Introduction and summary: Library Studies, the Informational Disciplines, and the iSchool: Some Remarks Prompted by LIS Forward

Introductory

The LIS Forward report is motivated by “a sense of urgency concerning the future of LIS in information schools.”  It is a welcome and interesting contribution.

The Report looks at the current position of LIS (Library and Information Science/Studies)[1] in the iSchool. It echoes recurrent discussions about the prestige or position of LIS/Library Studies within the academy, the unsettled relationship between various informational disciplines, circular debates about the nature of those informational disciplines, and the challenges to a practice-based discipline in a research environment.

I share the authors’ sense of urgency. However, this sense of urgency is not driven primarily by questions of disciplinary definition or boundary. It is driven by a sense that this is an important moment for libraries and for librarianship.

It is an exciting time, as the library has been transforming from a transactional, collection-centered one to a relational, community-centered one. It is also a challenging time as both library value and library values are being questioned.

It is very much a field in motion, and occasional commotion. 

For these reasons it is a time when it is more important than ever to have strong learning, research and advocacy partners which can strengthen the field and provide leadership in these areas:

• Research: enrich the library’s knowledge base about its community and environment.
• Career preparation: understood broadly as provision of skills and outlooks to understand and act in changing social, political, technical and service environments.
• Engagement: connect libraries to frameworks, evidence and arguments which influence practice and inform policy.

Library or Information Studies is one important place this leadership can come from, although as I note below, there are others. The current iteration of the Report focuses on research, although I make comments on all three areas.

Accordingly, the urgency that I see is in the connection between, on one hand, the library of today and tomorrow and, on the other, the university educational capacity that prepares much of the library workforce, and the university research capacity that can potentially advance the field.

Is iSchool education and research helping libraries succeed? I am not sure to what extent it is. I would be interested to see more of an outside-in view of the questions raised in the report in future iterations. What do libraries and related organizations need in terms of iSchool (or other) research, education and innovation partners?

I mostly use the term ‘Library Studies’ (LS) – or librarianship -- in my response.[2] This is certainly because libraries and librarianship are my primary focus; however, I also want to avoid some of the definitional blurriness around the use of ‘LIS’ that the report acknowledges. I believe that this blurriness can be politically and personally convenient while also being more generally unhelpful.

It is clearly significant that LIS Forward was initiated by a group of iSchools within R1 institutions, given the reputational hierarchies and research focus at play in those institutions. Library studies may have low prestige or ‘symbolic capital’ in these environments. This comes across very clearly in the contribution in Chapter 3 of the Early Career Faculty. It is also evident in some comments in the Deans’ interviews.

Indeed, in support of this view, one need not look beyond the disciplinary backgrounds of the Deans of the involved iSchools, and the relative absence among them of a disciplinary or practitioner background in library studies. The low proportion of LS hires in 2022 (as opposed to LIS hires) noted by the report authors also seems telling.

At the same time, the perception of libraries themselves, particularly within university structures of influence and opinion, may be static and out of date. They may not be seen as complex management environments embedded in demanding political situations, or as sites of evolving technology or strategic choices, or as public investments in wellness, education and research.

At a high level, this leads to a two-fold challenge for Library Studies within the iSchool, especially within the R1 environment. First is the lack of academic prestige and hence emphasis; second is a potential lack of belief that libraries can motivate theoretical frameworks or professional preparation that is sufficiently worthy of academic attention.

These and other challenges have led to what I call here a story of progressive subsumption, as library studies is subsumed into various broader informational constructs. Schools of Library Studies diversified into LIS to reflect the changing technology environment, and the variety of informational careers students were following. LIS was subsumed into broader schools of information, as information processing and management became more common. The iSchool range is wide, with emphases as various as, say, vocationally oriented information systems work, or as social and philosophical aspects of an informational society, or as values-driven social justice and equity explorations. In some cases, informatics or related undergraduate degrees were added. The Report makes clear that Library Studies feels squeezed or undervalued, despite reporting continued demand for the MLS. There are also questions about the balance between teaching-oriented faculty and research faculty, as this educational demand continues.

This pattern of subsumption also relates to scale, the LS research and education capacity available in any iSchool or in aggregate across iSchools and other institutions. Is this a community that is stable or in decline? Of course, an advantage of the bigger school unit is the ability to work in concert with others.

There is a third challenge, one of agency and change. Local evolution will be driven by individual university configurations, influences and needs. Any change process is diffuse and slow, and is subject to the collective action problem across schools. It may also be resisted, although the report does not emphasise this, as may happen if some reallocation of resources, influence and vested interests is suggested.

Together, these challenges lead to a major question the Report needs to address. Given the depressingly recurrent nature of the discussions about the position of Librarianship/LIS in R1 institutions, what needs to be done differently now to secure and elevate that position?

This is why I emphasise four factors throughout this response:

1. the benefits of increasing the awareness, scale and impact of research and policy work through a more concertedly collaborative approach,
2. the benefits of reconnecting more strongly with libraries and related organizations, and the organizations that channel their interests, which includes discussion of more flexible and tailored learning and certification reflecting evolving skills and workplace demands,
3. the possible benefits of refocusing this particular discussion of Library Studies around the institutional and service dynamics of LAM and connecting that with a variety of disciplinary hinterlands (public administration, social studies, and so on) and moving away from the familiar and maybe superseded discussions about IS, LIS and so on,
4. the benefits of developing an agenda of Key Areas which connect with current library needs, and which can provide some rationale or motivation for recruitment, research activity, granters, collaborative activity and so on. If iSchool education and research respond more actively to evolving library issues, the people with appropriate skills and interests need to be in place.

Of course, there is a prior question about whether Library Studies has a place in the iSchool at all, but for now I assume it does. In fact, one is aware of opportunity. R1 institutions contain the space, resources and ambition to potentially remake Library Studies in ways that address the challenges of the times. If Library Studies is to benefit from strong collaborations within the range of specialisms an iSchool offers then Library Studies itself must be strongly represented in the structures of the school, be connected with the practitioner community, and have a strong research profile. The report recognizes this, notably in recommendation 3.

It seems unlikely that library studies has the prestige, track record or scale to exist in the R1 environment outside of a bigger grouping such as the iSchool. Given the history of library schools within this environment, a favorable position with an iSchool or other school seems like a win. (And again, Library Studies exists outside of this environment also.)

I comment on iSchools here given that that is the focus of the report, acknowledging that other disciplinary-departmental configurations exist and may offer other advantages. A key issue here is the scale required to have a range of educational offerings and some research capacity.

Finally, as the Report notes, iSchools are quite different from each other and given the fluidity of disciplinary definition, origin stories, and departmental organization, it is clear that practices are highly contingent – on institutional histories and configurations, on Deans’ preferences and outlooks, on hiring decisions, on institutional political and economic drivers, and on existing faculty interests. This comes across quite strongly in some places in the report, and I thought that it would be interesting for the authors to lean a little more into some of these questions at some stage. 

For this reason, when I talk about iSchools I tend to have a somewhat idealized version in mind, assuming a broad scope that entails a sociotechnical exploration of technology, people and organizations within a multidisciplinary setting. Thinking about the position and future of the iSchool within the university is outside my scope here, and, indeed, outside my competence. Library Studies certainly have a place within such an environment. Of course, actually existing iSchools variably embody that idealized version.

Summary note

My response is in seven sections. This introduction is followed by five relatively self-standing pieces which could be considered independently, each looking at a different aspect of Library Studies and the iSchool. For this reason, there may be a little redundancy between them. Finally, there is a section which responds to the Report’s invitation to provide some candidate recommendations.

Five opening remarks:

1. The initiative should have ambition which is proportional to the urgency they describe, and to the benefits of having a strong research and education partner for a challenged and changing library community. This needs some thinking about agency in respect of collaborative activity, and I suggest the group seeks funding to coordinate and seek additional support.
2. Given the recurrent nature of the discussion about the position of Library Studies/LIS within the University, and given the prestige dynamics of an R1 institution, a (the?) major question before the initiative is how to secure and elevate that position. This involves steps to elevate the interest in, the awareness of, and the impact of the research and education questions Library Studies addresses, to sharpen focus on the distinctiveness of LS, and to reconnect with evolving library challenges and interests.
3. The report notes an identity challenge within an identity challenge (LIS within the iSchool). One could extend the identity challenge concertina and add Informatics, Library Studies, Information Science and Information Sciences to the mix. At the same time, as the Deans note, outside perceptions can be confused about labels, be unaware of intellectual traditions, or be confused about the nature of the scholarly enquiry or education involved. After many years of discussion, the LS/LIS/IS discourse does not cumulate to consensus about a unified field, about the main emphases in such a field, or about the terms used to describe it. Seen against the challenge I describe above, this disciplinary discussion seems like a played-out topic, of declining interest; however, it still commands attention and I explore it further below. At the same time, the library is not just a set of information management techniques. Nor is the future of the library more Python or data science, important as those are for some who work in libraries. The library is a service organization that needs to be designed and sustained and a social and cultural institution with a long history and a vital educational and civic role.  Library education and research have other potential partners in the disciplinary ecosystem, which is one reason that the potentially broader social and cultural range of the iSchool is of interest. If the focus of the initiative is on libraries, I think that it makes sense to talk about Library Studies (rather than LIS), noting, as the report does, the evolution of and interaction between informational disciplines.
4. I question above whether switching from LIS to LAM as a focus would clarify and sharpen the goals. This would move it away from definitional discussion within the informational fields, although it could still benefit from their focus. Of course, libraries, archives and museums have quite different traditions and emphases, but they do share that they are practitioner-focused, and represent institutional responses to social, cultural and scholarly needs. Establishing a new focus, within the rich multi-disciplinary hinterland of the iSchool, connects to the future rather than to a past struggling to establish its place. A Library/Archive/Museum focus also potentially presents a more understandable and relatable focus to other parties.[3]
5. A key factor here is economics. I do not have the data or the knowledge to comment on this. However, it is important to understand local economic drivers, market demand and willingness to pay, and so on. This plays into the interesting discussion about certificates, stackable qualifications, and other flexible learning pathways in evolving practitioner-oriented disciplines.

Here is a brief description of what is to follow.

1 Information – an elusive and changing concept

I sketch a brief historical schematic, just to provide some context for subsequent discussion of libraries and the informational disciplines. I note the move from the long age of literacy and print, to the proliferation of recorded information and knowledge resources after World War II, to the current ‘informationalized’ environment where information is an integral part of social organization. I note how the library, Information Science, and the iSchool emerged, respectively, in these successive phases. And I also discuss the current broad philosophical, technical, cultural and social interest in informational issues across disciplines. This interest is also turned to the past, which may be reinterpreted in informational terms. In parallel with this rise, information critique becomes more important.

2 Libraries – organizational responses to learning and creative needs

My main focus is to reaffirm that libraries are complex and changing social organizations, which are deeply collaborative and networked, and which are often working in challenging political and social contexts. They are shifting from being transactional and collections-centered to being relational and community-centered. This means that they manifest interesting educational and research issues, from the technical, to the management, to the social and political. For example, libraries are relevant if you are interested in the public sphere, the nature and support of public goods, equity of opportunity, childhood learning, building sustainable scholarly infrastructure, the balance between creators and consumers, the nature of memory and forgetting. Information management skills remain important but there is a range of community, management, organization, advocacy and other skills that are also very important. This underlines how the library can generate interesting education and research agendas, and a principal theme here is how to elevate awareness of this and interest in it among peers from other disciplines. I suggest that the initiative convene with central library organizations and funders to develop a motivating list of Key Areas that will be important for libraries, and might provide some signals for recruitment, research, and course development.

3 The informational disciplines

I review some of the literature about LIS, Information Science (IS) and the emergence of the iSchool. I note the binary nature of LIS (L + IS) and the subsequent ambiguity in its use as well as occasional tension between the two wings. The relative L or IS emphasis may vary by context of use or person. In its classic form, Information Science may only be fully appreciated by those familiar with its tradition. Others may understand it more generically as a more applied companion to computer science or as a general enquiry. We already see discussion of ‘information sciences’ or ‘information science’ which make no reference to the classical Information Science intellectual legacy or social community. Nevertheless, there are strong intellectual traditions and affiliations at play, and I conclude that it may be appropriate to think of LIS and of Information Science as ongoing social communities, supported by particular educational affiliations, journals, conferences and associations rather than as self-standing disciplines. The iSchools themselves are an important part of the IS and LIS social architecture. However, this may mean that the specificity of the IS or LIS community may be diluted as the iSchool faculty continues to be diversified, as the broader iSchool informational agenda subsumptively addresses the core IS issues in a hybrid disciplinary setting, and as iSchool graduates have a variety of disciplinary outlooks. Library Studies can potentially benefit from being a strong focus within the multidisciplinary mix of the iSchool.

4 Ideas – impact on policy and practice

I briefly look at the general transmission of ideas and innovation in the library domain and wonder if the impact of Library Studies here is less than one might expect. The report is relatively silent about this area, but some disciplines (business and economics, for example) do aim to inform policy and influence practice. This seems like an important discussion point.  I would be interested to see some follow-up work comparing Library Studies with other disciplines. Education, Health Sciences, Social Work, Industrial Relations and Hospitality Studies come to mind.

5 Prestige and power in the university

I talk about prestige and power, which are clearly very much at play in the dynamics of the iSchool and the influences on the Report. I draw on Bourdieu’s discussion of field, capital and power. The historical trajectory of Library Studies in the context of successively emerging informational disciplines (Information Science, LIS and the iSchool) lends itself extremely well to analysis using these categories. To what extent does the historical addition of ‘Information Science’ to library (as in LIS) or the positioning within a broader technology hinterland represent a desire to increase the symbolic capital of the discipline? Has the ‘IS’ subsequently crowded the ‘L’, as the report seems to suggest? How do Library Studies play within the prestige politics of an R1 institution? Library studies undoubtedly benefit from the scale and diversity a broader iSchool brings and the Report also notes the addition of interesting and relevant new domains of study, Indigenous knowledges, for example. However, Library Studies also struggles for attention or prestige and is pressed in some of the ways discussed emphatically by the Early Career Faculty. The Library Studies field typically has a professional focus, does not generate large collaborative grants, and its community engagement and contribution does not result in industry breakthroughs, major policy initiatives, newsworthy prizes, or other markers of distinction valued in this environment. Reception is also gendered, given the historically feminized nature of the profession. There is a comment in the Dean’s section about having to continually make the case for librarianship: I would have been interested to have heard more from the iSchool Deans about the realities of leading iSchools in an R1 institution, and indeed more generally about power, prestige, and politics in this environment. This section was written in dialogue with ChatGPT, which notes “The struggle for symbolic capital in LIS involves both defending the value of library-centric research and aligning with the broader, more interdisciplinary goals of the iSchool movement.”

6 Recommendations and candidate recommendations

A concluding section takes up the invitation to offer some candidate recommendations. They mostly focus on how to elevate the status and recognition of Library Studies, in part through stronger collaboration across the iSchools. I also include some suggestions for additional studies that would amplify topics or questions raised in the Report.

There are two Codas. In Coda 1 I include some NGram diagrams of vocabulary used in the report (LIS, Information Science, etc.). The curves are interesting, but I did not incorporate them here given uncertainty about NGram data and interpretation. Coda 2 is a note describing my experience, and acknowledging my partial perspective.

Some preliminary notes

Finally, here are some additional notes of areas that are important but not pursued here.

• Library studies shares with some other practice-oriented disciplines (health professions, hospitality, social work, and others) a historic association with service and community engagement. These areas have been traditionally feminized and undervalued. How much is this dynamic in play in the relationship between Library Studies and the informational qualifications in part designed to make it appear more technological or scientific? This definitely bears further exploration by the initiative.
• The report notes that libraries can stand in for LAM generally in discussion. I think that ‘LAM’ should only be used when it is applicable to and inclusive of all three strands, not when the discussion is really library or LIS based. While acknowledging that there are variously converging interests, each practice also has a history, professional community(ies), and curatorial traditions that warrant individual discussion. Assimilating LAM to an LIS/LS discussion like this is unhelpful. That said, schools that are lucky to have all three strands benefit greatly.
• I am very conscious that the report does not consider student or potential employer interests. My own knowledge here is largely personal and subjective. Given that many students are looking for the MLS credential as an entry point to a library or related career, this seems like an important gap which future work may address. The relevance of LS research, education and other work to libraries and related organizations is an important element of their claims to research and education status.
• The Report is about iSchools. Of course, as noted above, Library Studies may achieve some scale and collaboration possibilities in other configurations – within cultural studies or communications schools, for example, or business or education. Given the organizational context of libraries, there is a variety of relevant disciplinary hinterlands, and it is increasingly the case that ‘information’ is only one possibility. Given the topic of the report, I do not discuss those, although I do suggest some further exploration.
• I use ‘librarian’ generally to refer to those who work in libraries and have a vocational interest in their evolution. Only occasionally do I explicitly limit it to those who have the MLIS credential.
• I include references. Given the historical nature of the discussion, some of these are to older materials.

Coda: overview of and links to full contribution

Collection: LIS Forward (2025) Responses to the LIS Forward Position Paper: Ensuring a Vibrant Future for LIS in iSchools, The Friday Harbor Papers, Volume 2. [pdf]

Contribution: Dempsey, L. (2025). Library Studies, the Informational Disciplines, and the iSchool: Some Remarks Prompted by LIS Forward. In LIS Forward (2025) Responses to the LIS Forward Position Paper: Ensuring a Vibrant Future for LIS in iSchools, The Friday Harbor Papers, Volume 2. [pdf]

Contents: Here are the sections from my contribution. Where I have excerpted them on this site, I provide a link.

• 1 Introduction [excerpted here]
• 2 Information: a brief schematic history [excerpted here]
• 3 Libraries and library studies [excerpted here]
• 4 Informational disciplines
• 5 On the dissemination of ideas and innovation [excerpted here]
• 6 Symbolic capital
• 7 Recommendations and candidate recommendations
• Coda 1: Google Ngram
• Coda 2: Personal position
• References

[1] LIS can be expanded as Library and Information Science, which is how it seems to be used in the report. Less often, perhaps, it is expanded as Library and Information Studies.

[2] Of course, not all iSchools include Library Studies in their portfolio.

[3] While Archival Studies is present in many ischools, Museum Studies is less so, which can complicate use of the LAM label. I am not suggesting that the designation ‘LAM’ is readily understood, but libraries, museums and archives are. I understand various objections to this, not least the perception that LAMs are about the past.