the annals of history. Keith's book
should be easy to get a copy and check.

We learned that persons who were going to work as librarians needed to have
as much undergraduate education as possible to be well educated in the
liberal arts before entering the noble profession of librarianship. We
learned all about Mr. Dewey and his establishing library schools directed
by able women which seemed to turn the profession into one that was less
frequented by males even though they usually held the prime positions and
made the most money then and sometimes yet today.
What has always fascinated me was the basic education my father received.
He left high school after two years to take a job away from the farm where
his two older brothers were working. In his two years of high school, he
had read all of Shakespeare's plays while students today muddle through
Romeo and Juliet one year and occasionally are offered Hamlet. I have the
feeling he could have managed a libraryafer a very good apprenticeship.

Blanche Woolls, AB, MA, PhD
Director and Professor Emerita, San Jose State University
Professor Emerita, University of Pittsburgh



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Nancy Poole <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 7:12 AM
Subject: Fwd: History: MLS, MIS, MS, etc
To: [log in to unmask]


Hello all:

I believe Richardson's piece indicates that most schools of library science
had the MLS (replacing the BLS) by 1949 - prior to the ALA's 1951
standards. (Cite available in my previous note).

I can't imagine that anyone was purposefully leaving out the iSchools.
Courses on the history of education for librarianship are rare and
certainly not required (at any school of which I am aware)  to obtain the
PhD or MLIS/MIS/MSIS/MLS degrees - so how many of us are aware of the
history of the best-known schools (or their own) let alone that of other
schools?  Because they have had more press and were first in a number of
undertakings, Chicago and Columbia simply stand out more than Pittsburgh,
Syracuse, Washington, Illinois, and the others - apologies to the iSchools
I am leaving out here - but you *are* mentioned in the listings below.
Yes, current members of the iSchools Organization do have long individual
histories as  schools of information or library science - whether they
currently have ALA-accredited programs or not. iSchools as such have a much
shorter history - 2000/1 for the development of the name and philosophy and
2005 (the first iConference) for the official announcement, unless you want
to go back to the PIttsburgh-Drexel-Syracuse *Gang of Three* meetings in
the 80s. All of this information can be found on the iSchools Organization
website listed below.

The University of Wisconsin at Madison and Simmons University, not
iSchools, also have *accreditation* histories extending from the 1920s.
Some schools were accredited in the early days, then dropped out, then
re-emerged. My own university (UNC, Greensboro)  is one of those - our
program was accredited in 1929/30, when we were the North Carolina College
for Women and that is prior to our sister school - UNC-CH's SLIS  by a
couple of years - who's counting ;=) - We dropped out in 1934 and re-upped
50 years later. The program at St Catherine University was first accredited
in the 20s, dropped accreditation in 1959, and re-upped in 2009/10
according to the ALA website. Note I am referring only to accreditation
here. Many schools of library science appeared much earlier than the 1925
date that is the base year for the ALA accreditation information to which I
am referring. I'll let all of you old line folks provide the
pre-accreditation dates.

From ALA's website, here is the historical listing of *all *ALA-accredited
programs - http://www.ala.org/accreditedprograms/directory/historicallist

And here is the history of the origins of the iSchools Organization -
http://www.ischools.org/site/history/- which provides a listing of all
current iSchools.

Enjoy your weekend.



-- 


Nancy Poole
University of North Carolina
Greensboro, NC


*Status, while important in its own right, is reinforced through its
relationship to procedural justice because being treated fairly is, itself,
a recognition of status.  *

Robert Birnbaum (2004)