LIS Program Part of UB Shakeup

COA grants UB conditional accreditation, continues others’ status

By Andrew Albanese & Norman Oder -- Library Journal, 08/15/2006

The University at Buffalo’s (UB) Department of Library and Information Studies (DLIS), NY, will become part of the Graduate School of Education next fall, and the Department of Communication, which with DLIS has constituted the UB School of Informatics, will return to the College of Arts and Sciences upon the dissolution of the School of Informatics. The decision was explained as a realignment, but former Informatics dean W. David Penniman criticized the move.

According to Penniman, provost Satish K. Tripathi had refused to free up resources to support faculty at the school and misled him regarding plans to close it. Business First of Buffalo reported that some corporate supporters, including AT&T, which had provided more than $400,000 for the school, had asked the university to reconsider the decision.

The Committee on Accreditation (COA) of the American Library Association (ALA) has granted conditional accreditation to the Master of Library Science offered at UB, though the decision was unrelated to the dissolution of the School of Informatics. According to a University of Buffalo statement, “The DLIS faculty has already begun meeting to develop a plan for addressing the issues identified by the COA.”

Also, COA will continue the accreditation of the following graduate programs, with the next program review scheduled for 2013: Master of Library and Information Studies offered by the School of Information Studies, University of Alberta, Edmonton; Master of Library Science offered by the College of Information Studies, University of Maryland, College Park; Master of Science offered by the School of Library and Information Sciences, University of North Texas, Denton; and Master of Library and Information Science offered by the School of Information Sciences, University of Pittsburgh.