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Since Bill Crowley directed his response to
"All and Bernie in Particular", I thought I should probably reply.
I've grown very weary of the "Is there a chasm between LIS education and professional practice?" question. Seeing the question once again, posed in the context of yet another ALA Forum on Library
Education, pushed me to the tipping point. In the process of replying I blurred the distinction between two issues:
1. Is there a "chasm" or "gap" between library practitioners and LIS educators? Well, yeah, there's often a gap between educators and practitioners, in many fields. There are those who "teach" and
those who "do", and never the twain shall meet (this is a slight exaggeration for the sake of example). Some library practitioners today complain that many LIS educators don't really know much about libraries, which is a valid point. But 35 years ago, when
I was getting my MLS, my fellow students and I had similar complaints. The faculty may have had library backgrounds, but they hadn't actually been practicising librarians in quite a while. I'm willing to accept that there is some sort of gap
My “information” friends—and I DO have information friends—often respond to the “Is there a chasm between LIS education and professional practice?” question with a variant of the “No, it’s all information science. End of discussion” argument. This is only to be expected since there are certain questions whose answers cannot be ascertained through quantitative surveys. If you want a simple answer I would suggest determining whether or not “library” and “information” practitioners and those “academic practitioners” who often teach in and administer —without library experience—LIS programs share the same professional cultures. The short answer is many do not. Culture and co-cultures, the foundations of both science and practice, can be learned from e-books but are really learned through living it. I go into this issue more in both Spanning the Theory-practice Divide in Library and Information Science (2005) and Renewing Professional Librarianship(2008).
If you want to go the longer route of “scientifically” determining the existence of a chasm—or lack of one—here is what you do. You get millions and millions of dollars to hire a lot of cultural anthropologists, many “Chicago School” sociologists (if you can find them), and a lot of folklore scholars. They you have them read a lot of issues of Library Journal, School Library Journal, VOOYA, American Libraries, and the equivalent information and knowledge management practitioner journals. Then you send them to every LIS school, give them every course syllabi, and let them “sit in” on weeks of F2F and online LIS classes to determine if the syllabus and classroom activities match the instruction needed and required professional learning. Then you send them out to do more such participant –observation and numerous interviews with managers and new librarians to determine if the LIS educational mix actually matches library-information-knowledge realities. (BTW, I did a thesis on the professional folklore of night-school education for a master’s degree at Ohio State University in the 1990s and can testify that is involved here is a LOT of time on subject. )
You could do all of the above and then find out that the intellectual lenses used by some of those who actually read the study will not allow them to accept the reality of the results. For the reasons why this is so, you might want to revisit Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions or the old legal truism of determining who benefits from asserting that a particular belief is true. (Jobs anyone?)
In short, a lot of work can be done with conclusions accepted or rejected on the basis of what benefits the reader the most. It can be irritating but it is very human.
Best wishes, Bill
Bill Crowley, Ph.D. Professor Graduate School of Library and Information Science Dominican University 7900 West Division Street River Forest, IL 60305 708.524.6513 v 708.524.6657 f [log in to unmask]" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">[log in to unmask]
From: Open Lib/Info Sci Education Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of B.G. Sloan
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