From the issue dated April 7, 2000

In Revamped Library Schools, Information Trumps Books Institutions' new curricula and new names reflect student interests and the job market By KATHERINE S. MANGAN Ann Arbor, Mich. Before he enrolled in what used to be the library school at the University of Michigan here, Daniel Bree spent months trudging through Bolivia ALSO SEE: Join an online discussion on the changing curricula at library schools creating a documentary video about tropical birds and plants. A comparative-literature major with a knack for computers, he went on to become a Webmaster for a public-health company. He's the kind of eclectic student the university prides itself on attracting since the library school was remade to embrace a broad array of information specialties. Today, students seeking master's degrees in information at Michigan represent more than 50 majors, and only about a third of the program's graduates will become traditional librarians. A growing number of them are preparing for jobs with newfangled titles like information architect and intelligence manager. Michigan's School of Information, as it is now known, is part of a trend that is making some librarians shudder in their stacks. Increasingly, library studies are making way for specialties that train students for high-tech careers in which skills at handling and organizing vast amounts of information are in great demand. A few schools broadened their missions well before the World Wide Web came into existence, but the pace of change has picked up in the past five years, as library schools have struggled to keep up with rapid changes in information and information technology. In his current job, Mr. Bree is typical of the new breed of information professional. After receiving his master's degree last year, he went to work as as a "knowledge liaison" for Scient Inc., a San Francisco-based start-up that advises companies on how to sell on the Internet. He devises business strategies for his clients after analyzing the market and the competition. While some of Michigan's recent graduates still pursue traditional library jobs, the numbers who do so are shrinking -- down from 58 percent in 1997 to about 33 percent last year, according to estimates. Critics of the curriculum shift accuse some library schools of abandoning their commitment to traditional library studies. Officials of Michigan and other schools respond that library studies remains an important component of their curricula, and that they they are building on the role of the librarian, not trying to replace it. In fact, they argue, the graduate who takes a job handling a corporation's World Wide Web site is likely to face many of the same issues, and draw on the same skills, as does a former classmate who is working in a public library. "The amount of electronic information is doubling every 60 minutes," says John L. King, dean of Michigan's School of Information. "How do you decide what to keep and what not to keep? What is the value of the information? Librarians have been dealing with these issues for years, although computer scientists get all the glory." Mr. King should know -- he's a computer scientist himself. He became the school's dean in January. The library school's transformation began in 1992, when Daniel E. Atkins was brought in as dean with orders to rebuild it. University officials "felt there was a need for a new professional with the technological prowess of a computer scientist but the heart and soul of a librarian," says Mr. Atkins, a former dean of Michigan's School of Engineering, who now teaches in the School of Information. "The fact that an engineer was appointed dean was pretty shocking, but most people gave me the benefit of the doubt." Under Mr. Atkins, the school assembled scholars from throughout the university to create a program that would examine how information is used in a variety of settings and how people and businesses are affected by the digital economy. Today, computer scientists and librarians at Michigan work alongside sociologists, economists, and engineers. Under the new curriculum, unveiled in 1997, Michigan students receive a master's of science in information with a specialty in one of four areas. In addition to traditional fields, like "library and information services" and "archives and records management," students can specialize in "human-computer interaction" or "information economics, management, and policy." Variations on those themes are cropping up at library schools around the country. Among the universities that have revamped their library schools are Drexel University, Indiana University at Bloomington, Syracuse University, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the University of Pittsburgh. The changes have proved popular with prospective students. At many of the schools with revised programs, applications and enrollments have increased. "The schools that are going to remain viable are the ones that have adapted their view of library to include the broader range of information providers," says Raymond F. van Dran, dean of Syracuse's School of Information Studies. It dropped "library" from its name in 1974, outraging many alumni and librarians elsewhere. "We were sitting here waiting for the information revolution to hit long before it actually did," Mr. van Dran says. "Now that it's here, other universities are jumping on the bandwagon and saying, 'This is hot stuff.'" Such talk rankles some traditional librarians, who say that the schools are going overboard in their eagerness to embrace new technology and trendy careers. "What I'm concerned about is that during this change, some programs seem to feel it's necessary to downgrade the concept of library, which was deeply rooted in their origins, and to shift toward preparing professionals to work in the commercial-information sector," says John N. Berry III, editor in chief of the trade publication Library Journal. "The emphasis on library studies is downgraded, because the other is newer and sexier and possibly more lucrative." Some faculty members who come from library backgrounds resent the influx of scholars from other fields, particularly when the newer, technology-related specialties overshadow their own. Three faculty members from Berkeley and Indiana, who declined to be identified, said library professors sometimes feel like second-class citizens when universities trumpet their newer, high-tech offerings. While administrators at schools like Michigan's insist that their new course offerings don't diminish their commitment to library studies at all, they acknowledge that integrating two widely divergent cultures -- that of the traditional library student and that of the student pursuing a potentially lucrative high-tech career -- can present a challenge. "When I was there, there was definitely a tension between those who had come for a traditional library education and people who had been attracted by everything else," says Mr. Bree, who was part of the first class to attend Michigan's revamped School of Information, starting in 1997. For his part, he didn't appreciate having to learn so many library-related skills -- when he had no intention of going to work in a library -- even while some of his classmates, who did plan to work in libraries, resented the program's new technological requirements. What had attracted Mr. Bree in the first place was the fact that the new program drew from so many disciplines and covered such diverse ground. "I wanted to go to graduate school, but my interests are all over the place -- international studies, film and video production, public policy, computers," he says. "I wanted something that combines all of those." While students were flocking to the new program, some alumni and library advocates were crying foul. "People were saying, 'What's going on? You're not graduating librarians anymore? You took the "L" out of your name,'" says Joan C. Durrance, a professor of information who has taught at the school for nearly 20 years. "They felt we had turned on them." Mr. Atkins, who came in to help broaden the school's focus, says the school has had to work hard to dispel that notion. "The library activities are still alive and well, but we've added new degrees," he says. "The simplistic view is that we're focusing on technology rather than people, but it's not an either/or situation." In 1992, when Mr. Atkins took over as dean, the library school had an annual operating budget of $1-million, compared with the current $12-million. "It was too small to be sustainable for the long haul," he says. At the time, many library schools around the country were struggling; Columbia University and the University of Chicago had recently closed theirs, and Berkeley's was down to six full-time faculty members. While Michigan was beefing up its program with a $5-million grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and $2-million more from the university, Berkeley took a different approach. It suspended admission to its library-and-information school in 1993, and reopened it four years later as the School of Information Management and Systems. The decision to suspend admissions coincided with a statewide recession that resulted in the slashing of public-library positions in California. And the school's decision to not seek accreditation from the American Library Association was to many a clear indication that it no longer considered itself a library school and was moving in a new direction -- straight toward Silicon Valley. "You can't train people for jobs that aren't there," says the dean, Hal Varian. Even though the school continues to train some students for library careers, more are heading to high-tech companies, where it's not unusual to earn a starting salary of $90,000 -- far above that of a typical librarian, he says. A similar shift is taking place at Indiana University at Bloomington, where clashes between the old and the new have prompted the dean, Blaise Cronin, to hold faculty retreats and to encourage joint projects in research and teaching. "It's another version of the culture wars, but on a slightly smaller scale," he says. Despite the tumult, Indiana's revamping created new opportunities for interdisciplinary research, he says. "We have raised the scholarly and research bar. In some ways, the vocational and practical are taking more of a back seat, and people in the world of practice aren't always happy with that." The critics, he says, "feel there's a stampede off to novelty, and in the process, the tried and trusted is being given short shrift." Accreditors at the American Library Association, for their part, seem unperturbed by the sea change. They accredited the Michigan program last year and have approved other programs that do not focus exclusively on libraries. "The profession might go into an uproar if we accredit an information-technology program that makes no mention of library in the title -- but if it meets our standards, there's no reason we shouldn't," says Ann L. O'Neill, director of accreditation. "Any program or curriculum that deals with information and how people handle it have aspects in common. They're all concerned with how information will be retrieved, how you organize and select information, how people get information out of a database. The basic underlying issues are the same." http://chronicle.com Section: Information Technology Page: A43 Easy-to-print version E-mail this article