The End of the Standalone "Library School"

Beginning in 1982, when the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Rutgers University was incorporated into the School of Communication, Information and Library Science, more and more "independent," standalone LIS programs have been incorporated into larger academic units. By the end of 2001, 17 of the 56 American Library Association (ALA)–accredited LIS programs—nearly a third—had experienced a similar fate. This trend is more sweeping than the library school closings of an earlier period, which received much more attention.

While starting slowly in the 1980s, the trend accelerated in the 1990s, especially in the second half of the decade. Indeed, since our study was completed last year, the College of Library and Information Science at the University of South Carolina is being incorporated into a larger unit, the College of Mass Communications and Information Studies. It consists of the School of Journalism and Mass Communications and the School of Library and Information Studies. The four finalists for dean were all from the communications side, which is not surprising since the LIS program is half the size of its partner.

A similar process is underway at the University of Tennessee. The die is nearly cast for the creation of a new academic unit to include the College of Communication and its four departments (Advertising, Speech Communication, Journalism and Public Relations, and Broadcast) with the School of Information Sciences and several other smaller components. The changes in South Carolina and Tennessee mean that the incorporation trend now involves more than a third of ALA-accredited LIS programs.

This phenomenon has less to do with the map of scholarship and the place of LIS education on campus than the basic question of size. Library schools almost inevitably end up as junior partners to larger programs. The alternative is for the schools to expand from their core, as exemplified by such aggressive LIS programs as the University of Washington Information School and the Syracuse University School of Information Studies, NY. This is less common but becoming more frequent.

There's not one main partnership pattern but two: schools in the communications/journalism/media cluster (six cases, plus the latest two mentioned above) and schools of education (also six cases). Also, two programs have been merged with a faculty of graduate studies and one with management. The increasingly technical nature of LIS education and LIS work has not been reflected in these partnerships; only two became part of computer science programs.

When LIS schools are incorporated into larger units, there are five distinct configurations (in order by frequency):

• The LIS School is the junior partner in a merger with a preexisting, usually larger, dominant unit (six).
• The LIS School is a junior partner in a newly established unit (five, plus the latest two).
• Repositioning or relocation (only the reporting relationship changes), but no merger, within the academy (three).
• The LIS School is an equal partner in old or new unit (two, but see comment below).
• The LIS School is the senior partner in a newly established unit (one).

It is clear that LIS programs do not typically emerge as the top dog in the reorganization. In only one of the 17 reorganizations, at Long Island University (LIU, where we work), was that the case. And this is the exception that proves the rule; LIU has two large, nearly autonomous campuses: Brookville (the C.W. Post campus) and Brooklyn. The Palmer School (the LIS program) is located on the C.W. Post campus, while there are computer science programs at both. The reorganization occurred at Post between the Palmer School and the department of Computer Science and Management Engineering. At a more conventional institution with a single main campus, the computer science department likely would have been the larger and senior partner.

In two cases, at Rutgers and Western Ontario, the LIS unit could be described as an equal partner. Still, in both the dean had not been selected from the LIS side, and respondents indicated that their successors were not likely to come from the LIS side. In Buffalo, the new dean of the incorporated program, W. David Penniman, has a strong LIS background—former head of the Council on Library and Information Resources and the American Society for Information Science and Technology—but not a library degree.

A parallel phenomenon has emerged at standalone Information Schools, such as at the University of Pittsburgh, where the new dean, Ronald Larsen, has a strong background in digital library issues but not a library degree.

South Carolina and Tennessee both represent incorporation with a larger partner, where the dean will come from the field of communications. In South Carolina, the new dean is Charles Bierbauer, former chief Washington correspondent for CNN. Still, the LIS program had much involvement in the design and structuring of the new entity.

Behind the phenomenon is size—or more accurately, the LIS schools' lack of it. In almost all cases, the incorporation was driven by administrators at academic VP level and above, aiming to simplify the organizational structure of the university. Thankfully, there seems no particular pattern of disdain for LIS education. Indeed, in several cases the LIS program was only one of several small programs ordered to merge.

The merger directive came in two equally common forms: either the LIS was told with whom to merge, or it was told to find a prospect and arrange its own merger. Interestingly, at least at the higher administrative levels, perception of intellectual or scholarly similarity between LIS programs and other programs such as communications/media or computer science seem to have played very little role. Even when the LIS program was directed to find a partner, the choice depended far more upon local political issues than subject "fit." Administrators want to reduce overhead. Deans are much more expensive than department heads, and reducing their number reduces overhead.

In South Carolina, the driving force again was size. The new structure is a consequence of a universitywide review of academic structure and governance that was undertaken specifically with an eye to administrative rationalization and the elimination of small units through incorporation into or with other units. The LIS program saw the handwriting on the wall. LIS leaders then proposed Communication and Mass Media as the partner because it was a good intellectual fit, the two schools already had some significant level of cooperation, and it gave LIS access to Communication and Mass Media's doctoral program.

In no case was the incorporation driven by the territorial ambition of a predatory neighbor, and in only one case, at Rutgers, did the respondents feel (and not unanimously) that they had been somewhat outmaneuvered by their partner.

It is perhaps not coincidental that Rutgers was the first of these incorporations. In subsequent cases, perhaps because they were more on guard, the respondents did not report similar feelings. At LIU, the incorporation was suggested by the units involved, LIS and Computer Science, but in almost all the other cases it was driven by administrators.

There's significant corroborating evidence for our thesis that size rules. Compare schools in this study, those incorporated into larger units, with the 14 LIS (or in one case, former LIS) schools that tend to describe themselves as "I Schools" or Information Schools. These 14 are represented at IT (Information Technology) Deans meetings, regularly scheduled but relatively informal gatherings held under the auspices of the Computing Research Association. (The association is a nonprofit organization, with some 190 members, mostly universities, whose mission is the support of computing research.)

The IT Deans special interest group focuses on the growth of IT programs that are broader and more holistic than traditional computer science programs and that tend to emphasize IT applications rather than IT creation and construction (i.e., not so programming or hardware oriented). These programs tend to be at the undergraduate level.

More than 40 institutions were represented at the past two IT Deans meeting. These 14 are listed in Figure 3, alongside the list of the newly "incorporated" LIS programs. There is some overlap between the two lists—a few of the newly incorporated LIS schools went to the deans meetings. LIU is an anomaly on the "incorporated" list because it is the senior partner in the new entity. Albany attended the IT Deans meeting because it was in the process of considering an undergraduate program and because it feared another administration-directed reorganization. Buffalo came on board in 2002, after the incorporation, and was represented by a newly appointed dean. Dalhousie was represented by the head of the faculty of computer science, not the unit at Dalhousie into which the LIS unit was incorporated. Hawaii was represented by someone from the computer science department, not by someone from the larger unit. If we subtract these anomalies, then there is no appreciable overlap between the two lists.

The obvious conclusion is that those LIS schools that have pursued policies of growth, initiating broader non-LIS programs, have not been incorporated into larger units. Size and initiative count.

Faculty in these programs say that the effects of mergers have been comparatively minor. The LIS programs continue to operate as relatively discrete units. Indeed one of the most striking findings from the study is the overall lack of significant blending, mixing, or cross-disciplinary effects resulting from the incorporation. The only obvious negative consequence of the incorporation is that the LIS program's chief typically drops in status from dean to department chair. Despite this, the status of the LIS program on campus is perceived to be little changed, and faculty morale has been generally unaffected.

Somewhat surprisingly, the incorporations are reported to have had little effect upon curriculum innovation, and little change in student enrollment in the ALA-accredited MLIS is reported. On the positive side, resource availability is seen to have improved slightly, and the intellectual environment appears a bit more stimulating.

Also, all respondents felt that the long-term survival prospects of the LIS program have been enhanced. Finally, in comparison between incorporation into schools of education and schools of communication, there was no evidence that either scenario was better or worse. The aggregate of these results is clearly not negative.

As we have said, the key determinant in this phenomenon is size. We can't attribute this trend to a change of perception as to where LIS fits in the Information Age intellectual landscape.

In time, there likely will be only two major types of LIS programs: those that have developed new degree programs and have grown in size and scope from their LIS base and those that have been integrated into larger units. The day of the standalone LIS school with only one product—the ALA-accredited master's degree—is over. The only likely exception will be in the cases of LIS programs housed in small parent institutions in which the academic span of control is already very small.

Whether the change is self-directed (as with the I Schools) or largely unwilling (as with mergers and incorporations), the ALA-accredited master's degree is becoming one of several degrees offered by a larger academic unit no longer devoted to one degree or one constituency.