Dean’s Note – SLIS Alumni Magazine, Fall 2009

SLIS alumni have recently been mailed the Fall 2009 issue of the alumni magazine (SLIS Network, Vol.47, No.2). The theme of this issue was "SLIS Ph.D. Program Celebrates 45 Years." If you did not receive a copy, you can update your alumni address by emailing us at (slisnews@indiana.edu).

An article by SLIS Dean Blaise Cronin opened the issue:

Dean's Note:
Reflections on the SLIS Ph.D. Program: 45 Years & 168 Graduates Later

If we did not grant doctorates, there would not be a field. Or if there were, it would be a field with decidedly limited prestige and little or no academic credibility. It is not an accident that the leading library and information science schools, however you care to define leading, have doctoral programs. And it is no secret that some schools that do not have a Ph.D. program wish that they did: we like to keep up with the Joneses, too. Why should one expect academia to be immune to inflationary tendencies: remember Ronald Dore’s book, The Diploma Disease, which appeared in the mid-1970s? That said, I do feel a sense of pride when I look at the list of graduates from the SLIS Ph.D. program and, more particularly, when I think of their many contributions to the maturation of the field and its consolidation within the ranks of the nation’s major public research universities.

We graduated our first doctoral students in 1968 just as waves of French students were taking to the streets of Paris: Navanitaya Intrama and William Studer were in the vanguard; 166 have followed in their tracks since. Some have not strayed far, or if they did found the lure of Bloomington too strong to resist: Charles Davis (1969), Marilyn Irwin (1991) and Ralf Shaw (1983? - an annus mirabilis with six Ph.D.s being awarded, including one to Margaret Fung whom I last saw in Taipei) and all still very much here and integral members of the School. As I run my eye down the list I see the names of many current faculty with positions at leading institutions across the nation (Kathryn LaBarre at Illinois, Connie van Fleet at Oklahoma, Cheryl Metoyer at Washington, John Richardson at UCLA, Danny Wallace at Alabama) and others who are pursuing academic careers in countries such as Canada, Japan, Korea, Saudi Arabia, Thailand and the United Kingdom.

The list also contains the names of many current and recent practitioners of note, including William Crowe (1986), James Mullins (1984), Pamela Sandstrom (1998) and Gary Wiggins (1985), individuals whose career contributions have left an indelible mark on the field. As you imagine, there has been a broadening of subject focus. Many of the early Ph.D. dissertations had a specific concern with library materials, operations or processes, so unlike today: “The classified catalogs of German university libraries…” vs. “Identifying gender ideology in Web content…”. Reading the titles is a good way of refreshing one’s knowledge of the recent history of the field: at a glance one can see just how much the field has developed in a matter of generations and how certain concepts and issues are invariant. Last but not least it brought home to me once again the enormity of the contributions made by Distinguished Professor Emeritus David Kaser, who during his 18 years on the SLIS faculty, directed more dissertations than most of us have had hot dinners. Long may the program flourish!

• SLIS Network - Fall 2009 (PDF)

Posted November 10, 2009