ALUW Winter Quarter Meeting, March 21, 2002

The meeting was called to order by ALUW President John Holmes at 3:25, Thursday, Mar. 21, 2002. A brief business meeting preceded the program.

Winter Quarter Business Meeting

Randy Hertzler gave the Treasurer's report. There is a total of $3,417.39 in the ALUW checking and savings accounts. We have an operating budget total of $1,722.20 and a legislative budget total of $1,695.19. Since the fall mailing, members have contributed $2,505.00 to ALUW. Randy thanked the members for their generosity.

John Holmes gave a brief legislative update in the absence of Andy Johnson and Joe Kiegel. A collective bargaining law for faculty was passed in Olympia; however, a clause was appended to it, to the effect that any faculty wishing to make use of their collective bargaining rights must give up their faculty senate. It is not clear yet what will happen with that. But now faculty, TAs, and others have collective bargaining rights, but librarians at the UW do not. Since we are the only librarians at a state 4-year institution that do not have faculty status, we are not included in the new faculty collective bargaining law. Librarians at the UW participate in Faculty Councils and committees, but we are not on the Faculty Senate. Steve Duncan, WLA lobbyist, was paid a retainer by ALUW to ensure that protective language covering our status in the State higher education budget was not removed.

The ALUW Board is gathering some information on collective bargaining, faculty status for librarians, and other issues and is planning to have brown bag lunches in April to discuss the special status of UW Librarians. The Brown Bags are intended to provide ALUW members with information that will hopefully facilitate discussion of these issues at the Spring Quarterly and to provide the ALUW Board with feedback from members about issues that ought to be included in the discussion. See the ALUW web pages for more information as it becomes available.

Program

What's New at the ISchool

Mike Eisenberg, Dean of the Information School, and Matt Saxton, Allyson Carlyle, and Joe Janes, ISchool Faculty, came to the Winter Meeting to bring us the latest news from what we used to know as the Library School.

Mike reassured the audience, that even though the word "Library" was no longer in the School's name, the Masters in Library and Information Science still is the largest program in the school. There are now about 250 MLIS students. The MLIS program now has a more structured, sequential curriculum and is more cohort-based. (The previous practice of "rolling" admissions was convenient for students, but led to a less than coherent curriculum.)

The ISchool will also be launching a distance education program for the MLIS. The "distance MLIS" will be the same exact program in terms of requirements as the on-campus MLIS (though not all courses available on campus can be offered through distance education). The distance MLIS students will come to campus for 1 week in August and then again for a long weekend at the end of each quarter. Otherwise course work will be internet-based.

The ISchool also has some new programs: a BS in Informatics, a two-year course (no summers) for a MS in Information Management, and a PhD program in Information Science (designed to be a full-time program lasting from 4 to 6 years). The new Information Research 220 courses, which are team-taught with librarians, have proven to be very popular. The ISchool has about $2 million annual funding for research projects. Handouts describing all the programs of the ISchool and the faculty and their research interests were distributed, along with nifty ISchool key chains. All in all, the ISchool has achieved the ambitious goals they set out for themselves 3 years ago, including their status as an independent school on campus with their own Dean.

Joe Janes went into detail about the curricular revisions made to the MLIS program in the last couple of years. Core courses are arranged around the concept of the life cycle of knowledge. The team that revised the curriculum started out by deciding what is was that graduates really needed to know, and then devised courses to fit that (not vice versa). Elective courses build on the core curriculum and are still very centered on the basic information skills that libraries need, like reference and cataloging. Now more graduates are taking these library skills out into other fields as well.

The Masters' Exam will take place for the last time this Spring Quarter. The exam will be replaced by a portfolio assembled by the student. The portfolio can be in any format, but needs to document 5 skill or activity areas where the student has grown:

  • A significant teaching or training experience
  • A significant leadership experience
  • A significant practical or service experience
  • A sustained intellectual argument or experience through the creation of a professional-level document or presentation
  • Participation in the design and development of a significant project or product involving information technologies

Mike emphasized that the ISchool is "our" school, too, whether we are alumni or not. He encourages working closely together. For instance, UW librarians may have "portfolio opportunities" for MLIS students. Contact Lynnea Erickson, Student Services Administrator, if you have any projects that you think can help a MLIS student (and help yourself as well). Librarians are also asked for their ideas for ISchool courses (and are invited to teach them if they want). The ISchool is especially interested in ideas for continuing education courses for professional development for librarians in the field.

Submitted by Diana Brooking, Mar. 26, 2002