This presentation (of 11 Microsoft PowerPoint slides and a narrative in Microsoft Word) at the 2005 ALISE Conference held at Boston (Jan. 11-14) was delivered in Session 3.4 titled LIS Faculty and the Future. It is a follow-up study to a previous one which was reported at the ALISE 2004 conference about PhD students in LIS. 148 Curriculum Vitae packages received by ALISE in search of a position as future LIS faculty were analyzed. Of the 106 CVs with usable data, the study found that 45 dissertations were library-oriented, 25 in the area of information theory, 6 were information technology, and 20 were indeterminate or outside the field. Seavey concludes by asking "Do we have a crisis?" and notes that the answer "depends on the meaning of crisis" while also acknowledging that there are "definitely problems within speciality areas."

This article takes campus libraries and computer labs as some of the physical standards in the evaluation of LIS programs. It uses both outputs and inputs of a program to measure its presentations.

This is a juried paper presentation (of 21 slides) in Session 2.2 â International Programs & Students (Juried Papers), on Wednesday Jan. 12, at the 2005 ALISE Conference. The history and current situation of LIS education in Latin America and the Caribbean is presented. The traditions of European and U.S. LIS educations as well as UNESCO's Programs have influenced the development of latin educational systems. However the policies of regional authorities have contributed to the shaping and re-shaping of LIS programs in these areas.

This article emphasizes (1) librarianship today is a technology-dependent discipline that is driven by technological changes, and (2) libraries will need to adopt a much more business-like model and develop management skills. The author thought the ideas about libraries could be applied to library schools. Accordingly, suggestions were made for library schools: (1) they must change redically, and (2) a commitment to reinvigorated continuing education may represent a good step for them to redefine what it does. Some examples were used to illustrated the ideas.

Seen from an international point of view, the German LIS structure is of many reasons a very special one. Understanding the system, one has to gain insight into the political structure, the hierarchical system, and the salary system for civil servants. Up to the present, library education and training are more or less characterized by a special German way. Various educational and training programs on school, university and university college level are available. The different certificates open the way to different career paths in the LIS sector. In addition to that, the Bologna Declaration causes vital changes in the European university system in general and in that of Germany in particular. This contribution outlines the change from the old to the new paradigm in Germany in an international Context and pinpoints some actual problems.

Over the past ninety years, and more so over the recent twenty years, Library and Information Science schools in China have done a lot of work in collaborating and resource sharing. These activities consists of establishing LIS schools, training of teachers, compilation of teaching materials, change of names, application for the authority to enroll graduates and conferring degrees both of master and doctor, and academic exchanges. The demands of society and the policies of the government are important factors promoting the collaboration and resource sharing. Academic exchanges, such as academic meetings, ex-change visits and research papers, are the main channels for LIS schools to collaborate and share re-sources with each other.

This is a juried paper (18 pages) presented during Session 1.4 titled LIS Curriculum: Global Perspectives" on Thursday, January 11 at the ALISE 2005 Conference, Boston, Massachusetts (Session Moderator: Bharat Mehra). The Liberal Arts curriculum, understood here as a programmatic standard for the first parts of a university education, rather than a more general philosophy of the entire scope of education, is usually structured through the distinction of different "forms of knowledge," or different "ways of knowing". In this article, the concept of information, in a very broad understanding of this term, is proposed as a factor integrating the Liberal Arts curriculum. The advantages of the diversification of the curriculum achieved by developing in students an awareness of different ways of knowing are lost when such diversification actually produces dissociation of the acquired knowledge. There are several themes which are often effectively used to integrate what students are learning such as intercultural communication, globalization, computer technology, etc. However, the limited universality of even these general themes creates limits for integration. Information however, through its manifestations in almost all domains of the university curriculum, and because of its relation to the concept of knowledge in general, is of special interest as a potential factor in curriculum integration. But before it can be effectively used in educational practice, information must acquire a firm philosophical foundation.

A total of 35 slides were presented in Session 2.4 â Community Connections: Advancing LIS Education and Practice Through Partnership, at the 2005 ALISE Conference. Community informatics, defined as the study and practice of enabling communities with information and communications technologies, is drawn to the attention of researchers. A call for a Community Informatics Initiative that employs community partnerships to develop useful information systems is made. Diverse initiative programs such as Prairienet and Community iLabs are presented as examples. At the same time, the presentation highlights the barriers and issues pertaining to the development of such community resources. Some goals are established for building up community connections, including facilitating teaching/learning/research, undertaking community action and development, and paying attention to local/global use and impact to the development.

This is a 13-page juried paper presented on Wednesday, January 12, 2005, Session 4.4, Special Information Agencies and Issues, at the ALISE 2005 Conference.

This discussion focuses on the institutional cultures in which library and information science education finds itself. It concentrates on the general idea of the library and its relation to LIS education. It proposes looking at the library in society as an era-specific phenomenon and discusses the library that people know. The article also looks at three principal aspects of modern library that are being challenged by present circumstances. It dwells on factors that LIS education must consider in order to accommodate the new impression of the library. It reveals the change of modern libraries in three different aspects: its view that its chief cultural legacy lies in the social organization it created, its adoption of heterogeneous normative target populations as a basis for its work, and its dependence on government funding.