Whenever the LIS education debate has popped up over the years, one "side" in the debate has tended to use loaded words like "chasm" and "crisis" to describe the state of LIS education, without knowing if there really are problems with LIS education. One can make the case that there are fewer library-oriented LIS faculty (and library-oriented LIS doctoral students) than there used to be. And one can say that LIS program offerings are less library-centric than in the olden days, even though future librarians still represent a large chunk of the student body. But this doesn't necessarily mean that LIS schools are doing a poor job of preparing future librarians.

 

LIS education proponents on the other "side" can make the case that librarianship is simply a subset of information science writ large, and that LIS schools prepare students to work in a wide variety of information organizations. But this doesn't necessarily mean that LIS schools are doing a good job of preparing future librarians.

 

Librarianship has undergone significant change over the 20 years or so. LIS education has changed quite a bit as well. One would think that, given significant changes in both practice AND education, both groups would be interested in assessing the effectiveness of LIS education in the preparation of the librarians of the future. I doubt that there truly is a "chasm" or a "crisis", but that doesn't mean that LIS programs can't do things to improve the librarian education part of their enterprise...especially when librarian education is a significant part of that enterprise.

 

I'd like to turn back to the suggestion John Unsworth made in the iSchool/iCaucus response to the ALA Library Education Task Force report: "... to conduct empirical research leading to a genuine understanding of the needs of the profession and to consider how those needs are, or are not, being met by programs such as ours." That seems like a common sense approach. With all the change over the past couple of decades in both practice and education, who knows? LIS schools just might find some areas for improvement in librarian preparation. And the naysayers just might discover that the "crisis" isn't as big as they think it is. I still think a research project like this would be a natural for funding by an organization like, say, IMLS.

 

In the meantime, maybe some people on one side of the debate can stop using loaded terms like "chasm" or "crisis" without first demonstrating that there truly is a chasm or crisis. That doesn't help. And maybe some proponents of the other side could stop treating those with concerns about LIS education as if they were fools. That doesn't help either.

 

Bernie Sloan