FOR A CAREER IN INFORMATION ORGANIZATION EDUCATION Daniel N. Joudrey, Ph.D. Ryan McGinnis, Graduate Student Simmons College, Graduate School of Library & Information Science Boston, Massachusetts ALISE/ALCTS Biennial Educators Meeting

A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT A time of changes Less money + fewer staff members = More responsibilities New activities New formats and new modes of access New models Entities and relationships are now the focus (E-R models) Functional Requirement for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) is the underlying structure for bibliographic description New standards RDA: Resource Description & Access Bibliographic Framework Initiative (BIBFRAME) New skills are needed!

IS LIS EDUCATION CHANGING? Are we preparing students for careers in information organization? Questions: What courses are being offered? What’s actually being taught? How have things changed in the last 7-8 years? To find out, we conducted a literature review and studied the Information Organization courses at 58 graduate Library and Information Science (LIS) schools.

WHAT LIS SCHOLARS ARE SAYING Theory vs. practice Catalogers are still needed Curricular innovations are needed Bloated information organization courses

COMPARISON OF SIX STUDIES Joudrey & McGinnis 2012 Joudrey 2005 Joudrey 2000 Spillane 1998 Vellucci 1997 CCQ 1987 # of schools # of courses offered Average # of courses offered # of courses taught ≈ † Unk. Average # of courses taught per school ≈3.6 – 3.7 † Unk. † These numbers are estimates because data on courses actually taught were not collected in the earliest studies.

14 TYPES OF IO COURSES Cataloging Advanced Cataloging Descriptive Cataloging Non-book Cataloging Subject Cataloging School Libraries Cataloging Classification Information Organization Metadata Indexing & Abstracting Thesaurus Construction Technical Services Special Topics Other

KEY FINDINGS The total number of IO courses has increased since courses offered/school 4.1 courses taught/school 80% of courses offered were taught in 2013 Required vs. Electives courses Courses offered: 20% were required 80% were elective Courses taught: 25% were required 75% were elective

KEY FINDINGS (II) 60% of schools offer 3-4 IO courses 88% of schools require one course 7% have NO requirement 5% have 2 requirements Requirements 67% Organization of Information 17% Cataloging 7% None 6% Choice of courses (Cat/Org/Tech Svcs/combination) 3% Org and Cat

KEY FINDINGS (III) Course TypeJoudrey & McGinnis 2012 Joudrey 2005 Change Cat Org Index Subject 16 0 Tech Svcs Desc 1011 Class 10 0 Techno Cat 01 Adv Cat/Special 4041 Adv Cat Special Topics Other Formats Metadata Non-book Miscellaneous Thesaurus Const School Libraries Other TOTALS # of schools Average # of IO courses offered

THE RISE OF THE METADATA COURSE Joudrey & McGinnis 2012 (n=58) Joudrey 2005 (n=56) Joudrey 2000 (n=55) Spillane (n=56) Vellucci (n=52) Schools offering a Metadata course 36 (62%)21 (38%)6 (11%)7 (13%)5 (10%) Joudrey & McGinnis 2012 (n=298) Joudrey 2005 (n=267) Joudrey 2000 (n=237) Spillane (n=221) Vellucci (n=156) # and % of all IO courses offered 42 (14%)22 (8%)7 (3%) 5 (3%) And, this is a good thing!