stepping up: shaping the future of the field john leslie king alise 2005 boundary crossings: lis...

Stepping Up: Shaping the Future of the Field

John Leslie King

ALISE 2005 Boundary Crossings: LIS Education in a Global Context

Thanks To• Toni, Fiona, Pru, Deanna

• Various deans and directors

Joan DurranceMargaret HedstromKaren MarkeyOlivia FrostJohn Seeley Brown Dan AtkinsLeigh EstabrookJoanne Marshall

Nancy PearlJohn UnsworthDorothy GregorCliff LynchAnno SaxenianChris BorgmanBill GoslingJulia Gelfand

QuickTime™ and a decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

RespekCivility Courteous behavior, politeness, formal or perfunctory regard; sufficiently observing or befitting accepted social usages; not rude. From the Latin civis, or citizen.

Respect To feel or show deferential regard for; to esteem; to relate or refer to; concern. From the Latin respectus, past participle of respicere, to look back at, to regard.

Three Themes

Confidence

Opportunity

Assertion

The Crisis Thang

• The anxiety discourse…

• Not new– Goes back a century

• Not unique to LIS– Computer science and information systems

• There are some common signatures– Horizontal violence– Approach/avoidance conflicts over metrics

Field Salary

Software engineers 70,900

Economists 68,550

Human resource managers 64,710

Physician Assistants 64,670

Computer Programmers 60,290

Physical Therapists 57,330

Architects 56,620

Budget analysts 52,480

Registered Nurses 48,090

Multi-media artists 43,980

Librarians 43,090

School Teachers 42,075

Medical Social Workers 37,380

Graphic Designers 36,680

Archivists and Curators 35,270

General Social Workers 33,150

Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook 2002 data, median salaries of salaried workers only

Field Salary

Economists 68,550

Physician Assistants 64,670

Librarians 43,090

Medical Social Workers 37,380

Archivists and Curators 35,270

Field Median Starting Salary

MBA 84,000

D. Pharmacy 66,210

MS Electrical Engineering 64,556

JD Law 60,000

MS Civil Engineering 47,245

MLS Librarian 37,450

Assorted Bummers

• Importance to the world -- recognition • Unstable professional frontier (e.g., funding)

• Low Respect (low salaries, burdens of a feminized profession, academic weakness)

• Practitioners vs. Academics

• The L-Schools vs. the I-Schools

Crisis of Confidence

• The challenges are real!

• But so what? That’s why this field exists.

• And what are we doing about it?

– Fighting over names

– Looking for salvation in the past

– Mistaking entitlement for principle

• We’re wrapped around the axle…

The library.. Gives nothing for nothing Helps only those that help themselves Does not sap the foundation of independence Does not pauperize Stretches a hand to the aspiring Places a ladder upon which they can only

ascend by doing the climbing themselves

This is not charityThis is not philanthropyThis is the people themselves helping themselves.

Andrew Carnegie, 1889

As a general rule, institutions fail because of overzealous adherence to

their own first principles.

Some First Principles

• Access• Collaboration• Diversity• Education• Intellectual Freedom• Preservation• Privacy• Professionalism• Public Good• Service

• Wisdom• Compassion• Knowledge• Freedom• Justice• Empowerment• Prosperity• Beauty• Innovation• Courage

What’s Changed in 115 Years?

• Lots of technological change…

• Public libraries as we know them today

• Academic library education programs

• Literacy from 90% to 99% for whites; from 53% to 98% for people of color

• Universal suffrage and civil rights reform

• And lest we forget what Carnegie was thinking…

Rectangularization of Mortality (Fries, 1980)

Life Span * 1.5Working life * 2Working population * 4Productivity * 4.5

Capital investment * 10Personal income * 10(inflation adjusted)

Critical Infrastructure

Hard work

Knowhow$

Hard work

Knowhow$ Cultural Institutions

We Won!

Game Over?

• The list of challenges remains long– 1-2 billion people are illiterate– 1-2 billion people are poverty-stricken– 2-3 billion live without political freedom

• The Age of Enterprise continues– ~ 1 billion with internet access (103 in 10yrs)– ~ 2-3 billion with telephony (104 in 10 years)– Digital access to content is accelerating

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor







are needed to see this p icture.















QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressor














Q ui ckTi me™ and aTI FF (Uncompressed) decompressorare needed to see thi s pi cture.



Q ui ckTi me™ and aTI FF (LZW) decompressor

are needed to see thi s pi cture.

























Where We Are Now

• Our work is not yet done

• We are wasting too much energy arguing

• The challenge are worthy of us

• A distant mirror and great fortune…



• 756 -- Umayyad Dynasty of Al Andalus

• Library at Toledo 9th-11th cent. held ancient Greek/Arab works: philosophy, math, astronomy, rhetoric, science, medicine

• 1085 -- Fall of Toledo to Christian forces of Alphonso VI

• 1105-1490 translations into Latin led the Renaissance







• 1436 Gutenberg builds press• 1455 42 Line Bible printed• 1462 Attack on Mainz printers• 1517 Luther;s 95 Theses• 1521 Diet of Worms• 1545 Council of Trent• 1560 European depository laws• 1660 The Royal Society founded• 1662 Bodelian Library• 1683 Ashmolean Museum

• 1620 Bacon’s New Organon• 1637 Descartes’ Meditations• 1687 Newton’s Principia

Mathematica

Access

• Library at Toledo: knowledge was there, but inaccessible; access changed the world

• Print helped Luther’s disintermediation move beyond salvation to human purpose

• Carnegie’s aphorism and the 115 years since

• Access to knowledge and empowerment -- isn’t this what we are here for?

It’s All About Opportunity

• Global illiteracy and poverty can be licked– How big did the challenge seem in 1889?

• Technology enables, but we must learn how– We’ve always had to figure it out as we go.

• Learning-by-doing is the only road forward.

Time to Assert Ourselves

• A crisis of confidence is a waste of time

• The opportunity has never been greater

• We must step up to the challenges we face

• We have already started -- that’s why people are worried!

• The revolution is underway

• Some suggestions…

The “Retirement Crisis”

Simple economics.





Bring it on! We kill two birds with one stone.

The “Library Funding” Crisis

• What’s broken -- Them or It?

• Cultural institution or critical infrastructure?

• The Public Goods problematic

• Multiple challenges, multiple models

• We should be the research leaders in this

• Productivity and Baumol’s Disease

• Examples…

The “Core Curriculum” Crisis

• What won’t work: accreditation mandates

– The ecology of accreditation structures

– Transformation of accreditation practices

• Embrace experimentation

– When you don’t know what to do, do lots of things.

The “L-School vs. I-School” Crisis

• What’s in a name? A language game…

• KALIPER showed what’s really going on

• Profligate vs. prophetic

• Life in Pasteur’s Quadrant

Practical Application

Fun

dam

enta

l Kno

wle

dge

Low

High

High

PasteurBohr

Edison

Donald Stokes Pasteur’s Quadrant: Basic Science and Technological Innovation. Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 1997

• An exercise in opinion, nothing more

• Diversity in thought and action

• We create our future, though not exactly as we please.

• Risky business -- high-risk/high-return.

• Would we have it any other way?

Respek

http://www.si.umich.edu/~jlking/ALISE/talk

stepping up: shaping the future of the field john leslie king alise 2005 boundary crossings: lis...

Documents

medical social workers37

general social workers33

physician assistants64

accepted social usages

perfunctory regard

deferential regard

ms civil engineering47

lis education