Reflection on: “Australian Professional Library and Information Studies Education Programs: Changing Structure and Content”

Introduction

Our 2004 paper presented statistical and other data on professional-level Australian Library and Information Studies (LIS) education over the period 1991–2003 inclusive. This reflection paper updates some of the previous information and goes on to revisit several points addressed in the 2004 discussion which are still of concern 12 years later. We use the same terminology as those in our earlier paper: LIS professional program, LIS school, program and course. As there is only one remaining LIS school, we also use the term LIS unit to avoid confusion with School or Study Area incorporating LIS units in 2016 (see Table 1). No attempt is made to list or discuss Teacher Librarianship (TL) accredited courses other than to state that the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA, 2016b) lists only two universities offering TL courses: Charles Sturt University and Queensland University of Technology. Finally, we have extended our reflection to include updates on LIS academics and the research landscape of LIS in Australia (Wilson, Boell, Kennan, & Willard, 2011, 2012; Wilson, Kennan, Boell, & Willard, 2012; Wilson, Kennan, Willard, & Boell, 2010; Willard, Kennan, Wilson, & White, 2008).

Table 1. Australian universities offering accredited first professional LIS programs in 2016.^a

State: university	Faculty, division or college	School or study area	Program	Undergraduate Bachelor (delivery modes and duration)	Postgraduate Diploma (delivery modes and duration)	Postgraduate Master (delivery modes and duration)
NSW: Charles Sturt University (CSU)	Faculty of Education	School of Information Studies		Bachelor of Information Studies (online; 6 years PT)	^bEARLY EXIT from Master’s	Master of Information Studies (online; 1.5 years FT, 3 years PT)
NSW: University of Technology, Sydney (UTS)	Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences	School of Communication	Digital Information Management	See below^c	Graduate Diploma in Digital Information Management (on-campus; 1 year FT or PT equivalence)	Master of Digital Information Management (on-campus; 1.5 years FT or PT equivalence)
QLD: Queensland University of Technology (QUT)	Science and Engineering Faculty	Information Technology	Library and Information Practice		^bEARLY EXIT from Master’s	Master of Information Science – Library and Information Practice (online and on-campus; 2 years FT; 4 years PT)
SA: University of South Australia (UniSA)	Division of IT, Engineering and the Environment	School of Information Technology & Mathematical Sciences	Library and Information Management		Graduate Diploma of Information Management – Library and Information Management (online and on-campus; 1 year FT or PT equivalence)	Master of Information Management – Library and Information Management (online and on-campus; 2 years FT or PT equivalence)
VIC: Monash University (Monash)	Faculty of Information Technology	Caulfield School of Information Technology	Information & Knowledge Management; Business Information Systems		Graduate Diploma of Information and Knowledge Management (online and on-campus; 1 year FT, 2 years PT)	Master of Business Information Systems – Librarianship and Information Science (online and on-campus; 1, 1.5 or 2 years FT or PT equivalence)^d
VIC: RMIT University (RMIT)	College of Business	School of Business Information Technology & Logistics	Information Management		See below^e	Master of Information Management (online and on-campus; 1.5 or 2 years FT or PT equivalence)^e
WA: Curtin University (Curtin)	Faculty of Humanities	School of Media, Culture & Creative Arts	Information Studies	Bachelor of Arts – Librarianship and Corporate Information Management (online and on-campus; 3 years FT or PT equivalence)	Graduate Diploma in Information and Library Studies (online and on-campus; 1 year FT or PT equivalence)	Master of Information Management (online and on-campus; 2 years FT or PT equivalence)

^a Information from ALIA (2016b) and from websites of the seven universities.

^b EARLY EXIT is interpreted to mean that students have to enrol in a Master’s program initially; perhaps there is a phasing out of the Graduate Diploma in favour of the Master’s degree in line with LIS professional qualifications in the US.

^c ALIA (2016b) states NO FURTHER INTAKE; we assume that the LIS undergraduate program closed in 2016.

^d Duration depends on prior qualifications (e.g. three-year bachelor's degree or four-year honours degree – see entry requirements).

^e RMIT website online (2016) for Graduate Diploma in Information Management refers to the Master’s program for more information (http://www.rmit.edu.au/study-with-us/levels-of-study/postgraduate-study/graduate-diplomas/gd088/); 1.5 years with advanced standing, generally an Australian bachelor’s degree in business related program; two years without advanced standing.

Too many schools

One of our concluding comments was that, despite the closures and amalgamations which had occurred to that time, there were probably still too many schools. In 1978, Australia had 19 LIS schools: two in universities and 17 in the (then) colleges of advanced education (Wilson, Boell et al., 2012). However, by 2003 there were 12 LIS schools offering 32 programs; 10 LIS schools in 2008 (Wilson, Kennan et al., 2012); and nine universities in 2016 (ALIA, 2016a). Of the nine universities currently listed in ALIA’s website (2016b), the University of Canberra and Edith Cowan University stated ‘NO FURTHER INTAKE’ leaving seven universities with 13 programs for the 2017 student intake. The seven universities are listed in Table 1 along with their academic homes, program titles, academic levels, delivery modes (online or on-campus; full-time/FT or part-time/PT), and duration in year(s) of ALIA accredited first professional programs in 2016.

The number of schools over the past decades has been charted and commented upon by others before and after us. Upon reflection, we see that Australian LIS education has struggled rather than bloomed and that some hard decisions about the rationalisation of programs still have to be addressed. The closures which have occurred over the decades have taken place from weak positions of low student and academic staff numbers and there has been little or no flow-on effect of exporting the redundant LIS academics into continuing LIS schools or programs to further enrich them.

Academic homes

In addition to the closures associated with student and academic size numbers, our 2004 paper discussed some of the consequences of the 1989 Unified National System in Australian higher education. One outcome involved finding homes for the small discrete units which almost all former LIS schools had been. It seems that some placements, with some LIS schools (or programs) experiencing more than one movement, were more satisfactory than others. Table 1 shows the 2016 academic homes of the seven LIS units: three are in Humanities/Arts and Social Sciences (Education; Communication; Media, Culture & Creative Arts); three are in Science and Engineering (mainly Information Technology); and one in Business (IT & Logistics). Notably, only one university has a standalone school entirely for Information Studies while six are programs within larger sectors such as School or Study Area. On the surface, new academic homes offered opportunities to expand teaching and research horizons and homes with an IT focus fitted in with many of the increasingly important concerns in our field; but it was probably the commitment to take in the LIS unit which was the most important determinant of the success of an amalgamation in the beginning. However, a positive welcoming environment would not protect LIS units against falling enrolments.

Academic programs

In 2003, eight of the 12 LIS units offered Bachelor’s degrees mostly of three years full-time equivalence; however in 2016 only two of the seven universities offered undergraduate LIS programs (see Table 1). In contrast, only one half of the 12 LIS units offered Master’s degrees in 2003, but now all seven offer Master’s degrees under various academic degree designations (and sub-designations), indicating the emphasis or focus of study: Information Studies; Information Management (Library and Information Management); Information Science (Library and Information Practice); Business Information Systems (Librarianship and Information Science); and recently, Digital Information Management. Increasingly, the trend is towards pursuing a Master’s degree of 1.5 or 2 years full-time equivalence rather than a Bachelor’s degree. In addition, all seven universities offer full-time and part-time enrolments with five delivering courses in both online and on-campus modes; one offering online only while another has on-campus only (see Table 1). Finally, all seven LIS units offer PhD degrees, often in collaboration with allied programs in their academic homes.

Diversity or dilution

The broader School or Study Area into which most LIS units were integrated offered diversity in courses students could select and provided co-supervision in research programs; however, the consequence of required core courses in, for example, a Master of Business Information Systems, meant a dilution (or reduction) of LIS courses to fit the finite number of hours of courses and programs. Anecdotally, we hear from information professionals in libraries that some recent LIS graduates often lack (assumed) basic knowledge of LIS principles and practices, and therefore need lengthy orientation and/or on-the-job training.

Too few students

Hallam (2007) presented university student enrolment data for the period 1996–2005 which showed an initial decline followed by stabilization for postgraduate enrolments and a steep decline in undergraduate enrolments. Our earlier data had suggested undergraduate programs were declining in popularity. In 2016, only two universities offer undergraduate LIS programs: CSU and Curtin (see Table 1). ALIA annual course enrolment returns for 2005 reported about 2500 enrolled students (Hallam, 2007).

More recent data for enrolments in ALIA accredited courses for the period 2009–2014 show an increase between 2009 and 2011, from 706 students in 2009 to 962 students in 2011. For the next three years, the figure is virtually static: 1000 students in 2014 (ALIA, 2016a). An accompanying figure of the breakdown of LIS higher education student numbers by academic level for 2005–2014 shows a fluctuation in postgraduate numbers though similar numbers at either end (600 students in 2005 and 603 students in 2014). Over this period, the trajectory for undergraduate enrolled students is downwards (532 students in 2005 and 356 students in 2014). Interestingly, Charles Sturt University indicates that there are over 2,000 students in their School of Information Studies in 2016 (www.csu.edu.au/faculty/education/sis/home). Besides LIS students in accredited ALIA programs, the 2,000+ students presumably include those enrolled in other programs, such as: Teacher Librarianship; Graduate Certificates in Information Studies and in Audiovisual Archiving; Masters in Knowledge Networks and Digital Innovation; and PhDs. Student enrolment figures for the other six universities were not found in their 2016 websites or in ALIA publications.

LIS appears to be in the position of being a small niche market. An outward-looking orientation is necessary for survival in a rapidly changing digital world; however, to hope that changes to programs and courses will attract a substantially wider student base is unrealistic if past experience is considered. Over many years, small numbers of graduates have taken positions beyond traditional roles but the majority of graduates still go into traditional roles such as library-related work (Australian Learning & Teaching Council, 2011). However, more recently ALIA (2014) stated that, inter alia, ‘[i]n university and special libraries, there is an increased role for information professionals in the research field’.

Academic librarians, Drummond and Wartho (2009), described the formation of the Research Impact Measurement Service at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) to meet the needs of ‘the increasingly competitive nature of the research environment’ in academia and uses bibliometric techniques to produce individual and institutional comparative reports. The UNSW Library redeployed staff from other library service sectors for research support as well as for improving traditional library activities such as collection development. Another initiative was undertaken by Griffith University when the Library redefined ‘… core library services to provide an integrated end-to-end service to support research outcomes. These services support researchers throughout the research life cycle: from idea discovery, grant application, research data management, e-research, and the management of research outputs’ (Bosanquet, 2010).

Further afield, a recent (2016) job description for a Scholarly Communications Librarian at University College Dublin (https://www.ucd.ie/) stated the first principal duty and responsibility was to ‘[d]evelop a range of services to address the need for high-level bibliometric support for research assessment and other purposes, for example, quality review processes … collection development …’.

Too few academic staff

LIS schools not having a critical mass of teaching staff have been a part of the Australian LIS education scene. We commented on this in our 2004 paper and pursued it in great detail in a later paper which examined an extensive collection of data on many aspects of LIS academic staff to show, inter alia, a picture of the falling staff size in LIS teaching units from 1960 to 2008 (Wilson et al., 2010; Wilson, Kennan et al., 2012). Briefly, in 1978, there were approximately 167 academics in 19 LIS schools and by 2008 there were 64 academics in 10 LIS programs and/or schools. For 2016, we estimated about 55 LIS-related academics in seven LIS units. Other than CSU, the remaining six universities required close scrutiny of their websites to uncover academics in the larger sectors (Faculty, School or Study Area) to determine teaching staff involved in LIS-related programs and courses. There were many research visitors/adjuncts who may teach in LIS programs; however, we counted only resident university academics, full-time or part-time, who taught at least one LIS-related course. For example, CSU, School of Information Studies lists 18 academics and 39 adjuncts (http://arts-ed.csu.edu.au/schools/sis/staff); the other six universities each had from four to nine academic staff according to our estimate.

LIS research landscape

Our earlier (Willard et al., 2008; Wilson et al., 2010, 2011; Wilson, Boell et al., 2012; Wilson, Kennan et al., 2012) and current findings lead to a somewhat negative impact for the LIS research landscape and publication profiles of LIS academics in Australia, despite the fact that there has been an increase in the percentage of LIS academics with PhDs: 63% of the 64 academics in 2008 and 85% of the 55 academics in 2016. The report by the Australian Research Council, Excellence in Research for Australia for Library and Information Studies (Field of Research code 0807) gave ratings for only five Universities, one of which ceased offering LIS programs a decade ago: one was ‘above world standard’; two were ‘at world standard’; two were ‘below world standard’; and three of the seven (current) universities offering LIS programs were ‘not assessed’ (ERA, 2015).

It has not been an easy time for LIS educators who, despite being a small cohort, have had to adjust within their institutions at program level (e.g. by embracing online and part-time teaching to accommodate students’ demands) and at individual levels, through greater academic research and publication achievements. Detailed data and discussions on research and publications of LIS academics are presented in our earlier papers (Willard et al., 2008; Wilson et al., 2010, 2011; Wilson, Boell et al., 2012; Wilson, Kennan et al., 2012) with updates and expansion from an environmental scan of Australian LIS-related research from 2005 to 2013 by Middleton and Yates (2014). More recently, a three-year research project funded by the Australian Research Council (http://www.arc.gov.au/2015-linkage-projects) was launched in March 2016 involving the University of Southern Queensland, CSU, ALIA, and National and State Libraries Australasia (Partridge & Given, 2016). The project is aimed at ‘encouraging and enabling research culture and practice in Australia’s library and information profession … the “practitioner-researcher” approach to professional practice’.

What next?

Several expressions of concern and possible paths forward have been suggested; some more easily implemented than others. For example, ALIA’s New Generation Advisory Committee stated that graduate librarians need to come from diverse educational backgrounds in order to evaluate and assess the quality of information in science and engineering as well as in the arts and social sciences. Furthermore, the Committee suggested that ‘library organisations could consider providing cadetships and selling library careers to graduates from different degree areas as a way of actively recruiting into the library profession’ (ALIA, 2014).

Cadetship in Australian libraries is not a new initiative and a revival movement is afoot; for example, Macquarie University Library (https://www.mq.edu.au/about/campus-services-and-facilities/library) has ‘established a 12 month Library Graduate Internship role to provide hands on experience to a wide range of professional tasks within the Library setting’. In 2009, the University of Melbourne implemented the Library’s professional cadetship program by creating positions in ‘relevant discipline library service delivery and academic liaison’ activities for cadets undertaking an LIS program (Kealy, 2009). Deakin University Library’s cadet program looked at ways of preserving ‘valuable knowledge’ of an ageing library professional workforce as well as attracting new information professionals to lead libraries into the future (Orme, 2011).

For LIS graduates to span a diverse range of information, recruiting for LIS academics must precede the process. For example, in July 2016, The Royal School of Library and Information Science in Denmark (http://iva.ku.dk/english/) advertised an Assistant Professorship in Bibliometrics position and ‘emphasized that RSLIS is dedicated to developing the field of Information Science in new ways that will integrate the study of information with the study of contextual, social, philosophical or cultural issues’ … and that the ‘successful applicant must be capable of and interested in putting teaching and research in bibliometrics into interplay with such issues’.

Harvey (2011), in an update of concern expressed in an earlier paper about disciplinary identity – another recurring theme in the literature – stated a belief that looking to America and positioning developments in the iSchool space could provide direction for Australian LIS units. Jank, Chu, and Koenig (2013) provide a history of the iSchool Caucus which was formed in 2005 and had 17 institutions with LIS education units having strong emphasis on IT. By 2012 there were 37 institutions, 29 from LIS disciplines, five from computer science including UniSA (School of Computer & Information Science) and three from management information systems schools. The University of Melbourne (Melbourne School of Information), with no ALIA accredited LIS program, was included among the 29 institutions from LIS disciplines. In 2015 a ‘tiered membership structure that better reflects the makeup and aspiration of … schools’ was formed and has ‘more than 75 schools worldwide’ (http://ischools.org/members/apply-to-join/). CSU (School of Information Studies) and the University of Melbourne (Melbourne School of Information) are Tier-2 members and the UniSA (School of Information Technology and Mathematical Sciences) is a Tier-3 member. Of interest to note is the conceptual diversity and growing internationalisation of the Information discipline in Australian universities.

Aside from the rigorous research and research funding guidelines of iSchool membership, LIS units need strong commitment to all aspects of information and not just libraries. The suggestion of ALIA’s New Generation Advisory Committee could be a start towards an Australian presence among the international iSchools, albeit with a more modest expectation of research funding.

A further outreach of Australian LIS education and educators is membership and participation in the Consortium of iSchools Asia Pacific, CiSAP established in 2008 (http://www.cisap.asia/). Five of the seven universities are members: CSU, UTS, Monash, QUT and Curtin. Presence in both the international and regional iSchools contribute to the visibility and future viability of LIS education in Australia. Additionally, Curtin University offers all three of its programs through OUA, Open Universities Australia (see for example, https://www.open.edu.au/courses/arts/curtin-university-master-of-information-management–cur-inm-mas-2017); thus, extending online and/or distant Australian LIS education globally.

A project begun a couple of years earlier which was supported by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (2011) also provides some direction. This investigation, which looks at students and workforce demands in addition to education, identified once again problems to do with school size and staffing, disciplinary identity and appropriateness of school fit within institutions. A particular value of this report arises from the fact that its preparation was supported by a non-LIS body; the partner institutions were the parent institutions of LIS schools and the project team was drawn from the staff of LIS schools providing an ownership of proposals. In addition to the concerns expressed above, this report also gave consideration to other areas: the blurring of boundaries between professional and support staff and the relevance and mechanisms of accreditation. Partridge and Yates (2012) included the report’s major recommendations for education and reminded readers of the pressing nature of issues facing LIS education and thus provides some hope that action will follow.

Conclusion

This brief reflection on our 2004 paper again raises the issue of the number of schools noting that while the number of schools has decreased so too has the size of the student body and the number of associated academic staff. These realities viewed together with developments in information technology and changes in higher education funding, priorities and program delivery methods have placed the LIS field in a very turbulent environment. LIS school responses have been to increase flexibility in program structure and delivery and for academic staff to increase scholarly output in research and publication. Over the past five or six years, ALIA has taken initiatives in reviewing the accreditation process and the encouragement of more member involvement, a hopeful sign for the future. This paper has opined that LIS in Australia must now be seen as a niche market comprised of several segments. This latter point can be clearly witnessed in the response within workplaces to their environmental demands for it is clear that different work environments call for appropriately targeted responses and getting these right is a key ingredient for survival.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Patricia Willard taught for many years in the School of Information, Library and Archive Studies (SILAS) at the UNSW, the university which awarded her doctorate. After retiring from her full-time position of senior lecturer, she continued for more than a decade pursuing as a consultant for the Bibliometric and Informetric Research Group (BIRG) a major area of her research interest: the environmental changes experienced by LIS schools, the changing demands of the workplaces graduates enter and the early career experiences of graduates. In addition to publication in this area, she also contributed to research and publication in areas related to public librarianship.

Concepción S. Wilson is a visiting professorial fellow in the School of Information Systems and Technology Management (SISTM) at the UNSW where she taught, inter alia information retrieval, health informatics and knowledge generation in the former Information Management program. She holds a doctorate in Information Science and has published extensively in major LIS, medical and information systems journals. Her major research interests include: the adoption of e-text in academia; bibliometric analysis of scientific literatures; productivity and performance in academic and research institutions; and LIS education and educators.

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the comments and helpful suggestions of the anonymous reviewers and the editors of AARL.