Library and Information Science Doctoral Education: The Landscape from 1930-2007
Bibliographic record
Abstract
To anticipate future trends for doctoral education in library and information science (LIS), we examine historical progression and current landscape of doctoral degree programs in United States and Canada. By providing a comprehensive rendering of history and current state of LIS doctoral education, this work provides data not previously available. Data for this work come from MPACT, a database that provides listings of 3,014 LIS dissertations conferred by 38 ALA-accredited schools between 1930 and 2007. This work discusses degrees offered and focuses on changes in landscape within last ten years, in addition to an evaluation of schools that produce future faculty for ALISE institutions. Results confirm health and activity of LIS doctoral programs in North America. Keywords: education, LIS history, dissertations, survey, MPACT, doctoral education Introduction The doctor of philosophy in library and information science (LIS) originated as a research degree within a professional school - creating from beginning perpetual argument of whether information and library science is primarily a practicing profession or a researching discipline. Professionalization of library science arguably occurred in latter part of nineteenth century, marked by formation of American Library Association and establishment of Library Journal in 1876 (Brough, 1972). This was followed in 1887 by foundation of School of Library Economy at Columbia College by Melvil Dewey. Further formalization of library science as a discipline occurred during early twentieth century with organization of Association of American Library Schools (1915), formation of Board of Education for Librarianship by American Library Association (1923), and foundation of Graduate Library School at of Chicago in 1926 (Houser & Schrader, 1978). The Graduate Library School at of Chicago heralded a new standard in library education. Prior to opening of this school, degrees were defined by number of years of given programs; for example, Board of Education for Librarianship defined a Bachelor of Arts degree plus one year of study as a professional degree and a Bachelor of Arts degree plus two years of study as a degree. There was also considerable debate over need for professional degrees of Bachelor of Library Science, Master of Library Science, and Doctor of Library Science. The Graduate Library School was chartered in order to provide what some claimed had not been previously provided: facilities for development of cultural, literary, bibliographical, and sociological aspects of librarianship as a learned profession built upon ideals and charged with responsibilities as definite and as vital in their implications as those of any other learned profession, and requiring similar academic preparation to insure its highest development . . . [this school] . . . should be an organic member of a university group, with background, atmosphere, resources, and equipment afforded by such affiliation. (Lester, 1940, p. 6) As this was first school for library science, none of founding faculty held doctoral degrees in librarianship. Instead, their backgrounds included degrees in higher education, history, and theology (Houser & Schrader, 1978). However, they all stressed need for research in education of librarians - one faculty member remarking that graduate work means research, and research means extension of boundaries of knowledge (p. 42). Another faculty member asserted that the most important single responsibility of School is to meet standards of scholarship and research maintained by other departments of University (Houser & Schrader, 1978, p. 43). In this way, Graduate Library School championed idea that research and a theory-based education could serve needs of practicing professionals and would be a necessary component of professionalization (Houser & Schrader, 1978, pp. …
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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 | 0.006 | 0.017 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.009 | 0.021 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.001 |
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".