Will Library Education Survive?

This article highlights the annual Conference of the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE), held from January 8-11, 1991 in Chicago, Illinois. The theme of the conference, Exploring Elements for Educational Excellence: Experience, Expectations, Enhancements, Evaluations, addressed the pressures faced by modern academe. The week began with an assessment of the doctoral programs in library and information science (LIS) in the U.S. Mary Biggs of Mercy College asserted that library schools should abandon them and let the subjects of LIS doctoral research go to other disciplines. Faculty grappled with a set of ALISE position papers for the upcoming White House Conference on Libraries and Information Services. Richard Halsey tried to steer the resolutions, most deeply stricken with the academic language problem, to approval. According to Brooke Sheldon, library leaders have negotiating skills, a penchant for risk-taking, an ideological commitment, and the ability to move back and forth from the bottom line to a larger vision. In her review of writings in faculty evaluation, Barbara Moran of the University of North Carolina, found that little had been added in 20 years. She found no evidence of a correlation between excellence in research and in teaching, finding that new work on faculty evaluation is clearly needed.