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"The stereotypical view of librarians is outdated." Stephen Itoga ICS Chair

The Bottom Line

Harada acknowledged that some SLIS students were uneasy about the reorganization, afraid the dissolution of the independent school meant the program was dead.

"We are fully intact -- there is no danger of closure," Harada said.

Overall, she said the response has been positive.

"From our graduate students to our faculty to everyone else involved, there has been total support to go ahead with the plan," she said. "Now we're breathing a sigh of relief."

Both Harada and Itoga stressed that the consolidation should be invisible to LIS students.

"They shouldn't see anything different," Itoga said. "They'll have the same professors, labs and courses... they'll be getting the same degree."

The only change will be in the program's name -- from Library and Information Studies to Library and Information Sciences -- to bring it in line with most of its mainland peers.

In addition, Harada said the program's accreditation by the American Library Association shouldn't change.

"We are one of only 57 ALA-accredited programs in the country, and we've received consistently high marks for our curriculum and our student-centered focus," she said.

Harada said she's confident the accreditation team will see the reorganization as a positive move, as the new LIS program will have made visible progress toward greater computer literacy.

"Ten years ago, only one or two of our classes were in computers," Harada said. "Now one of the key areas all of our students examine is the impact of technology."

"The stereotypical view of librarians is outdated," Itoga said. "Their graduates work in medicine, the judiciary, corporations.

"Today, the use of databases and information retrieval are the lifeblood of any organization," he said. "The new librarian needs to know more about technology -- not just what, but why."

For ICS, the reorganization puts five degree programs under its roof -- a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science, Master of Science degrees in both computer and library science, and an interdisciplinary PhD in Communication and Information Sciences.

A sixth degree, a Bachelor of Arts degree in Computer Science, has also been in the works, Itoga said.

"It would be ideal for students in the library science program," he said. "It would be similar to the BS program but without the heavy lab requirements."

Harada and Itoga said they will also look into whether existing ICS courses can fulfill requirements for the LIS master's degree and vice versa. New hybrid courses, however, are only a distant possibility.

"We want to work on the marriage before completely forging new courses," Harada said.

While the reorganization will hardly make a ripple at the student level, the waters are considerably rougher at the top.

"We're going to really have to reorganize how the administration functions," Itoga said.

In absorbing the library school, the ICS department -- headquartered on the third floor of the POST building -- will have to learn to administrate a program halfway across campus in the basement of Hamilton Library.

In fact, even though the LIS program's new administration is located in one of the newest (and incomplete) buildings on campus, Harada said the home of LIS will always be in Hamilton.

"[The library] was planned and designed from the start to be a working laboratory for the library school," she said. "Even if given the choice, we wouldn't want to move."

Details of the department's post-consolidation budget have yet to be hammered out, Itoga said. For now, he said ICS and LIS staff will operate as they always have, presuming the resources normally allocated to each will be added together.

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