Episode 51 (May 2026): The Changing Contours of the Information Field

This episode examines the ascent of library science education  from the academic periphery to becoming central to the modern university within Information Schools (iSchools). Over the past fifty years, the field has transformed from a niche, single-degree program into broad-based, robust, multi-program iSchool powerhouses with significant research funding and enrollments. 

But, iSchools exist within universities, and universities today are facing a "perfect storm" of severe enrollment declines ( the 2026 demographic cliff), mounting fiscal pressures, and a shifting cultural landscape. One “solution” taken by some is to merge and consolidate schools and departments. According to recent 2025–2026 data, nearly 20% of university presidents have engaged in serious merger discussions. This is called, the "Great Consolidation."

 In this episode we examine  the implications of this consolidation, and whether it is the right move or misguided in relation to the field, universities, and society.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:21

Greetings and welcome back to the Libraries Lead podcast. If you're interested in our back episodes or getting more Library Leads content in digital and print form, go to our partner, the Library Journal website, specifically our website there, librarieslead.libraryjournal.org. I'm David Lankis, the Bowden Professor of Librarianship at the University of Texas Austin. And along with Beth Potent, Associate Professor at Syracuse University School of Information Studies, and Mike Eisenberg, Dean Emeritus from the University of Washington's iSchool, we're going to talk about how information and library schools and programs are dealing with difficult times facing higher education here in episode 51, May 2026. The changing contours of the information field. Also, please note that we'll be taking a summer break from our full episodes, but we will be offering some special features in the next few months. But first, Beth, please remind us of why we're here.

SPEAKER_00 1:26

Hi, everyone, and welcome to Libraries Lead. This podcast is about the information world, the changes happening now, the challenges we're facing, and what might be coming next. This show is interest is for anyone interested in libraries and information work, whether you're deep in the profession or just library curious. People like Dr. Vanessa Irving, who is an associate professor at East Carolina, and also our past president of Elise. And so thank you so much, Vanessa, for subscribing and downloading. We appreciate it. And honestly, we're so we love that so many people that are listening aren't librarians at all. Today's episode follows our usual format. We'll start with a what's up, checking in on what's going on in our lives. Then we'll move to AI Watch, where we react to the latest AI developments, technologies, and research. After that, we'll dive deep into our main topic and we'll wrap up with our awesome library thingies, where we highlight amazing things happening across the globe in the library and information world. All right, let's dive in. Dave, what's up with you?

SPEAKER_02 2:35

What's up with me is I just got back from Toronto, um, where Leslie Weir, who's the National Librarian and Archivist of Canada, uh, is holding, uh, she's the current IFLA president. She's holding uh IFLA triannual meeting there in Toronto. Um and she wanted to kick it off with a pretty big conversation about futurism and future thinking and such. So I was really honored to be invited to be part of that conversation and have to sum up a day's worth of future thinking in 30 minutes. That was fun. Uh and I got to see really cool and meet interesting people, including my sort of sister in in in in all endeavors, Kim Philp, and caught up with Stuart Hamilton talking about putting together a tour of library thinking around Ireland in 2027. So it was fun stuff. So yes, that was that's what I did. It was great. Beth, what's up with you?

SPEAKER_00 3:30

Yeah, well, I'm excited to share that I am this year's Jeffrey Katzer Professor of the Year. Um for those of for those of you for those of you that don't know, that's the highest teaching award you can be awarded at the Syracuse iSchool. And it is named in honor of Jeffrey Katzer, who Mike and Dave both got to work with. So I feel like in a lot of ways, he's my intellectual grandpa. I think that that's how that works. So it's it's good. I know that the care that Jeffrey gave to Mike and Dave is getting passed down to me, and that's pretty awesome. So I feel really great to uh be able to accept that award, and it meant means I get to speak at graduation, and they can't really stop me for what I'm gonna say. So that's very exciting power to have. The potential of power in this moment is exciting.

SPEAKER_02 4:27

I'm just gonna say Mike's off the hook because he sort of started it as he left, but I was there for 20 years and never won that award. Congratulations. So clearly they have high standards, is what I'm trying to say.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

It is, it is hard to, it's hard, it's not easy to win. So it's it's pretty exciting. And then um also on Monday, I'm gonna be traveling to New York to record uh a special version of Library Journal. They're gonna be celebrating their 150th anniversary, so I'll get to share uh some of my impressions about the library world now and and what's gonna happen in the future. Mike, what's up with you?

SPEAKER_01 5:06

Hey guys, that's great. And congratulations, Beth. Uh, Jeffrey would be thrilled. You would love Jeffrey, he would have loved you. And uh as people may know, uh Jeff is what I consider the real father of our whole field uh in terms of iSchools and that. So anyway, well, I had a medical scare last week. Uh I had some heart discomfort and I wound up spending a night in the hospital. Uh I had a cardiac cath where they take a good look in your arteries to check things out. And I the good news is everything's okay. I'm okay, pain-free. I might have overdone a workout or something like that before, but uh that. But I thought that what was interesting is from an information perspective, because that's what we do, and that's what I do. It really struck me how efficient they're getting with their IT systems uh in the hospitals these days. All my records were immediately available through Epic. I didn't have to sign in, I didn't have to. I mean, I showed them my driver's license, and that was it. And as test results came in, I could check my chart in Epic and see the results at the sometimes before the doctors even saw them. So, you know, they'd come and take blood from me, and then I'd get offline like and see my results. So I thought it was pretty good.

SPEAKER_02 6:24

Um I'm just putting it in today. But um so when I got treatment for Duke, I found out that I also was in the epic system. I found out that when I send email questions after treatment, that all goes in the records as well, including any attachments. So I made it um an absolute priority that when I send in email questions, I always include a very, very odd picture so that my medical records will be well illustrated with the absurdity of my life.

SPEAKER_01 6:52

That's great. That's great. Well, the only last thing I was gonna say is that um I just wish they could simplify and make the process of getting to speak to a human being at the office uh as efficient as the epic system because it is impossible to get appointments. And I've been on voicemail for hours and hours since then. But things are good. I have good context. So let's move right into our next segment, the AI watch. Uh, Dave, what have you got for us this month in your AI watch?

SPEAKER_02 7:25

So I have um, I'm gonna mention another podcast. Uh they might have a few more listeners than we do, which is the New York Times The Daily podcast. Um, they had a really wonderful uh episode on the the uh 14th of April, which is the workers letting AI do their jobs and talking about with vibe coding and with clogged co-work and clogged code and all these other things, that AI coding is really taking over in some in you know, two-person startups, 80% of the code being written for their startup is AI generated. In big, large, complex organizations like Google, it might be down to 20 to 40 percent, but still significant. But the thing that I just wanted to point out that really sort of blew my mind, which was he says, you know, we think that we live where software is everywhere, right? We just talked about Epic and healthcare, and we see software everywhere. He goes, but really to get software written well and maintain it is still very expensive. You need people to know what they're doing. He goes, Imagine when it is a matter of walking up and talking to your AI and having it do the software, which I've experimented with little tiny parts. He goes, then you know, the four-person specialty steel company that is running off an Excel spreadsheet and hoping they have all the data can just say, I need a business process management system for this. I need right and so that suddenly software can go everywhere. Where and my example was which I posted, I started hearing AI music in Spotify. I Claude, write me an app, sits in my in my um menu bar, and anytime Spotify has played a song that is mostly AI generated, it tells me. Um I did it's a native match app written in Swift and Xcode and all these other things, which I vaguely know what it is, but I didn't have to do a bit of it in order to generate this stuff. So I really love this concept of truly software everywhere, and software um by everyone is a really cool concept. I highly recommend you take a listen to that podcast. So Beth, what do you got?

SPEAKER_00 9:41

Yeah, so I don't have any links or anything to share, but I just want to talk about like some tensions I've been experiencing as the LAS program director. And it is that our students, my a lot of my students are vehemently against AI, you know, morally, ethically. And of course, you know, we have talked a lot about ethics and speaking their values throughout the program. And so I've raised my own monsters in some ways, and I'm and I'm grateful for that. Um so that is one part of it, and we've talked a lot about that tension and AI anxiety, right? Those two things going hand in hand, and that people have every right to be nervous slash grossed out by it. Um and we've kind of always handled that in the podcast and like talking about AI literacy. Well, they're well, people are going to be using this as a way to get information. And so, as information professionals, we at least need to understand how it works and how people are using it and the kind of end results of that. And so I see professors thinking about how do I write AI into assignments, but also giving people an out if they don't want to do the assignment that way. And so, like, if you don't want to do the assignment this way, you can write about like ethically why you're opposed to utilizing this technology in class or finding some other kind of technology to do that. But the real tension for me is coming for when I'm talking to employers. And so I was at a research talk on campus and bumped into David Seaman, who is the Dean of Libraries at Syracuse. And he is loving AI right now. He's using AI to read old manuscripts, having them translate it, having people check those translations. For our undergrad students who can't read cursive, the AI can scan it and it's doing fairly well at the kind of descriptive work that it couldn't do a year ago. And he told me, and I and we've heard this before, I'm not hiring, I'm not gonna put out any more job ads without a line or two about how the having the capacity to utilize AI tools. And so it's my first year as a program director. I've taught these kids to speak their truth and think of and lead with ethics and morals. And so we have this thing that is at the very least fuzzy in ethical terms. And if we talk about like water or power or data centers, it is extremely clear where the ethics lie in that. But we've also talked a lot about the usefulness. Um, but what happens when this is a requirement of our of their jobs? And it is my job to prep them for their jobs. And so I have no solutions. And I think, and I and I'll say this too we got a lot of feedback. Library Journal shared the podcast this month, and it had a lot of likes, a lot of likes, but almost all the comments were talking about AI photographs, right? And so the same kind of tension that we see in chats when we're sharing AI pictures um is definitely what I'm feeling. But like then also the bosses want this. And so no solutions, but just bringing out that that's kind of what I'm wrestling with, and AI literacy isn't enough to help me bridge the gaps between those two communities. And so thinking about what work needs to happen there for me over the next year.

SPEAKER_02 13:41

Ask them about how they feel about working with Elsevier.

SPEAKER_00 13:45

Well, have you ever seen the AACR2? Because I used to carry that binder around, right? Like you would hate that too. But yeah, uh, we were killing trees.

SPEAKER_01 13:56

Well, I think it's a it's a good topic. I we should maybe one of our first things uh after the summer, we should we should bring that up. Because in this case, I think the students are behind the field, and that's my AI watch. So I'm gonna move to that, and then you'll you'll see it. I took a uh a look at where libraries are these days, in general, libraries and AI. And uh if I had to give it a headline, I'd call it moving beyond the shiny new toy. Uh, I looked at the latest things that are going on, and I was very pleased to find that libraries are moving beyond the uh the shiny toy aspect. They're shifting from a what is it and oh wow, to how do we govern and manage and use this? I'm really encouraged that they're moving beyond just the experimentation to uh what it might be called a structured phase of governance and institutional management. I'm gonna give you three specific examples. The first is ALA, the American Library Association. They have moved from a general observation to an active policy guidance. In early April, the AI Policy Working Group released a formal draft intended to unify the field's stance on generative AI. The document moves beyond how-to tips and instead talks about integrating AI into the core ethical framework of librarianship, focusing on intellectual freedom, patron privacy, and the public good. And I'll give you the citation, but I thought that was excellent. ALA is leading in this. A second is the university, and you're you're uh talking about the SU libraries. Well, the university AI ecosystem is alive and well, and academic librarians are positioning themselves as central managers of campus-wide AI ecosystems. Uh, an example that was given that I found was Stony Brook University on Long Island, uh, where the library has transitioned from hosting basic AI workshops, the shiny object, to hiring dedicated AI resource librarians and launching, quote, search AI, a custom controlled application layer that sits above the library catalog. This allows the institution to manage AI interactions within a trusted environment rather than relying solely on external commercial vendors. Seems really neat. And this is just brand new stuff with SUNY support. And lastly, moving into the literacy aspect of it, a recently proposed uh approach in terms of learning and literacy is called the gravitational model of literacy. It was in a book by Hannigan and Roser, R-O-S-S-E-R, Hannigan, H A N E G A N, called Generative AI and Libraries. Um, and this model talks about um managing the disruptions of AI by treating things as orbitable bodies, like they're in a solar system, and they're stabilized and governed, but around the professional values of librarianship. Their model places libraries' existing librarians' existing skills, critical thinking and ethical reasoning and inquiry at the center of the emerging gen AI uh literacies. And I thought it was really interesting. And they distinguish it from other generative AI models by claiming the emphasis is on meta-literacy and placing the librarians' core foundational skills, that is, things like ethical reasoning and inquiry at the center of the literary solar system. Uh, it's an interesting framework. There, not any really reported adoptions or applications at this time, but I think we should stay tuned. So here we see the field is going beyond just uh, you know, um taking a look and doing some uh testing and whatever and getting really down into the nitty-gritty. So I was encouraged. That's my A watch. That's our A watch for this month. So we're gonna take a very short break, uh, listen to a little music and come back with our main topic: the changing contours of the information age in relation to the challenges facing higher education in today's world. We're back for our main topic for episode 51, the changing contours of information. This episode examines the ascent of information schools, iSchools, from the academic periphery to becoming central to the modern university. Over the past 50 years, library and information science education has transformed from a niche single degree program into broad-based, robust, multi-program powerhouses with significant research funding and significant enrollments. But iSchools exist within universities, and universities today are facing a perfect storm of severe enrollment declines, something called the 2026 demographic cliff, mounting fiscal pressures, and a shifting cultural landscape. One quote, solution taken by some is to merge and consolidate schools and departments. According to a recent 2025-26 data, nearly 20% of university presidents have engaged in serious merger discussions. This is being called, quote, the great consolidation. So, in relation to information schools and library information education, is this the right move or is it misguided? And what are the implications? Now, I'm gonna start this off. Uh I'm gonna kick off the conversation with a brief history of LIS in higher education through the founding of iSchools in the early 2000s, and then to today. And then I'll turn it to Dave for his thoughts about what's going on with the great consolidation because great Dave is at ground zero because UT Austin has announced the creation of a new school of computing that will unite the independent and highly ranked School of Information, high school, with the Department of Computer Science and the Departments of Statistics and Data Sciences. So I'll try to be a brief if I can. I'm gonna skip past the many thousands of years from ancient times to the present, um, or not to the present, but to the United States in the 1800s, uh, and tracing LIS education uh to the 1880s from library economy to professional academic standards and to uh interdisciplinary information science today. In the mid to late 19th century century, the professionalization of library science happened in the United States. We had informal apprenticeships before that, and it became a rigorous, a more rigorous academic discipline. In 1876, the American Library Association was founded. And uh also in 1887, Melville Dewey established the first formal training program, the School of Library Economy, at Columbia College, which standardized the quote, library economy curriculum and emphasized technical uh efficiency. Throughout the early 20th century, the field shifted toward higher education because in 1923 there was a report. Um, it was a uh the Carnegie Corporation funded a report by Charles Williamson called the Training for Library Service. And that is considered, at least in my research, the most influential. Document in the history of library science education. It argued that library training should be an academic pursuit rather than vocational, and it should be hosted within universities. The result was a move toward academic education, and it culminated in 1951 when the American Library Association adopted new accreditation standards that established the master's degree as the requisite entry-level professional degree for credentials. Graduate degrees programs sprang up in major colleges and universities across the U.S. for the next 20 years. We're talking the 50s to the 70s. Takes us to the 1970s, and we start to see that these library schools, these programs start to expand beyond the library field into information science, into media management and systems. And in 1974, Beth, Syracuse University becomes the first school to formally change its name from library science to the School of Information Studies. I'll just give you a very quick what yeah. I'll give you a quick aside though. Bob Taylor actually wanted to call it the School of Information Science. He could not because there already was the term information science in the Department of Computer and Information Science. And so he went to studies. So it wasn't some big philosophical studies or science thing. That went along for a little while, but in the 1980s, Tony Carbow, who was the dean of the school at Pittsburgh, the University of Pittsburgh, decided to bring together some of the forward uh thinking schools. And she became, she brought together what became the first gang of four. It was Syracuse University and Drexel and Pittsburgh and Rutgers. And uh they came together making a gang of four. And they are schools that had beyond the library focus, including undergraduate information science and telecom. Some had journalism. And the objective was to share information and foster development of a community of colleagues addressing such questions as how do you explain information science to your provost? I knew about this, I was around in those terms, and I knew they were meeting. And the gang of four met informally into the mid-1990s and then faded away. But the same person, Tony Carbo, in 2001 brought together a new gang of cutting-edge schools at Pittsburgh. I was there. There were deans from Syracuse University, Ray Von Durant and Drexel, David Fensky, myself from the University of Washington, and then the University of Michigan's John King. And we became the gang of five. And our membership grew in 2003 when we added a bunch of other deans. It was University of Illinois, North Carolina Chapel Hill. We had a big meeting at Chapel Hill. The College of Information of Florida State was with us. And we agreed at that time to formalize our group, and we adopted the name Information Schools and the Moniker iSchools as our brand. In the past 25 years, these iSchools have just flourished and thrived. There are well over a hundred. There's a worldwide organization, the iCaucus and the iSchools. And they have fulfilled, in my opinion, their mission, which was to create broad-based information programs that meet lots of students' needs, but also remain true to library science as well, and to celebrate library science. Now, however, we're facing these new challenges of the academy in the year 2026 and beyond. The landscape of higher education is undergoing what I already referred to as the great consolidation. The demographic cliff, which actually started in 2025, which is the sharp drop in college-age population, skyrocketing operational costs, and particularly facilities costs, and pressure to keep student tuition and costs down. And then the cultural, social, and political pressures, particularly for the Trump administration and in some states with Republican conservative governors and legislatures, frankly. And then finally, the last perfect storm element is the disruptive pressure of AI. One solution seems to be for universities to abandon the standalone model for its smaller units, although I would argue that iSchools are no longer smaller units, but that's a different topic. According to recent data, nearly 20%, as I said, of university presidents have engaged in merger discussions. And the example that we might start with is Dave's School, UT Austin, which is a mainstay iSchool that has a terrific reputation for many years and strong LIS program. But the university has announced the creation of a new school of computing, right, Dave? That will unite the independent school of information with the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Statistics and Data Sciences. So is this the right move in relation to iSchools, in relation to the field, in relation to the universities? Dave, what do you think? Is this the right thing or is it misguided?

SPEAKER_02 27:37

Well, I think first we got to play the it's not just happening today. In fact, one of the models for both uh what happened here in Texas, I'll talk about that in a second, and at North Carolina started at the University of Wisconsin-Madison several years ago, where they brought their information science, computer science, data things together within a c within a sort of larger unit. And this year they rolled it out into the College of Computing and Artificial Intelligence that will start next year. So we can hopefully name these things as well as incubate them. And so what's happening, uh, what I can say is happening at Texas, um, I'm gonna put aside the fact that there's been zero faculty voice or or consultation, at least on the information school side. But what's being said out loud is that this is a time to invest, that you know, computing is big and information is big and data's big, and if we get them all together, then we go find a hundred million dollar, you know, donor for it. Meanwhile, we're we're well positioned for NSF and grants and things like that. And and honestly, this started as a proposal from computer science several years ago. I think it's been accelerated by vibe coding and the stuff we talked about before, which is increasingly the job market for starting computer scientists is tough and information science is growing. And so, you know, there are all these practical concerns and tactical concerns and strategic concerns to a point, right? So when this happened, normally the fear, and we can talk about places like Indiana, we can talk about some other colleges where library and information science suddenly finds itself in the middle of a wilderness they don't understand, like engineering, where there's this sort of unhappy connection between them. There is a sense here that it's an investment, that this is a this is a thriving area and growing area, not let's submerge it. The question to be seen in all of these cases will be how much of the information and really the library science side that goes with it. Because Wisconsin's the College of Computing and Artificial Science. We are going to be the school of computing, and nothing to me better represents my research into libraries and communities than computing. Uh, North Carolina is going to be the school of data science and society. Um, we've also seen related not so much with the library science side, but you know, University of San Diego combined their school, created a school of computing, information, and data science, bringing their data science institute and their supercomputing center together. New York University established the Institute, um, the Corrant Institute School of Mathematics, Computing, and Data Science. Cornell created sort of out of cloth, a computing and information science area. So it's not brand new, but three of them at once sort of got everyone's attention. And for me, because I'm annoying, the the larger question you asked is do we fit? Right? Because the problem is if you read at the surface level, oh, you all deal with ones and zeros. Go for it. Um, and then the question becomes you know, you're all we're all some phrase a meta profession, a meta discipline, meaning compute the effects of computing are felt in economics and are felt in media, and the effects of information science are felt in business and et cetera, right? We're not like accountants that work with accountants. And so that means that we've all have boundary issues, we're all trying to claim our space, even computer science. Um, many stories that when they're in engineering schools, for example, with computer engineering, um, the question becomes you know, how much do we really need the software versus building the hardware? And so, and data science is having an internal conflict about is data science the same thing as statistics? And so all of these contested boundaries are being put together and like go be fruitful, and we and it's being done in like a month. This is going to be interesting. And so I've been, because once again, this is me, writing writing the new book on if these things fit together. And you know, you've got a situation where computer science delegates mental labor, right? The goal of computer science is to determine what is computable with algorithms and such, and ultimately how that can reduce mental labor, automation, et cetera. So you've got this idea of this the focus on labor. Data science discovers patterns that humans couldn't see. So we're looking for patterns in in sort of that people can't look at. Information science mediates between a person and the knowledge they need, right? We always talk about no one's no one loves it, but everyone uses it about information science being the intersection of information and people and technology. But the people there is important. Part of the discussion here at Texas is our computer science folks don't do a lot of human-computer interface, HCI interaction, uh, a world, and that's a big world. And a lot of that is happening in the information school because it's people and how those people work in collaborative systems. And so the question will be tactically, how can we organize these schools so that they all continue to prosper? Okay. Strategically, how can they come together to present a vision that is attractive to students, is attractive to faculty, is attractive to donors, is attractive to funders. And then intellectually, does it need to go farther? And is the model not because that's library information science has always been pointing this one, right? Is it library and information science as an event together? Is it they're next to each other? Is one bigger than the other? And I think that for now, when I think about it, I think about it more like three threads that are being brought together to form a rope or a cord where there is strength but also tension between them. Um, when you look at something like AI, right? AI has got a, you know, put put on, we Mike always talks about his information glasses. Put on your computer science glasses. This is algorithm and algorithms and neural nets and training systems and and et cetera. And you put your data science, and this is all about, you know, coordinate algebra and transformations and non-deterministic algorithms. And you put on your information science classes, and it's all ethics, and how do we get our people, how do we ethically get our students to take these jobs or not, right? That's we're we're creating AI with these three different views that have never been coordinated. I call us accidental architects. We're all trying to push in a different direction that we feel is the right direction. We're all have actually a pretty big say in this, but not in a coordinated way. And so we're ending up in a very fragmented world around these kinds of things. And so I guess the the present form is we've always been evolving and changing. Um, things are accelerating within higher education. The jury is out about whether this is a marriage of convenience that we're gonna see more of. But even the iSchools, when you talk about the Gang of Four and the Gang of Five, and you talk about the worldwide iSchools now, there are many, many, many, many iSchools that have zero background connection to library science. Georgia Tech, um, Carnegie Mellon, these are iSchools that do not have that tradition. And so they're not wrestling with places like the University of Maryland, where they had to wrestle with is this still core or not, and how do we fit in? They're just moving ahead. And so um I think it's good that it's happening in higher education where our job is to think deeply about these things. But um, as I say, I think the jury is still out about whether this latest round of consolidation will work. And speaking of ground zero, I mean, Beth, what's your perspective being in an iSchool that is not currently being refurbed there?

SPEAKER_00 36:02

You know, it's interesting for me because when I wanted to become a librarian, I went to LSU, and that was a pretty traditional library school. And I did not know iSchools were a thing. And I'm trying to think about like if at LSU we even talked about other iSchools. I don't know that we really did. Um, but in my experience, like I had Dr. Dow, who was an archivist teaching me. I had um Margie Thomas, who was a school librarian teaching me how to be a school librarian, Alma Dawson teaching us how to be academic librarians, right? Like everybody that was at LSU was also a librarian working at some point and teaching us. And when I got to Washington to start my PhD, it was where I first and probably, you know, noticing the difference in like R1 at that school level is that there were so many people who did research about libraries, but weren't necessarily librarians. And it was always and has remained interesting to me how the some of the big schools like Washington and Illinois have so few people who've been librarians now at this time, you know, in my generation, versus versus, you know, even 20 years ago, where that presence was much stronger. And so when I got to Washington, Mike, you were you were dean, I think, when I got to Washington, maybe. Um, and you had that school, you were a school librarian, and then you were a professor, right? And so you had worked your way through that experience. Harry Bruce took over, who also had some of those experiences. But when I think about, you know, but when I look at the dean now, removed from librarianship. If I think about, you know, Syracuse has had a parade of deans since I've gotten here. And, you know, Raj, degree in business, Andy, a degree in, I don't know what, sorry. I'll keep my comments to myself. Don't know, right? But like not in that same base. And so we started to see more and more computer scientists, data scientists, but then even further. So business people, engineering that are being hired to lead our schools. And when I look across the deans at our, you know, topped ranked information schools, it does seem work like we're getting further and further away from librarianship as one of those foundational threats, like you know, that that library economy thread that you talked through. And so, you know, when I think about the students that we're getting. So, like right now at Syracuse, our LIS program is 24% of our total student population. So, in this economic cliff, our program is doing really pretty well. And we'll see how, you know, we'll see what happens with like loans and all of the kinds of rules that are coming up and what we'll do to kind of work through that. But, you know, for now, I see people that really want to work in libraries, really want to protect community heritage. They're wanting to do these types of things. And, you know, we're gonna have a new concentration on AI librarianship and human-centered AI, I think. So it's been interesting. We should do one episode that's just all the different AI terms that people are using. But the students were upset when they saw that. And so, like, you know, but obviously you don't have to do that as a concentration. There are gonna be people who want to, and those people are gonna probably immediately get jobs too, because we know that the employers are looking for that. And um, so I mean, it it that is that is one of the tensions, you know, that I think about. And when I when I'm hiring adjuncts, you know, have you spent time in the library? And we need that now more than ever because like less and less we're turning out faculty members that have this library experience. And so if I can't pull from my faculty to bring that experience, you know, out of our, I don't know how many faculty, only four of us have experience in libraries. That's not a lot of people when we have 25% of the student population, right? So that means the adjuncts that I have to hire have to be excellent in librarianship, but we know that there's like equity issues with with that too. And then for those of us who are librarians and also playing tenure games and getting full professorship, it is also hard to be fully engaged in practice and community building with like other research demands. And so, like, if my colleagues don't think Nyla counts as a good research conference, it's hard for me to allocate my time there. And so, one of the things in the Syracuse program that's changed over time is when I got there, most of our LIS faculty were professors of practice. So we had built in time, people like Barb Stripling, Jill Hurst Wall, we had built in time and space for them to do that community work. But now, you know, all five of us are tenured or on the tenure track, right? So there's just not that same it does not feel like the same space in making the claims about library work. And Dave, you did us, you did us a big service by going through the program before us because we can point to you for public scholarship and things like that that make a difference, right? And and Megan Oakleaf too, right? Like work that changes our field. And I think, and our colleagues get that, right? Like this is not uh an indictment on my colleagues because I think they've been ultimately really supportive of this work. But I just I feel like it is slipping away. And I'm worried about that. And I, you know, and does I mean, and at some points I think like when we had different deanships who did not see the value of the library program, but I knew that it was there. Like, let's should we take our program and go to education? Is there a different space for us? Can we be a boutique school at the library? You know, like what is what does that look like? And so, you know, kind of the opposite of the great merger. I'm thinking about like a tiny boutique school. And and and in some ways that's also going back to our roots, maybe. Um, but that I that my concern is that we are lost in the bigness of all of this. And, you know, I went to dinner last night with our iSchool board of advisors, and they were like, How do we organize all of the information on AI and who is gonna store it and who's gonna organize it? And I'm like, the librarians that like we we've always done this. So these are new information problems, and it's more data and it's more this, but we've we've always been these people. And so, you know, part of it is reminding them that it's always been us and like making sure that we're saying that in those rooms with computer scientists and whomever. Um, but then also like, should we take our ball and go home? Mike?

SPEAKER_01 43:47

Well, I don't know where you you where you would go, Beth, because I think that the uh it it might sound you know uh starry eyed or something to the boutique school within the line. library or something, but I'm not sure it's viable. But I think your concerns are are real and justified um because as a particular area is um part of a larger and larger organization um it becomes more difficult um to gain resources and and degrees of freedom. At universities, unless it changes the school and college level uh with a dean is the way that the organ the units are organized. And what's interesting is over time uh there's been quite differences of sizes in that you have uh some uh you know boutique little schools and colleges like the School of Dentistry at the University of Washington that really has a handful of students and yet there's a dean uh versus a dean of arts and sciences that has like you know many many uh different things i have uh grown up in the iSchool era I'm one of the architects of iSchools and I do believe there's something uh unique and special about our uh organizational scheme with a dean and an independent iSchool um because it does give it a certain amount of clout and recognition and while for example the library program has to negotiate and and work through getting the resources and the people it needs at least it's at that level it's uh like you said you're 25% of enrollment within an iSchool if you were to be merged with computer science and engineering and others you're gonna be you know eight percent of uh the dean's uh portfolio now so that that changes things but besides just the economic aspect to me um there's also the cultural and while it might be true Beth that uh the library side may not have as much influence as it did in the past I do think that the the general culture of collaboration of coordination among people of the way we work of the human focus is embraced by information units and I don't see that in engineering and computer science uh and and management and and some other areas one of the reasons the information school at Washington was able to be successful is because there were some very forward thinking people in computer science who said we don't want to do that stuff. That's not our focus or nature or interests and therefore we think and I said well why don't you because I I when I first got to campus at an interview I said why don't you just take this computer science and and and bring it in with you and do it they said because we don't want to we want to stand side by side with a strong information unit that includes library by the way and let us do our coding and other things and our our focus uh but we'll work together and that's happened um you know to uh uh uh the benefit of all now I realize computing is changing and they have to accommodate that and figure out where they're going I don't think the solution for them is to become more people centered and to take over that middle ground of trans because it's just you know that's not in their DNA. That's not what they want to do. And I think they'll work it out. I think frankly if I were the dean of computer science I would be getting together with electrical engineering and computer engineering and those things because I think the hardware software question is the next great horizon. It's not so much AI but it's cyborgs and humans taking on physical um um technology within us and stuff that's that's where I would be going with it. In terms of our schools I'm wondering and I know you know we've got to be careful about the time and there's a lot to talk about I'm wondering though if what we need to think about is helping ourselves the information units within iSools including and especially library science how do we navigate moving forward if some of this is inevitable. Dave your future it's inevitable at least for the next five years or whatever. You're not gonna break away in two years when they realize they made a tremendous mistake, which I think they are in putting these things together because you'll be navel gazing and fighting among yourselves and trying to work things out instead of taking on the great challenges and questions intellectually of our field you're going to be caught up with you know administrative bickering and and and figuring out how to work together. So how can we because we're pretty agile creative people regardless of what environment we find ourselves in whether within the School of Computing or arts and sciences at uh at Wisconsin although you said they they broke it off or so that's kind of a thing. At Albany it's in this you know the College of uh CEH emergency preparedness uh homeland security and cybersecurity that's where the uh information is so how can we do that and I and I'll just foreshadow what I I want to bring up afterwards do we need to bring together a new gang of N of leaders within the field to kind of work together on this problem instead of each of us trying to do it separately on our own campuses.

SPEAKER_02 50:09

Well but but you there's two issues there right so one is the intellectual issue of what do we want to be what what impact do we want to make in society how we fit together. The other is structural because I'm about to go from a school of 28 faculty with about five six of those being professors of practice to a school of just looked it up 700 faculty of which 390 are um uh tenure track yeah but if you can't see it but that's I'll just drop it because that's what I did too that those numbers holy shit holy shit so we're going from a faculty of 28 to a faculty of 700. And how many are tenure track? 390 of those are on tenure track and and what it means is that before when you would not have a great idea you would go to the dean and say I got a great idea. Now you go to the policy and process that tells you which associate dean deals with this on which Thursday did you fill out the proper form. Because you can't manage an organization that big without structure. And so Mike what I might push I don't think pushing back but what I might add to when you talk about the evolution of iSpools part of the reason the evolution of iSpools went the way it was was because they were either their own standalone units already and they grew right Maryland grew Washington grew they Syracuse grew from a unit right and they took great benefit from a time and a place and they grew and even then I remember the days when you were talking about the scale problem which is that when you go to hire a new dean of liberal arts, you look for someone who's been an associate dean or who's been a chair of a big department and there's this sort of ramp of increasing administrative knowledge and responsibilities. When you go to iSchools you're looking for a full professor who's not too much of an asshole. You know it's like they they may or may not have experience but it's a small enough community that people sort of treat them by their interpersonal skills more than others.

SPEAKER_01 52:12

I I have I have to interrupt on that because I actually disagree I think the successful deans were not research deans or um intellectual deans but they were manager deans. Well I didn't say successful I just said the ones that got picked okay quite well taken but I mean Ray Vondran at Syracuse certainly has research and intellectual trials but Ray was a brilliant manager.

SPEAKER_02 52:41

Yeah 100% that's why it worked same with Dom Marchandy but having just gone through two years of trying to convince the Provost to hire a dean their answer always back was who would we hire what's their lineage and the answer is they're good and smart and whatever as opposed to well they were this and they were that and then they took on this leadership role and and Michigan is now experiencing like where they've gotten really big and they're thinking about departmentalizing. Their information school has always been the school of one without departments and now they're like we can't manage it at this scale. And so what we what we're intellectually where we sit and how we defend ourselves is one thing but the other is the institutional inertias and structures of higher education which is very different at an R1 than it is from you know a medium sized private school than it is from a small right that's where we're wrestling with these kinds of questions because at at Texas we were never ignored to be ever want to be a 700 faculty thing. At Syracuse I get where are you guys you're somewhere around 35ish 40 I think but in essence you're considered one of the big successful schools in that scale right Washington has around 70 right you don't have a 700 person department that right so so the scale matters and the institutions matter. When you look at the mergers that occurred that we just talked about Texas Wisconsin and Chapel Hill they're big units with big administrative structures big numbers in students and so that idea might be part of this inertia. So the question I don't disagree Mike intellectually how do we demonstrate as we all we've been doing this since I was a doctoral student how do we demonstrate that library science has an intellectual role all right University of Washington started their that that program Beth has been part of it talking about the role of so we write papers and we write white papers and we try and get doctoral students but the other part of it is how do we deal with an administrative structure in these universities that don't that doesn't deal with multidisciplinary island of misfit toys craziness very well and tries to manage it by putting it into a bucket and having as few buckets as possible.

SPEAKER_01 55:08

Yeah you're exact you're exactly right and that's my point I'll let Beth talk about it but we have to tie it up guys I'm I'm really sorry because I think we could go on for a couple of hours but uh you know it's in a way it's it's okay uh where do we go from here if you could wave uh a magic wand or something and and affect one thing moving forward in order to help us to cope with this what what might it be?

SPEAKER_00 55:36

Or anything else you want to say Ben okay thanks um so one thing I want to talk about and I'll do this really quickly is just kind of giving a shout out to the LIS forward work that is happening was happening at the University of Washington. And Mike I think it's doing some of the things that you're talking about um you know LIS forward was a iSchool wide well started with some schools Syracuse, Washington Michigan, Texas, a couple of others and we had various professors at all different ranks and staff coming together and we asked some questions we looked at data we wrote some white papers we shared it with the library world more largely and got feedback and and the goal of that was to really think about this exact thing the LIS at iSchools and a lot of these tensions you know got brought to the surface and and I'll make sure to share all of the publications from from Friday Harbor from from LIS forward including the Friday Harbor papers but one of the things that we noticed and this is maybe the thing that I would change is the pipeline pro problem we have in LIS schools. We are not graduating LIS researchers with PhDs who can come and be professors who have that experience in libraries that also have the research chops to come in and teach our students. And so we are having less and less uh LIS professors with that background which means we can't bring we can only bring in so many PhD students and so more over and over you know we can only bring in one person we can only bring in one person right so like we can't build a cohort of LIS people like that. So one I think like addressing that faculty pipeline because I think we're just going to continue to see I'm I'm worried that we will continue to see LIS faculty shrink if if if we don't really think about that that pipeline problem. And I think you know there's there's some things that we can think about doing to address that. And you know I think it starts with like having students think about librarianship in a at an earlier point in time right like how do we get librarianship as a career choice in front of high school high school students early college students right um at Syracuse we have a fast track program. So during your senior year you can take prop classes at LIS so you can finish in one year instead of two um so I I think you know finding these ways to on-ramp education to make sure that we have the people to put in front of future librarians is one of the things that I'd like to see us take on. And and I and I do and I'll and I can wrap us up with this I do think that that also means for us as the library educators to think about the curriculum and the ways that we're gonna talk about human-centered AI, artificial intelligence and anything else that we want to call AI, how we are going to handle that in the curriculum. And I think maybe the next thing would be to get LIS together again and maybe it doesn't mean just the iSchools maybe we need to bring in more of the library schools too and we need to think about this all together and um and and maybe AI curriculum is a part of that.

SPEAKER_01 59:10

Yeah um I think you're right uh collaboration across units of people in the library field I I think makes a lot of sense and again one step up from that would be collaboration among iSchools who are now finding themselves within larger units to see what they might do.

SPEAKER_02 59:28

Dave last word no other everything that that said yes except I would bring together um the library schools the i schools and I would bring together some really advanced librarians um the people who are hiring us but also those that have fought for power political and budgets in other settings that we could learn from. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 59:48

So I'm gonna ask each of you to make your lists of people that you think might want to be brought together and maybe we can do something to help bring them together maybe involving our friends at Library Journal to give us a an assist. Thank you both uh I don't know if I feel better um I'm more troubled in some ways I'm I I just worry that these universities really administratively don't know what they're doing. And they're making these changes whatever without really thinking through the implications.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:23

And because of that we can't worry about them and that side we have to buy worry about how do we first survive and then thrive within these contexts that we find ourselves so all right we're gonna take a short break come back with our awesome library thingy our final and required segment cue the music we're back our awesome library thingy we'll go Dave Beth and Mike go ahead Dave so I mentioned I was uh in Toronto and we were hosted at the uh Toronto Public Library which is just as always an amazing institution and so while this is kind of an old reference um it is a good one uh they've had starting 2024 an intellectual freedom campaign and they produced the most brilliant posters that they put up around the city they changed library cards that you could have um one of my favorite posters it says I'm all for free speech but and then it's got scribble scribble scribbles and scribble scribble scribble and it's like what's at stake when we lose our access to information and ideas um another one is a one dialogue box says we've lost the ability to respectfully disagree and the other one says shut up what's at stake and so they they did this beautiful tongue in cheek raising of like you can't you know you're always for uh freedom of free speech and free expression until you find the free speech or expression you disagree with and they led it to conversations they uh hosted forums they did they did a whole big thing and so I just want to give a a big shout out to that like I say it's relatively new but I think it's an idea that is always an ever uh green in these ideas and worth stealing. So I'll send a link to that one.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:42

So Beth okay I'm sorry I've got a couple um but I will try to make them fast so first I want to say congratulations to Tamika Barnes who was elected the 2027-2028 ALA president she's the associate dean of perimeter college uh library services at Georgia State University and she is also one of our amazing adjuncts at Syracuse and uh she'll take over the presidency in New Orleans at the annual convention and her platform uh centered advocacy inclusive leadership equity intellectual freedom and transparency um I also want to say congratulations to Christine Saluga who is a 2026 I love my librarian award honoree. She is a school library media specialist at Crantford High School in New Jersey where she transformed the library into a dynamic hub for student learning and community engagement and led a remarkable local history project honoring Cranford's Dixie Giants baseball team and won national recognition from ASL American Association of School Librarians and she is one of our recent um graduates from our program uh our LIS program won the one assessment award from Syracuse University so we assess the best which I think might be the nerdiest award I've ever won. But um that is in big thanks to Blythe Bennett who had kept all of our ducks in a row for so many years. And on a side note I deserve my own award for being the first program director without Blythe because that is a whole different ball game. And then last but certainly not least um I want to congratulate another one of our adjuncts Sarah Kelly Johns for being this year's recipient of the Joseph Lippincott Award from ALA. And this is one of our most distinguished honors and it's it's special for me. 20 years ago uh she was the president of the American Association of School Librarians and they named me as an emerging leader and as part of that they paid I also got a scholarship to go to an ALA conference and at that conference I ended up attending a program called Do You Wanna Get a PhD? And I met Alison Carlisle and Cynthia and Cheryl Matoyer, Karen Fisher, Harry Bruce, so many people who wooed me away to Washington and that's the start of my PhD journey. So in a lot of ways I wouldn't be here without Sarah and when I saw that she was like one of our adjuncts it really blew me away. So this recognition is for her for her decades of scholarship her leadership and all of her commitment to teaching our students all across the country and the work that she does for her own students um in in in the Adirondack. So thank you Sarah and thanks to all of our alumni y'all have been doing an amazing it was an amazing week for our Syracuse library program.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:54

Mike Yeah well Sarah and I go way back into the 70s when I was a school librarian. And uh we've been friends a long time. And we she uh is an Adirondack person, as you said, and that's where I spend my summers. All right. My awesome library thing is someone we should have recognized, I think, a while ago, and that's Luann James. She's the recently fired librarian from Rutherford County, Tennessee library after she refused a board order to reclassify over 130 children's books. Right now, we're starting to see a shift in the book censorship battles. It's not about banning anymore, it's about a legal area called reclassification. And the biggest flashpoint in the country happened in Rutherford County, Tennessee. Um, her story has become a lightning rod for the future of intellectual freedom. Uh, back in March uh last year, the local library board voted eight to three to relocate over 130 children's books to the adult section, uh the adult section. The board chair argued the books were inaccurate or promoted genuine confusion. Uh they thought they were talking about LGBTQ titles, but actually it included books on the Holocaust, slavery, and even some Bible stories. Luanna's 25 years in the field, and she flat out refused to do it. She didn't just see this as a policy disagreement, she saw it as a violation of the First Amendment. She raised a massive red flag about privacy, alleging that the board chair actually asked for lists of patrons, names and addresses included, who had checked out these books. The board didn't like that very much, and they uh fired her for insubordination on March 30th of this year. But she didn't go quietly. First of all, the public response has been huge. A GoFundMe campaign for her legal fees have already shot up past$120,000 in just one week. Professional groups like the Tennessee Library Associated, LLA are stepping in. Um, this is a textbook case of stealth censorship. So as of uh this last week, the local fight is officially gone uh federal. The ACLU of Tennessee is taking on her case, filing a civil rights lawsuit. They're arguing you can't fire a librarian for refusing to carry out an illegal discriminatory order. On the other side, the board has dug in. They've hired Larry Crane, a lawyer represented biblically informed, quote, legal views. I think this is going to go all the way to the Supreme Court. The local community is still incredibly active. Today, April 17th, they're hosting a screening of the documentary, The Librarians, to keep the conversation going. It all boils down to one question. If a board can't technically ban a book, are they allowed to just hide it? Stay tuned on this channel.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:53

And with that, that concludes our podcast of the month. Um, thank you for taking the time. Thank you for listening. Uh, please continue to let folks know. Thanks again to our partner, Library Journal, for services and support. LJ is available on the web at libraryjournal.com and social media platforms. And this month, we welcome our new advertiser, Bob's better bookmark, now with AI. Want to know where you are in that book? So does Bob. Please subscribe to us and rate us on Apple, iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts. If you're listening to this on a train, take out a pencil, scribble it on the wall. Someone will find it on a regular basis. You know, tell your for your friends, really. If they've invited you over for dinner, bring a speaker with you and play it. I'm sure they'll love it. Please subscribe to us, rate us, and contact us via email at info at librarieslead.org or post on our Facebook group, Libraries Lead. And again, our resources and references are available through our website, libraries lead.libraryjournal.org. Bye, Mike. Bye, Beth. Bye.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:03

Bye, y'all.