This presentation has 16 slides and is part of Session 7.1 - WebJunction: Your Gateway to Continuing Education - at the 2005 ALISE Conference. It summarizes the survey that was conducted among LIS students who either used WebJunction (WJ) or had interest in WJ resources. It underlines the potential of WJ for building the student liaison program, and suggests some rollout strategies for developing WJ into educational programs. "Web Junction is an online community where library staff meet to share ideas, solve problems, take online courses - and have fun."

This presentation was given in Session 3.1 on Wednesday, January 7, entitled "Forecasting the Future and Formulating Strategy", at the ALISE 2004 Conference in San Diego, CA. It contains a survey on PhD students in some LIS programs. The research analyzes the population of the students being surveyed: their background before entering a PhD program, their concentrations of research in the program, and their expectations for a job in varied fields. It finds that most of the students are not library science focused. Hopefully, the survey will be able to provide suggestions for LIS programs to reconsider their curricula and training strategies. Two files are presented here. The Powerpoint file (20 slides) is a concise version of the Word file.

Text in English and Chinese, with the presentation slides. / This paper summarizes the Education of Library and Information Science in China Nowadays in such aspects as general status, main courses, main research directions, and the problems in it, and put forward some personal opinions on the development of Education of Library and Information Science in China.

Library and information studies (LIS) education may be misreading the academic community's expectations. A program's viability may hinge on a counterintuitive premise, where the academic culture allows each discipline to create its own criteria for its own evaluation. LIS programs may have unwittingly assumed that adopting the scientific mode might gain them currency in the academic realm; yet there is little evidence that LIS programs had the prerequisite infrastructure to compete with a science discipline in terms of sustained funded research, teaching assistant and postdoctoral assistant services, laboratory equipment, and other resources. There is an irony that many LIS students and faculty do not come from the scientific disciplines, and this further inhibits their ability to compete in that arena. LIS program and faculty evaluators have used criteria from the sciences to measure LIS progress and to determine an individual's suitability for promotion. We contend that this application of inappropriate criteria has done unnecessary harm to LIS and the individuals in it. An examination of selected COA self-study responses and other sources indicates that LIS may misread the academic culture because LIS does not appear to be central to university governance. Finally, the waning of LIS's affiliation with libraries may do LIS irreparable harm. LIS's focus may need to be recentered on educating librarians.

This is a Plenary Session 4 - Working in Partnership: Priorities and Concerns for the Profession - presentation (in pdf format) on Friday, January 14 at the ALISE 2005 Conference. Professor Nicholas Belkin identifies some priorities for both education and research in library and information science.

This paper examines the challenges involved in understanding group dynamics when utilizing online teaching platforms, such as WebCT. When the student cohort involved is studying professionally oriented technical subjects, people who have prior knowledge of this professional area may exhibit be-haviors which overwhelm other students. In traditional face-to-face tutorial and workshop environments, teachers are able to interact with students, ensuring that they have a comfortable environment in which to contribute and learn. This may involve bringing them out of themselves when they appear intimidated and re-directing them when they threaten to dominate. Teachers can interpret body language and use their own body language and facial expressions as well as verbal comment to maintain a student-centered learning environment. It is much more difficult to influence the dynamics of online discussion. Our ex-perience at Curtin has shown that the potential for intimidation of students leading to their non-participation is stronger than in the classroom, especially when prior professional knowledge and experi-ence is involved. This outcome is opposite to expectations of web communication, usually believed to be an environment where people can overcome the constraints of their personality and participate in discus-sion more easily. Reasons this may occur will be examined together with techniques for ensuring that students are afforded an equitable learning environment.

This is a presentation (21 slides) of a study conducted to identify effective strategies for recruiting and retaining students of color in LIS. Using a Web-based survey, the study collected data from librarians of color, enrolled in, or graduated from, ALA-accredited LIS programs. Suggestions were made to develop strategies for diverse LIS community and programs.

A study of the subject interests of LIS students in Singapore was carried out via a questionnaire survey of students and graduates of the master of science (MSc) information studies program at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, as well as survey of applications to the program. Cluster analysis was performed on the questionnaire data. The respondents were clustered based on the elective subjects that they selected in the questionnaires. For both sets of data, two distinct clusters were found - a library-oriented cluster and an information technology (IT)/information management-oriented cluster. In each cluster, further sub-clusters were found that correspond to known specializations in the field. An analysis of the relationship between the clusters and the areas of specialization selected by respondents indicated some ways of improving the areas of specialization defined in the MSc program. The cluster analyses were found to yield useful results and provided a better understanding of the students' interests and how the interests were structured.

This article presents the background of Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University, its history, and its major study areas. It goes into some detail about the School of Liberal Arts before concentrating on the Information Science Programs offered by that school. The objectives, qualifications of applicants, and the details of the different Information Science Programs are presented at length. The article then goes on to give a detailed outline of the distance-teaching system as used by STOU. It concludes with a statement as to the unique value of the Information Science Programs offered by STOU.

Recent reforms to the higher education sector are presenting challenges for academic staff and university administrators across Australia. Within this context, LIS education faces its own specific issues and challenges. This paper reviews the current trends in the LIS education, looking at student numbers, aca-demic staffing and curriculum issues. Education providers also need to consider the career-long learning needs of the profession. It is argued that LIS educators cannot work in isolation: the LIS profession as whole must work together collaboratively to ensure it has a bright and relevant future.