ABSTRACT
Australian library and information studies professional education experienced major changes over the past 15 years or so. There has been a growth in first professional level masters programs. Some schools have been involved in organisational relocation. Program structural changes have aimed to make programs more flexible and appealing to prospective students. These changes have not produced increased enrolmellls; rather, enrolments have fallen.
Australian Library and Information Studies (LIS) education has experienced many changes in recent years and the University of New South Wales School of Information Systems, Technology and Management has been keen to document some of them. A 1999 study investigated several areas, gathering data on school closures, amalgamations and organisational positioning as well as graduation rates and staff numbers. Footnote1 It did not look at change in programs though this was known to have occurred.
This study investigated LIS professional education program structure and content from 1991 to 2003. During this time there was substantial change following on from the 1988 Federal Government (Dawkins) tertiary education review and the introduction of the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) in 1989. Additional drivers for change included changing client demand, innovations in information technology and the desire of LIS educators to cater to a wider information management marketplace than the traditional one.
In 2003, 12 schools offered accredited LIS professional programs. Prior to 1960 there had been no generalist LIS programs in Australian tertiary institutions and while 1960 saw the first, it was in the 1970s that a rapid increase in the number of schools occurred. By the rnid -1980s concern was being expressed about the proliferation of schools and the small size of some of them. The Dawkins’ review of 1988 advocated the closure or amalgamation of small institutions and schools and the establishment of a tertiary education system comprised only of universities. As LIS schools were in most cases small, and in the majority of cases in colleges of advanced education (CAEs), some change was inevitable for many schools.
Entry-level professional education post-1960 includes undergraduate and postgraduate programs. The postgraduate diploma (POD), based on the British model, is comprised of one academic year of full-time study and the undergraduate degree of three or four years of full-time study. By the mid-1990s a number of schools were also offering entry-level masters programs.
Definitions
LIS professional program
This is a program accredited by the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) as providing an entry or first level professional education. Some schools enabled specialisation by taking courses from a particular stream, however if the streams were not reflected in their own degree titles, they have not been counted as separate programs. Teacher and school librarianship are grouped under School Librarianship. Programs awaiting accreditation (eg that at the University of Tasmania in 2003) and programs for which ALIA accreditation was not sought (eg archives and records management programs) are excluded. Advanced level masters programs (ie those designed for graduates with LIS first level professional qualifications) are not included as they are not first level professional programs. The terms LIS professional education and LIS education are used interchangeably.
LIS school
This is the unit responsible for the management of LIS programs and students. It may also offer other programs.
Program, Course
Program is the composite of requirements to obtain a degree; a course is a unit within a program.
Background Literature
Acknowledgement of the impact of various changes (eg tighter budgets, technological innovations, changing client and prospective student demands) has been part of the debate about LIS education in Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom for more than a decade. In addition, long-present topics like the relative importance to be placed on theory and practical skills and whether there is a LIS core, and if so, what it is, continue to be discussed.
Perusing the American literature for the past 15 years or so reveals a pessimism in the late eighties and early nineties about LIS education’s future, not surprising as there were school closures with reasons suggested including lack of university support, academic isolation, small size and a lower market
demand. Footnote2 The tone changed as the nineties progressed and more recently, views seem to reflect a belief that some schools have taken advantage of opportunities, focusing more on information and applications of information technology, and been strengthened by this. Hildreth and Koenig who studied 17 LIS schools involved in mergers or other organisational realignments over the period 1982 to 2001 found that some schools had survived by amalgamation with other disciplines; in most of these cases the LIS component had ended up the junior partner and it was too soon to know if it would prosper. They found that those LIS units which expanded aggressively into IT areas appeared to have fared better than those which maintained a more traditional focus, but there were still several strong, viable standalone LIS schools.Footnote3 The authors comment on the importance of the acculturation process for a successful merger noting that the more dissimilar the merger partners, the more critical this is. Unlike America, Great Britain has not experienced school closures but there have been mergers which it has been suggested run the risk of leading to schools which no longer convey the distinctive identity of LIS.Footnote4
Some of the pressures experienced in America and Britain have also been present in Australia. Some LIS schools were small and so were subject to institutional re-positioning post-Dawkins. Tuition fees have had a negative impact on enrolments, a situation which worsened when up-front cost -recovery fees for graduate coursework students were introduced from the late 90s. ALIA graduation rate data provided to the researchers for the period 1996-2003 shows a decline at both undergraduate and graduate levels (Bachelor: 1996 - 308; 2003- approx 259, and graduate: 1996- 588; 2003- 478; this includes seven graduates from a new PGD at the University of Tasmania which was awaiting ALIA accreditation). Falling enrolments were identified as drivers in curriculum change by two schools, with that at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology seeking to widen its appeal through the area of knowledge management. Footnote5 The location of LIS within merged schools should increase visibility to a wider potential audience; however, there is also a risk of losing visibility through the move into the new home where LIS becomes just one, and often a small one, of a number of academic areas. In practice, schools which have relocated into broader academic departments have found their staff required to offer courses to suit a wider target than only LIS.Footnote6
An underlying theme in the literature concerns boundaries and this has produced quite robust debate with some seeing a broadening of scope as enriching and beneficial (eg Van House and Sutton’s much cited 1996 paper arguing for a re-positioning of LIS education to cater to wider information demands than the traditional marketplace). Footnote7 Others see this as diluting the connection to libraries. LIS schools in Australia (and overseas) have largely voted with their feet about inclusion of the L-word in school titles, though in atleast some cases the disappearance may have been due to new academic homes not wanting it rather than LIS staff keen to jettison it. Accompanying the American debate about direction has been debate about the place and value of accreditation and Australia has also seen some reflection on this.
Van House and Sutton believed that the increasing awareness of the value of information made areas of information management, traditionally in the realm of LIS, attractive to other professions and their educators. A different slant was presented by Paris, who in discussing LIS school closures in the 1980s, claimed that ‘turf battles’ with other departments such as business and computer science had those schools seeing LIS as encroaching on their ‘turf’. Footnote8 The changing fortunes of LIS education have also been attributed to the diffusion of intermediary functions, previously the legitimate domain of LIS, and the consequent search for new grounds for practice.
The findings of the KALIPER (Kellogg-ALISE Information Professions and Education Renewal) project seem to have contributed to the more positive view of LIS education’s future in America mentioned above. KALIPER, which was funded by the Kellogg Foundation, investigated American and Canadian LIS education and in the words of its authors was ‘the most extensive examination of the library and information science (LIS) curriculum since the 1923 Williamson Report’.Footnote9 It was guided by academics from a range of North· American LIS schools with data gathered through a variety of methods including surveys, curricula analysis and interviews. The field was found to have undergone many positive curricula changes that were presented under the following trends:
Trend I: in addition to libraries as institutions and library-specific operations, Library and Information Science (LIS) curricula are addressing broad-based information environments and information problems.
Trend 2: while LIS curricula continue to incorporate perspectives from other disciplines, a distinct core has taken shape that is predominately user-centered.
Trend 3: LIS schools and programs are increasing the investment and infusion of information technology into their curricula.
Trend 4: LIS schools and programs are experimenting with the structure of specialization within the curriculum.
Trend 5: LIS schools and programs are offering instruction in different formats to provide students with greater flexibility.
Trend 6: LIS schools and programs are expanding their curricula by offering related degrees at the undergraduate, masters, and doctorallevels. Footnote10
A number of the identified catalysts for these changes have also been present in Australia namely, changing student and employer demands; the
growth and high cost of new technologies; internal institutional demands and positioning and competition from other LIS programs.
Study Method
LIS program structure and content over slightly more than a decade (1991-2003) were investigated. The focus was on three representative years: 1991, 1997 and 2003. 1991 was at the beginning of much of the post-Dawkins change (though there had been some closures and mergers preceding this date). For six or seven years from 1991, there was quite a high level of organisational change, with some schools relocating into new institutional settings and others repositioning within their institution; hence the choice of 1997. By 2003 most schools had been in their current home for at least several years.
The source for the identification of LIS first level professional programs was the ALIA listing of such programs. For 1991 and 1997, these sources were in brochure form and for 2003, there was a web page listing of courses. This ALIA listing included links to more information about each course and these sites provided varying amounts of additional data. Footnote11 Where necessary, university (and former college) handbooks (and also for 2003, web pages) were also consulted for additional information about the courses identified through the ALIA documentation. Information for 1991, 1997 and 2003 provided the bulk of the data. Sometimes (usually for the purpose of clarifying an ambiguity) data had to be sought from other sources, however the intention was always to minimise this type of expansion as it was likely to greatly increase the cost of, and time required for, data collection. The decision to work from the ALIA listing and not through surveying individual schools was based on beliefs that the listing should be accurate as schools provide the information to ALIA, and that this approach represented the best use of the limited resources available.
There were two stages of data analysis. The first produced a snapshot of several features of LIS education at the three time periods. The second stage, which was more labour intensive, was limited to graduate programs and looked at structural features. Undergraduate programs were excluded primarily in the belief that schools would place similar emphases in their undergraduate and graduate programs and also on consideration of the significantly larger workload their inclusion would bring. As the focus was generalist programs, schoollibrarianship was excluded from all but the overview stage, where it was included to provide a ‘complete’ picture as a starting point.
The second stage also involved an investigation of course names and descriptions with the intention of identifying changes over time. It was limited to compulsory courses. The nature of some programs made this inevitable as. for example, programs which permitted students to select their elective courses from any offering of the university. ALIA specifies content which must be covered to obtain accreditation which is usually in compulsory courses. Hence it was expected that there would be quite a lot of content overlap between programs and that some of the less mainstream content offered in some programs would not be picked up as it was in elective courses. Despite these limitations, and the fact that course descriptions varied in detail, it was believed that the analysis would be informative, throwing light on changing content and terminology. Word counting software was used in the analysis of course descriptions.Footnote12
Results
The analysis was handled in several steps with the first using data about the number and variety of accredited programs. This included school librarianship and undergraduate programs, excluded from subsequent consideration.
Undergraduate and Graduate Accredited Programs
Eleven of the 12 schools offered professional programs in all three years. The Northern Territory University (since January 2004, Charles Darwin University) was not doing so in 1991. In the two or three years preceding 1991 there were several school closures and mergers and their impacts were still being felt in 1991. Several small schools which were subject to closures and mergers after 1991 have not been included though as with the pre-1991 mergers there were impacts (eg imported programs and students) on new academic homes.
Table shows the frequency and the mix of programs by university. At the three time periods more than half of the schools (eight in 1991, seven in 1997 and 2003) offered undergraduate and postgraduate programs. The number of undergraduate programs declined over the period, attributable, at least in part, to mergers and the rationalisation of school offerings. The University of South Australia is an example: it experienced a merger in January 1991 which brought together five programs which by 2003 were reduced to one undergraduate and one postgraduate program.
Table 1. Frequency of ALIA Accredited First Professional Programs by Institution in the Three Periods.
While master’s programs proliferated, the PGD retained its appeal (14 in both 1991 and 2003). In 1991 one school offered a masters first professional program; in 1997, five offered at least one; and in 2003, six of the 12 offered at least one. This increase was assisted by program structures which included courses in the PGD as a part of the masters’ requirements. This type of structure is not only cost-effective but it also allows a flexibility to change enrolment between programs more easily than might otherwise be the case. Some universities specified that they allowed their masters students the option to exit with a PGD (called an exit degree) after satisfying that qualification’s requirements.
The introduction of masters programs has not produced a growth in student numbers, however, they may have helped to contain the decline. The numbers supplied by ALIA and quoted earlier, aggregated masters and PGD graduates; however, it is likely that the majority completed PGDs as this qualification affords professional status and is the qualification more usually specified by employers. In addition, the PGD requires fewer courses and hence there is a lower cost to students.
Some decline in schoollibrarianship programs was to be expected as some small CAEs which closed or were subject to mergers in the late 80s and early 90s offered school librarianship programs. Table shows a decline in ALIA accredited school librarianship programs from 13 in 1991 to five in 2003 with the undergraduate programs disappearing entirely. The extent to which education schools catered for school librarianship through programs for which accreditation was not sought is not known. State education departments determine the requirements for their school librarians and so would be influential in determining librarianship content in education school programs. Some generalist postgraduate LIS programs included elective courses catering for schoollibrarianship, however, the degree obtained was a generalist one.
Table 2. Generalist and School Programs by Academic Level in the Three Periods.
Program duration was an area of change (see Table ). In 1991, approximately half (six) of the undergraduate programs were of four-year duration whereas by 1997 only one remained. This decrease was probably largely attributable to competition from three-year programs and the associated pressure on maintaining student numbers, as both afford librarian status in the job market. The only masters program offered in 1991 (of two-year duration) had been replaced by one of 1.5 years by 2003 and the 2003 masters program of two years was to be replaced by one of 1.5 years in 2004. The establishment of shorter masters programs is not restricted to LIS and has been encouraged by the desire to attract students in a climate of increasing student fees.
Table 3. Program Duration (full-time equivalence) in the Three Periods.
There was an increase in the flexibility of internal delivery methods over the period reflecting both a wider university trend (encouraged by the Dawkins review) toward making program attendance easier and, almost certainly, a desire by LIS schools to make their programs more attractive to potential students. In 1991, two schools offered a program to full-time internal students only (one a bachelor degree and the other a PGD) and by 2003 there were no programs available to full-time students only. The freeing-up of rigid load requirements has been another strategy adopted to make programs accessible and attractive as it allows more scope for students to tailor their studies to accommodate work and other commitments.
Four of the 12 schools had never offered programs in distance mode. In 2003 some schools which did not have distance programs were offering some of their courses in a distance mode. The overall position of a university and a faculty or division within it would be influential in the decision to offer distance programs. For LIS schools in universities with little or no involvement in distance education, their introduction would not be a routine procedure. Several programs were offered offshore, the major, but not only, provider being Charles Sturt University which offered programs in Hong Kong in 1997 and 2003: a bachelor (offshore only) and a PGD and masters (offshore and onshore) . This rural university has had a strong onshore presence in distance education, for many years offering all its LIS programs in this mode. This appears to be an attractive feature as graduation rates have remained strong with ALIA’s figures for 2003 showing that more than a third of LIS graduates (bachelor: 95 out of approximately 259 and PGD/masters degrees: 185 out of 478) were from that school.
Generalist Postgraduate Programs
The next step focused on generalist graduate programs hence, the Queensland University of Technology- Kelvin Grove which offered no generalist programs and the Northern Territory University which offered only an undergraduate program were excluded. Edith Cowan University offered a generalist program only in 2003 (in 1991 and 1997 it offered only school librarianship (see Table ).
Table 4. Frequency of ALIA Accredited Generalist First Professional Graduate Programs by Institution in the Three Periods.
Postgraduate Diploma Programs
Analysis of the structure of the PGD programs revealed a move to programs comprised of fewer and larger courses. In 1991, the number of required courses in a PGD ranged from 8-16 (mean: 10.1); in 1997 the range was 8-13 (mean: 9.3), and in 2003 the range was 6-10 courses (mean: 7.5). Six of the eleven 2003 programs were comprised of eight courses and four of six courses. The program duration of one year full-time study or its equivalence was unchanged.
Comparison of the 1991 and 2003 situation for the eight schools offering PGDs in all three time periods (Monash University and Edith Cowan University did not) revealed a move toward these programs being comprised of a higher proportion of compulsory courses: two of eight programs in 1991 (25%) and four of nine (there were two UTS PGDs) in 2003 (44.4%) were comprised of compulsory courses. Examination of the 1991 program structures of the eight schools revealed that out of the six programs which included elective courses, one allowed 50% of the total load in elective courses and the other five less than 50%. The program structures of 1991 with their larger number of smaller courses would have made the inclusion of a higher percentage of elective courses easier to achieve. In addition, at that time more of the LIS schools were standalone and not part of other schools with the associated requirements to fit into structures designed for several disciplines.
Of the five 2003 programs which included elective courses, the program with the highest proportion allowed 30%, three of the ten course load, in non-compulsory courses. Supporting the contention made above about possible impacts of structures in new homes, this school, which in 2003 had the PGD structure with the greatest number of courses, had not experienced a merger requiring accommodation to a new home.
Monash University, which experienced organisational repositioning over the period, offered a PGD in 1997 and 2003. In 1997 this program, which had been developed some years previously while in the old academic home, was comprised of all compulsory courses (two of the other eight 1997 programs also comprised compulsory courses). In 2003 the Monash PGD went against the trend toward more compulsory courses. It was the only school to offer a program comprised of all elective courses with six of the eight courses required to be selected from a specified group of what can be described as undeniably ‘LIS- relevant’ courses. While the school was relocated to another faculty between 1991 and 1997, it remained concentrated on library and archive areas, however between 1997 and 2003 it was merged into a school of information systems and management. It seems likely that the new home could have been influential in determining the 2003 course structure.
Masters Programs
The number of required courses in masters programs also declined with the range decreasing from 12-18 in 1997 (mean: 15.4) to 8-14 (mean: 11.7) in 2003. Four of the six 2003 masters programs required 12 courses. Program duration was unchanged for the masters programs in four of the five universities which offered programs in both 1997 and 2003. Monash University decreased its masters degree from two years in 1997 to one and a half years in 2003 and its load from 18 to 12 courses. When Monash University is excluded, the mean number of courses required for the other four programs declined from 14.75 in 1997 to 11.5 in 2003.
No 1997 or 2003 masters program was comprised of all compulsory courses. (No details were located about the 1991 Monash University masters program.) The percentage of compulsory courses within the five programs offered in 1997 ranged from 35.7% to 66.6% (in three universities) whereas for the six 2003 programs the range was between 57.1% and 75% (in three universities). This trend toward a larger percentage of programs being comprised of compulsory courses was similar to that for PGDs discussed above.
The analysis supported the impression that there was overlap between the compulsory courses in a university’s PGD prograrnls and those of their masters programs. In 1997, in four of the five universities there was 100% overlap between the masters compulsory courses and the compulsory PGD courses and the fifth university required four of its six compulsory PGD courses. In 2003, four of the six masters programs specified all their PGD compulsory courses as compulsory components in their masters degrees. Of the two masters programs which did not have this structure, one was in a university with a PGD program with no compulsory courses and the other in a university which included less than half of their PGD compulsory courses as required masters courses. In some cases (two in 1997 and four in 2003) the overlap was to be expected as the PGD program was identified as an early exit point (referred to as an exit degree) available from a masters program enrolment. This situation may also have applied in the other cases where there was I 00% overlap but it was not explicitly stated in any sighted documentation.
Program Content
As explained earlier, the analysis was limited to graduate compulsory courses and so is incomplete, particularly for masters programs, as with one exception, they had higher proportions of elective courses than PGDs. In addition, course titles and descriptions varied in length and detail. Factors limiting the use of word count comparisons arose from both the change in the relative weighting of compulsory and elective courses within programs over the period and the decrease in the total number of courses within programs.
The content of compulsory courses was expected to reflect ALIA’s accreditation requirements, for this would not be given if specified content was not addressed. It was not possible to verify the coverage as course descriptions did not provide sufficient detail.
Perusal of course titles showed a small number of compulsory courses in 1991 (course titles for the 1991 RMIT PGD and the Monash University masters were not known) and 1997 with titles which highlighted computers and computing, for example, titles such as Computers for Information Managers and Online Information Services. In 2003 there was less of this type of title for compulsory courses, and descriptions of 2003 courses suggest that content of the type included in such courses has become integrated throughout programs.
Names and terms appeared and disappeared from course titles and descriptions over the period. One example of this is the term ‘knowledge management’ which appeared for the first time in a compulsory course title in 2003. The word ‘business’ also appeared for the first time in compulsory course titles in 2003 (Business Economics, Business Information Systems, Business Information Management). These courses were in the two schools which had merged with information systems schools some years previously.
Analysis of course descriptions using word counting software revealed the appearance and disappearance of specific services and technologies reflecting the changing field: an example of this is the name online public access
catalogue (OPAC) which made one appearance in 1991, six in 1997 and no appearances in 2003. The name, Australian Bibliographic Network (ABN) occurred in one course description in 1991 and in five in 1997. However, the name Kinetica, which replaced it as the national bibliographic database service, was not named in any 2003 compulsory course descriptions. This can probably be explained as an example of a trend away from referring to specific LIS tools and services to the use of more generic descriptions and terms. Other examples of this include references to the Anglo- American Cataloguing Rules 2nd edition (AACR2) which was named in the descriptions of one 1991 course, five courses in 1997 and two courses in 2003, and Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) which was named in one 1991 description, three 1997 descriptions, and one 2003 course description. Metadata was mentioned in one 1997 course description and ten 2003 descriptions spread across courses in four universities. The counting procedure used in this study has involved one count per course description regardless of the number of occurrences of the word or words within that description. Multiple occurrences of a course (eg when a course was offered in PGD and masters programs or within several streams) were counted once only.
Investigation of the use of the term ‘knowledge’ to convey content dealing with the organising and accessing of ‘knowledge’ as distinct from ‘data’ or ‘information’ -that which is generally accepted to be ‘knowledge management’ - increased over the period. A simple count shows it in four course descriptions spread over three universities in 1991, in 10 course descriptions spread over five universities in 1997, and in 16 course descriptions spread over six universities in 2003. It must be acknowledged that this is a crude measure, arrived at by using the keyword ‘knowledge’ and investigating its context within course descriptions, and that in some cases the word information may have been linked with other words in a way which indicated this meaning.
The importance placed on workplace knowledge and experience (ALIA specifies this as an accreditation requirement) can be seen by the inclusion of content involving contact with professional practice. The majority of schools included a work experience or placement component in their programs, though in some cases it was recommended and not compulsory (see Table ). The decision to make this an optional requirement may be due to the fact that the majority of graduate students are part-time and so may have other opportunities to gain workplace experience and professional contact. The ALIA enrolment
Table 5. Number of Schools with Work Experience/Placement Component in the Three Periods.
data showed that more than 80% of LIS graduate students for the years 1996-2003 had part-time enrolments.
Concluding Comments
With the exception of one school, it was the 1990s which witnessed the introduction of first level masters programs into LIS education in Australia, a major innovation and a raising of the educational standards of at least some new entrants into the profession. This period saw a decline in the number of (ALIA accredited) school librarianship programs. Some of this shrinkage was due to the mergers of very small programs. Several schools continued to offer accredited programs addressing school librarianship, doing so by means of streams within their generalist graduate programs.
Both PGD and masters degrees experienced structural change over the period which resulted in programs comprised of fewer, but larger, courses. The researchers believe that several factors may have influenced this trend, namely: the wish to make program structure simpler and so more appealing to students fitting in with workplace and other demands; the structural requirements arising out of organisational repositioning; and, university policies to set their student fees on a cost per course basis.
There has been change in both the titles of degrees awarded in the LIS field and the academic homes of LIS schools. It is possible to gain a library qualification which signals through its title a connection to the academic field of Arts or Business or Applied Science or Communication, to name just four areas. Post -Dawkins academic homes are also more varied than they were with faculties and divisions housing LIS including Business, Commerce and Economics, Science and Agriculture, Communication and Education, to name a few. While the outlooks of various fields may be bringing a richness and multi-disciplinary outlook to LIS there is also the danger of this diversity encouraging perceptions that LIS does not have a knowledge base of its own.
While the study did not gather data to compare schools on the impact of organisational repositioning, some impressions were gained. As suggested above, program titles was an area where repositioning had an impact. Monash University which experienced a merger with an information systems school after 1997 had program titles change from Graduate Diploma in Library and
Information Studies to Graduate Diploma in Information Management and Systems, and Master of Arts in Librarianship to Master of Information Management and Systems. The University of New South Wales school which was part of a merger with information systems saw name changes from Graduate Diploma in Information Management - Librarianship to Graduate Diploma in Commerce - Information Management, and Master of Information Management - Librarianship to Master of Commerce - Information Management. In this latter case several of the compulsory courses included content which indicated their compulsory nature did not arise from the LIS focus.
Despite the freeing up of course structures and the introduction of the masters degree, 1996-2003 saw a fall in the number of graduates from Australian university LIS schools. While student fees could be responsible for this decline, anecdotal evidence (from recent graduates) suggests that the employment market for new librarians has not been strong over recent years and so is unlikely to have encouraged prospective students. Unfortunately, the attractiveness of the non-traditional market of information work has not emerged to take up the slack and attract prospective students.
The literature review raised areas of interest and concern relevant to the future of LIS education additional to those discussed here. Their inclusion was to highlight forces and issues confronting the field. An area of specific concern which should probably be on the table is the number of schools in Australia educating LIS professionals. Despite the intentions of the Dawkins reforms there are still some very small units (granted now part of larger schools) endeavouring to convey all the specifics of the field. On a more positive note, while this research did not set out to investigate whether the direction of change in Australian LIS education was in line with that reported for America and Canada in KALIPER, and noted earlier, in areas addressed by this investigation which were also addressed through KALIPER the changes experienced in Australia seem to be in similar directions.
University of Canberra library program to close
The University of Canberra has decided to withdraw its Graduate Diploma in library and Wormation Management and Master of library and Wormation Management from the courses it offers. There will be no new intake of students from 2005 onwards. A similar decision was made about 18 months ago when the University decided that, because of low student numbers, the undergraduate Bachelor of Communication (Wormation) would cease to take students from the beginning of 2004. At that time academics within the library and Information Studies area were given approval to develop the Graduate Diploma into an online course in an effort to extend the potential student market beyond the ACT. However, interest in the course has not been sufficiently high to convince University decision-makers that it had a viable future. Staff are particularly sorry that the course was not allowed to be offered in online mode for a couple of years to test whether it could, indeed, prove viable.
Undoubtedly, one factor in this decision was a number of staff retirements. Ros Raward retired partway through this year, and Belle Alderman at its end. Peter Clayton has also announced his intention to retire at the end of 2005. Hence, were the course to continue the University would have had to make several new appointments.
This was the second oldest course in the country and many of its graduates are now leaders in the profession in Australia and on the international stage. It will have significant consequences for the profession in the ACT, where there is a greater concentration of libraries and other types of information agencies in Canberra than in any other city in Australia
The University’s decision also raises significant issues for the profession in Australia as a whole.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to acknowledge the help of Ms Margaret Lo in data collection and manipulation. We would also like to thank Dr Linda Marion for introducing us to, and providing us with guidance to the content analysis module of WordStat.
Notes
1. P Willard, C S Wilson and C Pawley 'Australian Professional Library and Information Education: Structural Changes in the 1990s' Australian Academic & Research libraries vol 32 no 4 2000 pp294-307
2. E Logan and I Hsieh-Yee 'library and Wormation Science Education in the Nineties' Annual Review oflnfomlQtion Science and Tecluwlogy edited by ME Williams vol 35 2001 p426
3. C R Hildreth and M Koenig 'Organizational Realignment of US Programs in America: From Independent Standalone Units to Incorporated Programs' Journal of Education for Library and Information Science vol43 no 2 2002 pp127-133
4. J Warner 'W(h)ither Information Science?' Library Quarterly vol71 no 2 2001 pp243-255
5. H Bruce 'A New Perspective on Information Education from Australia' Education for Information vol 17 1999 pp187-198; W Martin 'New Directions in Education for US: Knowledge Management Programs at RMIT' Journal of Education for Library and InfomlQtion Science vol 40no31999pp142-50
6. M Middleton 'Skills Expectations of library Graduates' New Library World vol 104 2003 pp42-56
7. N Van House and SA Sutton 'The Panda Syndrome: An Ecology of US Education' Education for Library and Information Science vol 37 no 2 1996 pp 131-147
8. M Paris Library Sclwol Closings: Four Case Studies Metuchen NJ Scarecrow 1988 pl40
9. Educating Library and lnfonnation Science Professionals for a New Century: The KAllPER Report. Executive Summary Reston VA Association for library and Information Science Education 2000 (Available at: http://www .alise.org'nondiscuss/ kaliper.final.pdf)
10. Ibid
11. Australian library and Wormation Association Courses in library and Information Science 1990/1 Courses in library and Information Studies 1996/97 ADA-recognised librarianship Course http://www.alia.org.au/education/courses/libarianship.html [accessed 4 June 2003]
12. WordStat Version 2.5 Provalis Research 2003