Education for library and information studies in Canada: a cross‐cultural comparison
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Purpose This paper aims to highlight the unique characteristics and homogeneity of the Canadian accredited programs in library and information studies compared with those programs in the USA. Design/methodology/approach Each year the Association for Library and Information Science (ALISE) collects statistics from accredited graduate programs. By disaggregating the American and Canadian information and limiting the data to the accredited degree program only, comparisons could be drawn between the two data sets. The generalizations and themes were then validated by comparison with the recent history of development of Canadian schools. Findings The history of development of Canadian graduate programs and the national context has resulted in programs that are more homogenous than diverse. The programs are housed in public research institutions, with competition for spaces. The students are full‐time, studying a curriculum with more required courses. Faculty have more time for research. Access is an issue. The profession is generally satisfied, but points to inadequacies in education for management and favors more internships. Research limitations/implications While commenting on developments and trends the report relies primarily on three secondary sources, thus creating a snapshot. Practical implications The separation of Canadian and American models allows for greater attention to national approaches providing a beginning point for discussion, analysis and suggestions for further study. Originality/value This paper is based on a presentation to the ALA President's Forum on International Library Education in June, 2006. Both American and Canadian participants demonstrated limited knowledge of the subject and urged publication. No such explication has appeared previously.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.014 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.009 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".