I'm not so much worried about the lack of master's level thesis work.
Honestly, I think I've only ever cited two of them in any
presentation/work I did. I'm more worried about what the faculty and to
a lesser, but related, extent PhD students. With the movement to
iSchools, schools dropping Library from their name, and many LIS schools
hiring a large portion of their professors from outside LIS, I am quite
concerned about the future of librarianship as an academic discipline.
To be clear, I am not necessarily saying that I am concered about the
future of librarianship as a profession -- I think that is a different
issue/discussion altogether.
Edward
Sharon Foster wrote:
> This is an area that definitely needs an overhaul. At my school--and
> maybe at some others, I'm guessing--a one-semester research and
> evaluation class takes the place of a master's thesis. At least one
> paper gets published almost every semester, so I know it's not
> impossible, but in general I think it's very difficult to come up with
> a topic that is interesting, important, useful, and doable in one
> semester. People I've spoken to who graduated 10 or more years ago
> were not even required to take the research and evaluation class.
>
> Can we take a quick straw poll here? How many of you who have an MLS
> (or variations thereon) had to write a thesis, or, if it wasn't called
> that, do a major research project? How long did you get to complete
> it? Rather than clutter up the list, you can reply to me and I will
> aggregate the results.
>
> Sharon M. Foster, 91.7% Librarian
> Speaker-to-Computers
> http://www.vsa-software.com/mlsportfolio/
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 11:27 PM, B.G. Sloan <bgsloan2_at_yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> Ross Singer said:
>>
>> "I guess the question that comes up in my mind again and again to this
>> issue is, 'where are the library schools in all this'...Where is the research and the scholarship and the experimentation and the proofs-of-concept from the academy that can be applied to the real world environments?"
>>
>> I thing Ross raises a DAMN good question here. Where ARE the LIS schools in this discussion??
>>
>> Bernie Sloan
>> Sora Associates
>> Bloomington, IN
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
Received on Thu Mar 12 2009 - 08:57:15 EDT