The state of L-Schools: Intellectual diversity and faculty composition

Abstract

In recent years, studies of Library and Information Science (LIS) disciplinarity developed original methods for examining the disciplinary composition of the field (Wiggins and Sawyer, 2012; Wu et al., 2011; Zhang et al., 2013). However, most of these studies focused on one fragment of the field, specifically, iSchool programs. In order to gain a fuller understanding of LIS development as a whole, our study applied some of the recently proposed disciplinary measures to a sample of L-Schools, defined here as ALA-accredited LIS programs offering PhD degrees and not part of the iCaucus. Analysis of the faculty training and current research interests indicates that L-Schools are characterized by a strong presence of the LIS areas and notable interdisciplinary trends. The article speculates about some of the factors contributing to the iSchool and L-School differences and suggests directions for future research.

Keywords

Disciplinarity education faculty history interdisciplinarity Library and Information Science

Introduction

From its early years, Library and Information Science (LIS) applied ideas and techniques from other disciplines to tackle the problems of selection, organization, and availability of information resources for effective use (Bates, 2007; Shera and Egan, 1953). Most of the previous studies that examined LIS disciplinary development and interdisciplinary influences surveyed the field as a whole and frequently relied on bibliometric methods for these inqueries (Åström, 2007; Buttlar, 1999; Larivière et al., 2012; Milojevic′ et al., 2011; Odell and Gabbard, 2008).

Since the late 1980s, the number of LIS programs offering LIS education and other ‘information’-related degrees (e.g. education, telecommunications, journalism) began to rise, leading to the formation of the iSchool Caucus (or iCaucus) movement (iSchools Organization, 2014). Now uniting a large number of interdisciplinary LIS programs under its umbrella, iCaucus has strict membership requirements and does not include all LIS programs in North America (iSchools Organization, 2012b).

The emergence of the iSchool movement attracted a lot of attention, including a growing body of research on iSchool disciplinarity (Wiggins and Sawyer, 2012; Wu et al., 2011; Zhang et al., 2013). While these studies capture trends in the disciplinary development of iSchools, they exclude a large segment of the LIS programs not in the iCaucus and do not represent disciplinary developments of the LIS field as a whole.

In order to brings a more balanced understanding of the LIS disciplinary development, we conducted a study on a sample of ALA-accredited PhD granting LIS programs not affiliated with the iSchool Caucus. For convenience, our study refers to the non-iSchool LIS programs as ‘L-Schools’. Use of the innovative methods developed by Wiggins and Sawyer (2012) for the disciplinary analysis of the iSchools enabled us to compare disciplinary trends in the development of the L-Schools and iSchools and to gain a better understanding of the LIS disciplinarity for a particular period of time.

This paper reviews the main themes in the literature on LIS disciplinarity, outlines the study methodology, presents the findings, and discusses the differences and similarities in the disciplinary composition of iSchools and L-Schools.

Relevant literature

In recent decades, the literature on LIS disciplinarity paid much attention to (a) the role of technology in LIS disciplinary development, (b) growth of the information science, and (c) the increasing trend of interdisciplinarity within the field. Many of the reviewed papers examined LIS disciplinary composition by analyzing publications and citation patterns, disciplinary background of LIS faculty, and employment trends of LIS program graduates.

The studies published in the 1980s and 1990s recognize the dramatic effects of technology and science on the disciplinary composition of LIS. The need to organize the expanding universe of documentation using the latest technological tools, as well as the rise of the Internet and a host of other information technology have created a strong technological interest within the LIS field (Rayward, 1985). A number of citation analysis studies confirmed increased interest in information technology within LIS: analysis of 61 LIS dissertations (Buttlar, 1999) and journal-to-journal citation analysis by Odell and Gabbard (2008) identified a trend of increasing number of citations to technology and computer science disciplines.

The close integration of technology topics into the LIS field correlated with another growing trend: interdisciplinarity. Meyer and Spencer (1996) analyzed library science citations and noted a high number of citations to articles produced by more developed fields. Chua and Yang (2008) analyzed collaboration trends, as well as authorship and keyword analysis of all the research articles published in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology between 1988 and 2007. The study found a growing trend towards co-authorship with LIS and non-LIS faculty, which denotes a growing trend of internal and external collaboration (Chua and Yang, 2008). In the process of analyzing the most highly cited LIS articles, Levitt and Thelwall (2009) identified positive effects of interdisciplinary citations: the research found that articles that contained only Information Science or Library Science subjects were cited far less than if the research subjects also included Computer Science or Management (p. 53). The authors conceded that high citation levels may represent ‘interdisciplinary research inheriting a higher citation count from a field that naturally attracts more citations’ (Levitt and Thelwall, 2009: 57). Another benefit linked to interdisciplinary citations was noted by Pierce (1999), who found that authors who publish in or ‘export theories’ to other disciplinary literature (also known as ‘boundary crossing’) are involved in the most ‘direct form of information transfer’, which results in authors that ‘are likely to be more accurate in representing the content and perspectives of their own disciplines’ (p. 272). These findings point to the importance of interdisciplinary research in improving the quality of research within the discipline.

In another study, Fredrick Åström (2007) examined LIS interdisciplinarity by time-slicing co-citation analysis of 21 LIS journal articles in a 15-year period of time. The author theorized that the advent of the Internet created an increased interest in information-related issues and found that changes in the LIS discipline occurred mainly within ‘information seeking and retrieval and informetrics … not in new fields entering the discipline’ (Åström, 2007: 954). Åström (2007) concluded that LIS was a stable discipline regardless of the infusion of new research topics. Prebor (2010) also commented on the effect of technology and the interdisciplinarity of this adaptive field in her study of LIS dissertations. The author attributed many changes and highly interdisciplinary nature of our field to the ‘incessant evolution of technologies’ (Prebor, 2010: 256) and found that information technology, as well as the information industry, economics and management were among the top two dissertation topics in nearly half of the dissertations studied.

Milojevic′ et al. (2011) used co-word and title word analysis of 10,344 articles published between 1998 and 2007 in 16 LIS journals to reveal that despite increased technology focus, the three main branches in the LIS field include libraries, information, and science disciplines. The authors believe that their findings serve as evidence for ‘two distinct paradigms’ (Milojevic′ et al., 2011: 1933) within LIS: Librarianship, and Information Science which are held together by their common interest in ‘recorded information and culturally meaningful artifacts’ (Bates, 2007: 1933), as well as in the topic of information-seeking behavior.

In order to examine interdisciplinary trends in LIS, Chang and Huang (2012) applied three different bibliometric methods: direct citation analysis, bibliographic coupling analysis, and co-authorship analysis, to a sample of 10 LIS journals over a 30-year period. The authors determined that even though LIS still heavily cites from its own literature, this practice is on the decline while citations and co-authoring in Computer Science and Business/Management continue to be on the rise (Chang and Huang, 2012).

In an effort to trace disciplinary evaluation of the LIS field, Larivière et al. (2012) chronicled LIS development between 1900 and 2010 using keyword and citation analysis of 160 journals. They determined that the number of unique authors publishing in LIS literature has increased over the last century and the majority of the analyzed papers were co-authored. Larivière et al. (2012) found that within a pool of analyzed literature, changes in article keywords are influenced by the fast-paced technological changes and their adoption by the LIS field. The study findings point to the growing trends of interdisciplinarity, visibility, and presence of bidirectional relationships between LIS and the Computer Science and Management fields.

In addition to using bibliometric methods for examining LIS disciplinarity, several recent studies focused on the LIS faculty dissertation data as indicators of the faculty disciplinary training. In one such study, Sugimoto et al. (2011) examined over 3000 PhD dissertations in LIS over an 80-year span in order to analyze the students’ advisors and dissertation committee members as indicators of LIS interdisciplinarity. The authors gathered data through the MPACT Project, which was devoted to ‘defining and assessing mentoring as a scholarly activity, examining the emergence and interaction of disciplines, and identifying patterns of knowledge diffusion’ (Sugimoto et al., 2011: 1811). The authors found that since the 1970s the number of academic mentors holding terminal LIS degrees has been in decline, while the number of mentors holding terminal degrees in other disciplines have been rising and affecting ‘the output of the student’s dissertation’ (Sugimoto et al., 2011: 1822).

In recent years, interest in the LIS interdisciplinarity is particularly evident in the publications that focus on the analysis of the emerging iSchool movement. In an attempt to evaluate the longevity and sustainability of iSchools, Wu et al. (2011) examined iSchool faculty’s education, research, and publications and concluded that LIS areas are still very prominent in iSchool programs. The authors found that LIS is among the most common research themes of the iSchool faculty along with Computer Science and Business Management, and that research topics evolved around interactions between information, technology, and users within these three categories (Wu et al., 2011). They also found that the background of the iSchool faculty ranges from Computer Science, Engineering and Business to Education and Library Science. Analysis of the hiring trends in the iSchool graduates indicated a direct correlation between graduates’ education backgrounds and the types of positions they acquired upon graduation: students in the LIS category went into library-related jobs, while Computer Science and Business Management students were more likely to be hired into corporations (Wu et al., 2011).

Another recent study that focused on the iSchool interdisciplinarity examined full-time iSchool faculty member’s terminal degree and the department granting the degree as a proxy for intellectual interests and domain expertise (Wiggins and Sawyer, 2012). The data drawn from the ProQuest UMI Dissertation Abstracts database provided much of the information regarding iSchool faculty research interests and suggested an existence of a large variation in the disciplinary composition of iSchools with distinct pattern changes across the two years of the study (Wiggins and Sawyer, 2012). Within the analyzed sample of the iSchools, the number of faculty with degrees in information, as well as computing had increased, while the number of faculty with library degrees had decreased (Wiggins and Sawyer, 2012). In the authors’ opinion, these changes seem to indicate a definite shift towards interdisciplinarity and diversity in the intellectual composition of the faculty of iSchools.

In summary, the reviewed studies indicate several trends in the disciplinary development of the LIS field, including (a) presence of Library and Information Science core, (b) strong interest in information technology; and (c) growing interdisciplinarity and porous connections to other disciplines. Considering constantly changing foci of LIS, there is a continuous need to understand the field as a whole, its areas of growth and decline, tradition, and opportunities. In our view, a recent increase of the disciplinary studies with the main focus on the iSchool programs (Wiggins and Sawyer, 2012; Wu et al., 2011; Zhang et al., 2013) does not paint a complete picture of LIS field as a whole. In an attempt to bring balance to our understanding of the current disciplinary development of the LIS, our study focused on the disciplinary composition of the PhD granting ALA-accredited LIS programs not in the iSchool Caucus, or L-Schools. Using the methodology from the recent analysis of the iSchool programs (Wiggins and Sawyer, 2012), our study aimed to connect the analysis of the non-iSchools disciplinarity to the analysis of iSchool disciplinarity and extend the dialog around disciplinarity of the LIS field as a whole.

Methods

In an effort to understand recent developments in the LIS field, and fill the gap in understanding the disciplinarity composition of L-Schools, we designed a study to address the following questions:

What is the disciplinary composition of the L-Schools based on the two interdisciplinary criteria recently applied to iSchools, specifically faculty terminal degree training and school interdisciplinarity (Wiggins and Sawyer, 2012)?

What are the current research interests of the L-School faculty?

What are the differences between disciplinary composition of L-Schools and iSchools?

A pool of 16 (N=16) L-Schools, or LIS schools in the US and Canada that meet the following selection criteria were identified: (a) presence of full or conditional ALA accreditation; (b) presence of a PhD program; and (c) absence of direct affiliation with the iCaucus. The pool was identified based on the analysis of information published on the American Library Association website as well as the websites of individual schools in April 2012. Table 2 and Table 3 list the L-Schools that comprised our sample (Appendix B lists all ALA-accredited programs not in iCaucus as of March 2012).

We now describe specific methods used in our study to collect and analyze data on the L-School interdisciplinarity, L-School faculty terminal degrees, and current research interests.

L-Schools disciplinary composition based on faculty training

For each analyzed program, we searched the program’s websites for current full-time faculty who were holding doctoral degrees and one of the following academic titles: professor, assistant professor, associate professor, dean, associate dean. Similar to Wiggins and Sawyer (2012: 11), we excluded assistant deans, professor emeriti, lecturers, and other faculty ‘not necessarily representative of the long-term intellectual investment in academic expertise’. A total of 231 (N=231) eligible/suitable faculty members were selected for analysis.

For the selected pool of faculty, we then collected doctoral degree data using several sources, including schools’ websites, faculty web pages, and ProQuest UMI Dissertation and Thesis databases for the US, UK and Ireland. We collected data on the dissertation title, the discipline in which the terminal degree was awarded, and the degree’s granting institution for each faculty member. Similar to the Wiggins and Sawyer study (2012), the data about faculty doctoral degrees were used as a proxy for the holder’s research training and intellectual community.

The degree data were classified into nine disciplinary categories developed by Wiggins and Sawyer (2012): Computing, Information, Library, Social and Behavioral Studies, Management and Policy, Science and Engineering, Education, Humanities, Communication. Table 1 provides the disciplinary classification scheme that includes names of the subject categories, specific disciplines included in each category, examples of degree types, and corresponding number of the L-Schools faculty in each category.

Table 1.

Wiggins and Sawyer (2012) disciplinary classification applied to L-School faculty.

Subject category	Disciplines	Example of degree	L-School’s facultyN (%)
Computing	Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics	PhD, Computer Science	3 (1%)
Information	Information Science, Information Studies, Information Transfer, Communication Information and Library Studies	PhD, Information Studies	64 (28%)
Library	Library Science, Information and Library Science, Library and Information Science	PhD, Library and Information Science	102 (44%)
Social & Behavioral	Psychology, Sociology, Social Sciences	PhD, Psychology	3 (1%)
Management & Policy	Business, Management, Policy, Law, Economics	PhD, Economics	5 (2%)
Science & Engineering	Life Sciences, Physical Sciences, Statistics, Engineering (not electrical)		0 (0%)
Education	Education, Higher Education, Instructional	EdD, Curriculum & Instruction	28 (12%)
Humanities	History, Philosophy, Literature, English, Linguistics, Anthropology, Multi & Interdisciplinary Studies	PhD, Philosophy	21 (9%)
Communication	Communication	PhD, Communications	5 (2%)
		TOTAL:	231 (100%)

The terminal degree data were then used to determine the level of interdisciplinarity of the L-Schools. Following Wiggins and Sawyer’s (2012) methodology, we applied information entropy measure (Shannon, 1948) to quantify the faculty diversity in areas of subject specialization. The following formula was applied to calculate entropy values: f * log (f), where f is the percentage of faculty in a specific subject area by school. For example, if 15% of faculty members have their terminal degrees in Computer Science, the entropy measure is .15 * log (15). Entropy measures for the subject areas represented in each L-School were summed for each school and the negative of that measure was taken. As explained by Wiggins and Sawyer (2012), the summed entropy values were inverted to make a logical visualization of high to low interdisciplinarity. The z-scores were calculated based on the summed entropy values for all schools in order to normalize the entropy values. The z-scores represented the degree of programs’ interdisciplinarity where high values represent greater diversity of faculty’s research backgrounds.

Analysis of the L-School faculty terminal degree training and the L-Schools interdisciplinarity scores allowed us to compare L-Schools to iSchools on the same intellectual diversity criterion reported in Wiggins and Sawyer (2012).

L-Schools composition based on faculty research interests

While the terminal degree data served well for determining the faculty intellectual training, we extended Wiggins and Sawyer’s (2012) methodology by collecting data on the current research interests of faculty beyond their original training. An online survey was designed as a list of subject categories and provided participants with an option to select as many or as few subject areas that best describe their current research interests. The survey also included a free-text option for allowing participants to identify additional research areas not listed in the survey.

The survey was administered in July and August of 2012. Out of the 231 (N=231) full-time faculty from the 16 L-Schools, 222 (N=222) received email invitations to participate in a survey. Nine faculty names were removed from the sample because in the period between collecting data on faculty training and administering the survey, six faculty were no longer listed, and three faculty did not have their contact information published on the schools’ websites. One hundred twenty faculty (N=120) chose to participate in the online survey (54% response rate).

In developing the list of faculty research interests, we relied on a few established classification schemes of the LIS disciplines including Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) (2012), Library Literature & Information Science Full Text (EBSCO, 2012), and Library of Congress (LOC) (2012). We also integrated these schemes with additional LIS subject categories provided in the following research articles: Åström (2002, 2007); Bawden (2007); Chang and Huang (2012); Hjørland (2000); Irwin (2002); Larivière, et al. (2012); Milojevic′ et al. (2011); Tsay and Shu (2010). For the survey, we narrowed down a list of subject categories used in the above-mentioned classifications to 44 research interest areas (Appendix A).

The development of the survey instrument was based on an assumption that unlike disciplinary training, research areas frequently cross disciplinary boundaries and are more numerous than the academic disciplines associated with them. For example, a research area of Music Librarianship might require a disciplinary knowledge in Musicology and Librarianship, and therefore any categorization of Music Librarianship under a single category of Humanities or Librarianship would be incomplete. In order to provide a degree of comparability between faculty research interests and their disciplinary training, we grouped the research interests under the same disciplinary areas developed by Wiggins and Sawyer (2012). Due to the high-level of the Wiggins and Sawyer disciplinary categorization (p. 11), we made interpretive judgments in applying it to a more detailed list of the research interests. For example, Wiggins and Sawyer (2012) defined Humanities by including Philosophy, Literature, History, Multi and Interdisciplinary Studies. Since these disciplinary areas would be too broad to represent specific research interests, we applied the Humanities category to Music Librarianship, Museology, Theater Librarianship, Ethics in Librarianship, and LIS History, as these research interests require knowledge in humanities methods and/or subject areas. Similar logic was applied in categorization of Business Librarianship and Library Administration under the Management & Policy area, as these research interests require expertise in management and policy issues (Appendix A). We categorized Scholarly Communication under Communication in line with the LOC (2012), ERIC (2012), Larvière et al. (2012) and Hjørland (2000) treatment of this area, and using the notion that scholarly communication investigates the ‘forms, modes, media and consequences’ (National Communication Association, 2014) of a particular type of communication.

The task of developing the list of research areas for the survey was further complicated by a high degree of variability within existing LIS disciplinary classifications. The classification inconsistencies can be illustrated with the treatment of the Information Systems area by various classifications. For example, while Wiggins and Sawyer (2012) did not explicitly categorize Information Systems under their disciplinary classification (p. 11), the authors linked it to Management & Policy in the discussion of the Singapore iSchool (p. 16) and mentioned Management with Information Systems in the discussion of the areas of the iSchool development (p. 19). In ERIC (2012) classification, the Information Systems term is used as a broader term for Management Information Systems, and falls under the broader category of Information/Communications Systems. EBSCO (2012) links Information Systems to the Information Storage & Retrieval Systems, and categorizes these areas under the broader categories of Abstracting & Indexing Services, Computer Systems, Electronic Information Resources, Information Services, and Library Science. Since ERIC and EBSCO along with a number of individual authors (Åström, 2002, 2007; Bawden, 2007; Hjørland, 2000; Irwin, 2002) place the Information Systems area in the context of Information disciplines, we categorized this area under Information. Another example of classification discrepancy can be found in the treatment of the Research Methods and User Studies areas: ERIC, EBSCO and LOC categorize these areas under the umbrella of Research, while individual authors place it under Information Science. We chose to follow the Irwin (2002), Åström (2002, 2007) and Hjørland (2000) categorization of these areas as Information, though we acknowledge that these areas could also be categorized under the Social & Behavioral disciplinary area from Wiggins and Sawyer (2012).

In a number of instances we noted a high degree of agreement in treatment of LIS areas by disciplinary classifications. For example, Information Retrieval was categorized as an Information Science by nine reviewed classifications. In choosing subject areas for the survey, we considered inclusion of a category in the major LIS disciplinary classifications and the degree to which it represents the broader disciplinary area proposed by Wiggins and Sawyer (2012). Additional subject areas that respondents entered under the Other survey option were later mapped into the disciplinary areas developed by Wiggins and Sawyer (2012), and are included in a complete list of the faculty research interests data collected by the survey instrument (Appendix A). The Science and Engineering category from the original study (Wiggins and Sawyer, 2012) was eliminated because it did not have any corresponding entries in the list of research areas adopted in the survey and was not represented in participants’ free format responses.

Findings

We analyzed the disciplinary composition of the L-Schools using two sources of data: (1) faculty’s terminal degrees as a proxy of faculty research training, and (2) faculty survey results as a proxy of faculty’s current research interests.

L-School faculty research training

We first reviewed the disciplinary composition of the L-Schools based on the analysis of information about the full-time faculty terminal degrees. As Table 2 and Figure 1 show, Library is the most prominent research training area among the faculty at L-Schools (44%) followed by Information (28%). Most of the schools within the sample employ a high percentage (greater than 20%) of faculty that received training in either Library or Information areas. The L-Schools with the highest number of faculty with training in Library areas include Emporia State University (67% of faculty), University of South Carolina (60%), Texas Woman’s University (60%), Kent State University (58%), Simmons College (56%), Dominican University (53%), University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee (50%), University of Tennessee (46%), University of Western Ontario (42%), and University of Wisconsin, Madison (30%). The only school that has less than 20% faculty with terminal degrees in Library areas is the School of Information Studies at the McGill University (18%).

Table 2.

L-School intellectual demographics.

	Library	Information	Education	Humanities	Management & Policy	Communication	Social & Behavioral	Computing	TOTAL (N)
Emporia State University	67%	11%	11%	0%	11%	0%	0%	0%	9
South Carolina, University of	60%	20%	7%	7%	0%	7%	0%	0%	15
Texas Woman’s University	60%	20%	20%	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%	15
Kent State University	58%	26%	11%	5%	0%	0%	0%	0%	19
Simmons College	56%	39%	6%	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%	18
Dominican University	53%	20%	20%	0%	0%	7%	0%	0%	15
Wisconsin – Milwaukee, University of	50%	29%	13%	4%	0%	4%	0%	0%	24
Tennessee, University of	46%	31%	0%	8%	8%	8%	0%	0%	13
Western Ontario, University of	42%	21%	4%	17%	0%	4%	8%	4%	24
Wisconsin – Madison, University of	30%	20%	20%	20%	10%	0%	0%	0%	10
Alabama, University of	27%	64%	9%	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%	11
McGill University	18%	45%	9%	18%	0%	0%	0%	9%	11
Montreal, University of	25%	42%	0%	25%	0%	0%	0%	8%	12
Long Island University	27%	36%	0%	27%	9%	0%	0%	0%	11
Arizona, University of	27%	9%	27%	27%	9%	0%	0%	0%	11
Missouri-Columbia, University of	31%	15%	46%	0%	0%	0%	8%	0%	13
Total number of faculty (N, %)	102 44%	64 28%	28 12%	21 9%	5	5	3	3	231
Total number of faculty (N, %)					2%	2%	1%	1%	100%

Figure 1.

Comparison of iSchool and L-School faculty PhD disciplines.

The L-Schools with the highest number of faculty with terminal degrees in Information areas include University of Alabama (64% of faculty), McGill University (45%), University of Montreal (42%), and Long Island University (36%). Only three schools had less than 20% faculty with terminal degrees in Information areas: University of Missouri, Columbia (15%), Emporia State University (11%), and University of Arizona (9%) (Table 2). The School of Information Resources and Library Science at the University of Arizona was the only L-School in our sample that was not represented by a single dominant disciplinary area of faculty training as it employs equal percent (27%) of faculty with the terminal degrees in Library, Education, and Humanities areas.

When comparing the distribution of disciplinary areas of L-School faculty to Wiggins and Sawyer (2012) results for iSchools faculty, L-Schools appear to employ more faculty holding Library and Information PhD., 44% and 28% respectively, while iSchools have the strongest presence of faculty with the degrees in Computer Science (30% of the iSchool faculty in the Wiggins and Sawyer (2012) sample). Following Information and Library disciplinary areas, the next highest area of doctoral training for L-School faculty is Education (12%). The following programs have a high percent of faculty (greater than 20%) with terminal degrees in Education: University of Missouri-Columbia (46% of faculty), University of Arizona (27%), Dominican University (20%), Texas Woman’s University (20%), and the University of Wisconsin, Madison (20%). For the iSchools sample from the Wiggins and Sawyer (2012) study, the second most represented area of faculty disciplinary training after Computer Science was Information (11%) (see Figure 1). Some of the least represented disciplinary areas in the training of the L-School faculty include Computer Science (1%), Social and Behavioral Sciences (1%), Management and Policy (2%) and Communication (2%).

Using the Wiggins and Sawyer (2012) formulas and data on the faculty terminal degrees, we estimated interdisciplinarity of each L-School by calculating the information entropy score as a proxy for faculty diversity in areas of subject specialization. The analysis produced the following characteristics for each of the investigated L-School (summarized in Table 3):

information entropy z-score that represents the range of the intellectual diversity of the faculty disciplinary training;

number of full-time faculty as a representation of the school’s size;

number of disciplinary areas in which faculty received training (also illustrated in Table 2);

availability of an undergraduate program; and

dominant area(s) of faculty training, or a cluster: a qualitative concept based on analysis of disciplinary areas representing 10% or more of the faculty training, and used to examine similarities across schools (Wiggins and Sawyer, 2012).

Table 3.

Spread of PhD disciplinary focus of L-School faculty measured with information entropy scores.

School	Entropy (z-score)	Number of faculty	Number of areas of study	Undergraduate program	Cluster
Western Ontario, University of	1.70	24	7	Y	Library/Information
Wisconsin-Madison, University of	1.53	10	5	N	Library/Information
Arizona, University of	1.27	11	5	N	Library/Information
McGill University	0.89	11	5	N	Library/Information
Tennessee, University of	0.43	13	5	N	Library/Information
Long Island University	0.36	11	4	N	Library/Information
Montreal, University of	0.23	12	4	N	Library/Information
Wisconsin- Milwaukee, University of	0.07	24	5	Y	Library/Information
Missouri-Columbia, University of	−0.04	13	4	N	Niche
South Carolina, University of	−0.20	15	5	Y	Library/Information
Dominican University	−0.24	15	4	N	Library/Information
Kent State University	−0.69	19	4	N	Library/Information
Emporia State University	−0.95	9	4	N	Library/Information
Texas Woman’s University	−1.18	15	3	N	Library/Information
Alabama, University of	−1.58	11	3	N	Library/Information
Simmons College	−1.61	18	3	N	Library/Information

Table 3 ranks the L-Schools using the information entropy z-score, calculated from the average of all entropy scores, -f*log(f). The Information and Media Studies program at the University of Western Ontario received the highest disciplinary score of 1.7, indicating the presence of faculty with the widest range of disciplinary training. The lowest disciplinary score of -1.61 was calculated for the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Simmons College, indicating high concentration of faculty training in a few disciplinary areas. The same conclusions can be reached by examining data in Table 2. For example, the Information and Media Studies program at the University of Western Ontario, which received a high interdisciplinary score, employs faculty that received training in seven disciplinary areas, including Computing, Information, Library, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Education, Humanities, and Communication. In contrast, the faculty of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Simmons College, the school with the low disciplinary score, received training in three disciplinary areas, including Information, Library, and Education. The number of disciplinary areas represented in L-School faculty training range from three to seven. Most of the analyzed L-Schools (12 out of 16) employ faculty that received terminal degrees in four or five disciplinary areas. In comparison, the most frequent number of iSchools faculty disciplinary training area is nine, indicating that iSchools employ faculty with terminal degrees in a larger number of disciplinary areas, although not necessarily a large number of faculty in each of those areas.

The total number of faculty per school ranged from 9 to 24 full-time professional members, with the University of Western Ontario and Wisconsin-Milwaukee program having the most full-time faculty (N=24), followed by Kent State University (N=19), and Emporia State University having the least number of faculty (N=9) (Table 2 and Table 3).

Based on the classification of the faculty training proposed by Wiggins and Sawyer (2012), all but one L-School fell into the Library/Information cluster, indicating that most of the faculty received training in either Library or Information disciplines. The School of Information Science and Learning Technologies at the University of Missouri, Columbia was the only Niche cluster, with the highest percentage of faculty training in Education. The two disciplinary clusters that were not represented by the sample of L-Schools faculty were Computational and Sociotechnical.

L-School faculty current research interests

Data from the L-School faculty survey were mapped to the eight broad disciplinary areas derived from Wiggins and Sawyer (2012) (the Science and Engineering area was excluded from the analysis due to the lack of data in our study to support it). The survey data indicated that the Information (N=245) and Library-related (171) research interests were mentioned more frequently than other areas. Figure 2 reports the detailed composition of the current research interests of the L-School faculty and includes the summary count of all responses to the survey items grouped by the eight disciplinary categories from Wiggins and Sawyer (2012). Survey findings reveal that subjects within the broad Information and Library categories were the most frequently identified areas of current research interests by the L-School faculty respondents. Figure 2 shows a range of narrower disciplinary areas under Information and Library categories. The most frequently mentioned research areas in the Information cluster are Information Seeking Behavior (44) and User Studies (35). For the Library cluster, Librarianship (38) is the most popular research area followed by Library Services (26) and Digital Libraries (26). Further examination of the Library cluster shows the presence of broad and narrow subject areas; for example, within the Library cluster, Librarianship is an example of broader while Academic Librarianship is an example of narrower subject area within the Library cluster.

Figure 2.

L-School faculty current research interests.

The most frequently mentioned research areas outside of the Information and Library clusters include LIS Education (46) and Communication (43). A lower number of faculty interests clustered under Management and Policy (22), Humanities (17) and Computing (12). Some of the least mentioned areas of the current L-School faculty research interests include Research Methods (2), Rare Book Librarianship (2), Academic Librarianship (1), Business Librarianship (1), Technical Services (1), and Serials Librarianship (1). None of the survey participants indicated interest in Science and Engineering, Theater, nor Music Librarianship though these categories were included in the survey.

We were unable to classify some of the disciplinary areas that respondents entered in a free-text ‘Other’ survey option (N=15). Example of survey entries that did not fit into any of the eight disciplinary clusters used by Wigging and Sawyer (2012) are Transitional Justice, Culture, and Cognitive and Mental Models.

Discussion

Our study aimed to explore the disciplinary composition of the L-Schools, gauge current research interests of the L-School faculty, and compare disciplinary composition of L-Schools and iSchools. By adopting methodology developed by Wiggins and Sawyer (2012) for the analysis of iSchools’ interdisciplinarity, we were able to compare L-Schools and iSchools on several criteria, including disciplinary composition, interdisciplinary scores, and program size. We now discuss some of the trends that emerged from our analysis.

Analysis of the L-School disciplinary composition indicated that most of the faculty received Library (44%) and Information Science (28%) training, followed by Education (12%), Humanities (9%) and significantly smaller clusters in Communication (2%), Management and Policy (2%), Computing (1%), and Social and Behavioral (1%) areas (Figure 1). Additional evidence for the strong presence of Library and Information areas in the L-Schools sample came from the survey of faculty’s current research interests (Figure 2). The analysis of the faculty survey indicated a slightly different trend than the analysis of the faculty training, with most of the current interests falling under Information (43%), followed by Library (30%), Education (8%), Communication (8%), Management and Policy (4%), Humanities (3%), Computing (2%), and Other (3%) areas (Figure 2).

A large number of L-School faculty with training and current interests in Library and Information areas can be viewed as a disciplinary core of the L-Schools. In addition to the strong core, L-Schools employ faculty with training and current interests in non-LIS areas, suggesting the interdisciplinary nature of L-Schools where interdisciplinarity can be defined as ‘integration of knowledge and/or methods from various disciplines brought together to address an issue or problem’ (Holland, 2008: 9). The information entropy scores that were used to measure interdisciplinarity also support the argument for the interdisciplinarity of the L-Schools. Considering a smaller size of L-Schools compared to the iSchools, the L-Schools’ interdisciplinary scores, ranging between 1.7 and -1.61, signal a high degree of L-Schools interdisciplinarity (iSchools scores ranged from 1.23 to -2.02).

Based on the review of the iSchool faculty training (Wiggins and Sawyer, 2012), a core disciplinary focus of the iSchools is less evident, with 30% of the faculty having terminal degrees in Computing, 11% in Information, 10% in Library, 10% in Social and Behavioral, and between 10% to 5% of faculty with training in other disciplinary areas (the difficulties in understanding the iSchools’ disciplinary core are also mentioned in Cronin (2012), and others). However, the Wiggins and Sawyer (2012) data suggest that the distribution of iSchools disciplinary areas is highly affected by four iSchools with the high (more than 60%) percent of faculty in Computing, including Irvine, Georgia Tech, Singapore, and Indiana, and the removal of these outliers will result in a shift of iSchools disciplinary focus from Computing to Information (16%), Library (15%), and Social Sciences (13%), with Computing and Management and Policy moving to the fourth place (12% each, see Wiggins and Sawyer, 2012: 14). This observation suggests that even with the removal of Computing-focused schools from the iSchool sample, it is hard to identify its disciplinary core as the faculty training is almost evenly distributed among several disciplines. Since the Wiggins and Sawyer (2012) study focused on the faculty training and not their current research interests, further research is needed to examine the relationships between faculty’s training and their current research. We would argue that in order to claim schools’ interdisciplinarity, such a study would need to show that the faculty is using ‘knowledge and/or methods from various disciplines’ (Holland, 2008: 9) to address the problems of a core discipline, LIS or other. If the schools employ faculty trained in various disciplines who are ‘coming together working side by side with no intent to modify their own concepts or methods’ (Holland, 2008: 15), it might be more accurate to refer to these schools as ‘multidisciplinary’ instead of ‘interdisciplinary’.

Our comparison of the iSchool and L-School samples identified a number of differences in the quantitative characteristics of the two types of programs. During the time of the study, spring 2012, there were more iSchools with PhD programs than L-Schools with PhD programs (21 and 16 programs respectively). Since we collected the study data, four more L-Schools have joined the iCaucus (University of Wisconsin in Madison and Milwaukee, University of Tennessee, University of Missouri), decreasing the pool of the L-Schools even further. Out of the 40 (N=40) ALA-accredited programs not affiliated with the iCaucus, only 16 programs offered PhDs in Library and/or Information Science. In comparison, all iSchools offer PhD degrees and emphasize the importance of research and substantial financial investment in research activities (iSchools Organization, 2012a). Judging strictly by the numbers, it appears that one of the main iSchools’ foci is offering research and/or related PhD training, while the majority of the L-Schools focus on offering professional (Master level) training, with only 40% of the programs offering PhD degrees. A consistent focus of the iSchools on research is further confirmed by the iCaucus acceptance criteria including (a) the presence of a doctoral program and (b) a demonstrated record of the sustained research funding at about $1m a year (iSchools Organization, 2012a).

The comparison of the faculty size in the iSchool and L-School samples leads to somewhat similar conclusion: iSchools are represented by a larger body of faculty than L-Schools (769 and 231 faculty members respectively). The average size of the iSchool faculty was 38, with the fewest number of faculty (N=20) at the School of Information Systems, Singapore Management University and the greatest faculty members (N=85) at the Georgia Tech iSchool. The average size of the L-School faculty was 14, with the fewest number of faculty (N=9) at the School of Library and Information Management, Emporia State University and the greatest number of faculty (N=24) at the University of Western Ontario and University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee programs.

A lower number of PhD programs and smaller faculty sizes within the pool of L-Schools might signal the following trends that warrant further investigation:

Financial resources available to support faculty research, PhD programs and a larger number of full-time faculty. Further analysis of the parent institution and departmental financial health, research, and educational foci of the L-Schools and iSchools might further explain the differences in the size and composition of the programs. Future analysis of external funding available for LIS and non-LIS research might also shed light on the qualitative and quantitative differences between L-Schools and iSchools (e.g. research in computing might be associated with better funding opportunities than research in more traditional LIS areas).

Historical orientation of some institutions on research and others on professional training. Michael Buckland (1996) reviewed and critiqued two historical perspectives on the mission of the LIS schools with one emphasizing a strict focus on professional education, and the other advocating for the benefits of incorporating a research culture in the educational process. Many things have changed since 1996: during our analysis of L-School program and faculty websites, we noted information on numerous scholarly publications, research projects, grants, and doctoral student achievements, demonstrating a strong research culture of the L-Schools. However, if a research culture of the L-Schools had developed later than the research culture of the iSchools, the infrastructure necessary to support it might still be developing. More historic analysis of the LIS programs is needed to explain their differences and similarities, as well as the internal and external factors influencing their development.

One of the study’s unintended findings resulted from development of the survey instrument to identify current L-School faculty research interests. Specifically, analysis of the existing classifications of the LIS field, including ERIC (2012), EBSCO (2012), LOC (2012), as well as classifications found in Wiggins and Sawyer (2012), Åström (2002, 2007), Bawden (2007), Chang and Huang (2012), Hjørland (2000), Irwin (2002), Larivière et al., (2012), Milojevic′ et al. (2011) and Tsay and Shu (2010) revealed a number of inconsistencies in treatment and naming conventions of LIS areas and sub-areas (Appendix A). In addition to creating difficulties with analysis of the LIS disciplinary composition, classification discrepancies cause emotional debates within the profession. For example, when preliminary results of the study were discussed at the 2012 ASIST Annual Meeting (Lopatovska et al., 2012), some audience members expressed strong disagreements about classifying Digital Libraries under a larger Library umbrella as is currently supported by classifications, and argued for placing this sub-area under Information. While more work might be needed to update existing LIS classifications to reflect current research problems addressed in each area, another interesting line of research could involve looking into the sentimental value of disciplinary classifications and faculty professional identity.

We conducted a study to understand the disciplinary composition of the L-Schools as integral constituents of a wider LIS field. To obtain an even more accurate representation of the LIS disciplinary development, future studies might consider sampling all ALA-accredited institutions regardless of the presence or absence of PhD programs or iCaucus affiliation. Inclusion of non-PhD LIS programs could shed light on the types of expertise and training the faculty offer to the students who constitute the core professional force upon graduation. Analysis of a sample of non-PhD LIS programs might offer additional evidence of the field’s interdisciplinarity. For example, the authors of this article are part of an LIS program that does not offer a doctoral degree. Yet, the program employs diverse faculty with terminal degrees in Information, Library, Education, Engineering, Philosophy, and Musicology who actively bring their expertise into research and teaching. We also think that sampling the iSchools alone will not provide an accurate and complete representation of the LIS development for several reasons:

A number of iSchools are not LIS-focused and would likely introduce noise into analysis of the LIS trends (illustration of this point can be found in the Wiggins and Sawyer (2012) discussion of the Irvine, Georgia Tech, and Singapore iSchools composition).

Due to the dynamic nature of the LIS programs and the iCaucus membership, it would be beneficial to study current and prospective iSchools (e.g. after we collected the study data, four L-Schools at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and Milwaukee, University of Tennessee, University of Missouri, have joined the iCaucus bringing their strong LIS focus into the iSchool pool).

Our study had limitations similar to the original study of the faculty interdisciplinarity (Wiggins and Sawyer, 2012). Part of our study relied on interpretation of the secondary data sources, information published on the institutional and personal websites, which could have affected the accuracy and currency of data, as well as our judgments about full-time faculty affiliations.

In addition, our study presented some unique limitations related to our ability to produce results comparable to the Wiggins and Sawyer (2012) study. For example, our sample was drawn from a different geographical and chronological pool: the original study included all iSchools in the 2009 iCaucus, including several international programs (e.g. Singapore Management University, School of Information Systems) and excluding some of the programs that joined iCaucus after 2009 (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, School of Information Studies). Our study included LIS programs only within the United States and Canada that held ALA accreditation as of spring 2012. We used ALA accreditation as a measure of LIS programs’ consistency in addressing educational and research objectives, and excluded international LIS programs that significantly vary on the degrees of disciplinary boundaries, quality, the structure of academic units, and faculty roles.

Our survey instrument was designed to collect data on faculty’s current research interests as an extension to the inquiry on their disciplinary affiliations. In an effort to connect high-level disciplinary areas to research interests, we applied Wiggins and Sawyer’s (2012) disciplinary framework to a number of research areas mentioned in LIS classifications (Appendix A). The resulting categorization is inexact as most of the research areas can be categorized under multiple disciplines (e.g. Digital Libraries can be studied by the faculty with a background in Libraries, Information, and Computer Sciences). While the mapping of the research interests to the disciplinary areas enabled us to examine the disciplinary composition of the L-School faculty and compare it to the iSchool study findings (Wiggins and Sawyer, 2012), future studies might consider a different approach. Instead of mapping various disciplinary indicators, such as research areas and disciplinary background, future work can measure multiple manifestations of the disciplinarity construct (e.g. faculty publications, training, current research interests, and others) and compare them post-hoc. In developing our instrument, we also tried to reconcile differences of several disciplinary classifications. It might be more fruitful for the future studies to base the data collection instrument on a single classification instead of selecting areas and sub-areas from different classifications. Based on the limitations outlined above, our comparative observations should be interpreted with caution, and our findings should be judged on their own merit.

Conclusion

Our study investigated the disciplinary composition of the L-Schools based on analysis of faculty’s terminal degrees and current research interests, as well as compared the disciplinary composition of the L-Schools with the disciplinary composition of the iSchools. We identified a strong presence of the Library and Information Science areas in the L-School faculty training and current research interests. We also found evidence of the L-School interdisciplinarity with most programs employing faculty trained in four to five disciplinary areas (min three – max seven areas). Comparison of the L-Schools and iSchools revealed that both types of programs hire interdisciplinary faculty, with L-Schools hiring more faculty with the research background and interests in Information and Library areas. Some differences in the disciplinary composition of iSchools and L-Schools can be attributed to the few ‘outliers’ in the iSchool sample, specifically, four programs with the heavy presence of Computing, and a number of external factors, such as program’s or parent institution’s history, size, resources, research, and teaching orientation.

After the initial increased interest in the new iSchool phenomenon, we think that future disciplinary studies should return to examining the disciplinarity of the LIS field as a whole, without segmenting the field into iSchool and non-iSchool pools. The argument for treating LIS as a unified field can be supported by the similarities between iSchool and non-iSchool programs manifested in the common history, presence of Library and Information areas and interdisciplinary foci in tackling information problems; as well as complementarity of the iSchools interdisciplinarity and L-Schools connection to the more traditional disciplinary problems.

Footnotes

Appendix

Appendix B.

List of ALA-accredited programs not in iCaucus as of March 2012.

Library schools not in iCaucus	PhD program?	Included in the Study?	Undergraduate Program? (Recorded only for programs in the study sample)	ALA- Accredited?
Alabama, University of www.slis.ua.edu	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Albany, State University of New York www.albany.edu/cci/informationstudies/index.shtml	No	No	N/A	Yes
Alberta, University of www.slis.ualberta.ca	Interdisciplinary Only	No	N/A	Yes
Arizona, University of sirls.arizona.edu/	Yes	Yes	Minor only	Yes
Catholic University of America slis.cua.edu	No	No	N/A	Yes
Clarion University of Pennsylvania www.clarion.edu/libsci	No	No	N/A	Yes
Dalhousie University sim.management.dal.ca/	Interdisciplinary Only	No	N/A	Yes
Denver, University of www.du.edu/LIS	No	No	N/A	Yes
Dominican University www.dom.edu/gslis	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Emporia State University slim.emporia.edu	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Hawaii, University of www.hawaii.edu/lis	No	No	N/A	Yes
Iowa, University of slis.grad.uiowa.edu	Interdisciplinary Only	No	N/A	Yes
Kent State University www.slis.kent.edu	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Long Island University www.liu.edu/palmer	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Louisiana State University slis.lsu.edu	No	No	N/A	Yes
McGill University www.mcgill.ca/sis/	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Missouri-Columbia, University of sislt.missouri.edu	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Montreal, University of www.ebsi.umontreal.ca	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
North Carolina-Greensboro University of lis.uncg.edu	No	No	N/A	Yes
North Carolina Central University www.nccuslis.org	No	No	N/A	Yes
Oklahoma, University of www.ou.edu/cas/slis	No	No	N/A	Yes
Pratt Institute www.pratt.edu/sils	No	No	N/A	Yes
Puerto Rico, University of egcti.upr.edu	No	No	N/A	Yes
Rhode Island, University of www.uri.edu/artsci/lsc/	No	No	N/A	Yes
St. Catherine University www.stkate.edu/academic/mlis/	No	No	N/A	Yes
St. John’s University www.stjohns.edu/academics/graduate/liberalarts/departments/lis	No	No	N/A	Yes
San Jose State University slisweb.sjsu.edu	International program Only	No	N/A	Yes
Simmons College www.simmons.edu/gslis	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
South Carolina, University of www.libsci.sc.edu	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
South Florida, University of www.cas.usf.edu/lis	No	No	N/A	Yes
Southern Mississippi, University of www.usm.edu/slis	No	No	N/A	Yes
Tennessee, University of www.sis.utk.edu	Yes	Yes	Minor only	Yes
Texas Woman’s University www.twu.edu/library-studies/	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Wayne State University www.slis.wayne.edu/	No	No	N/A	Yes
Western Ontario, University of www.fims.uwo.ca/mlis/index.htm	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Wisconsin-Madison, University of www.slis.wisc.edu	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Wisconsin-Milwaukee, University of www.uwm.edu/Dept/SOIS/	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Buffalo, State University of New York gse.buffalo.edu/lis	No	No	N/A	Conditional
Queens College, City University of New York qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/GSLIS	No	No	N/A	Conditional
Southern Connecticut State University www.southernct.edu/ils	No	No	N/A	Conditional
Valdosta State University www.valdosta.edu/mlis/	No	No	N/A	Conditional

Acknowledgements

We thank Dr. M. Cristina Pattuelli for her valuable contributions to the project. We also thank Dr. Michael Buckland and anonymous reviewers for their feedback on ideas expressed in the paper.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Author biographies

Irene Lopatovska is an Assistant Professor at the Pratt Institute School of Information and Library Science. She holds a doctorate degree in Information Science from Rutgers University. Her research focuses on the topics of Human Information Behavior, role of emotions in Human Computer Interaction, and history of Library and Information Science.

Ellie Ransom recently completed her Masters in Library and Information Science from Pratt Institute School of Information and Library Science. She also holds a Masters in Applied Math and Statistics from Georgetown University. She is currently the Research Services Coordinator in the Science & Engineering Libraries at Columbia University Libraries/Information Services.

References

Åström

(2002) Visualizing library and information science concept spaces through keyword and citation based maps and clusters. In: Bruce

Fidel

Ingwersen

. (eds) Emerging frameworks and methods: Proceedings of the fourth international conference on conceptions of library and information science (CoLIS4), Seattle, WA, USA, 21–25 July 2002, pp.185–197. Greenwood Village, CO: Libraries Unlimited.

Åström

(2007) Changes in the LIS research front: Time-sliced co-citation analysis of LIS journal articles, 1990–2004. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 58(7): 947–957.

Bates

(2007) Defining the information disciplines in encyclopedia development. Information Research 12(4): paper colis29. Available at: http://InformationR.net/ir/12-4/colis/colis29.html (accessed 5 July 2013).

Bawden

(2007) Information seeking and information retrieval: The core of the information curriculum? Journal of Education for Library & Information Science 48(2): 125–138.

Buckland

(1996) The ‘liberal arts’ of Library and Information Science and the research university environment. In:The second international conference on conceptions of library and information science: Integration in perspective, pp. 75–84. Copenhagen: Royal School of Librarianship. Available at: http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~buckland/libarts.html#LIS_in (accessed 29 April 2013).

Buttlar

(1999) Information sources in library and information science doctoral research. Library & Information Science Research 21(2): 227–245.

Chang

Huang

(2012) A study of the evolution of interdisciplinary in Library and Information Science: Using three bibliometric methods. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 63(1): 22–33.

Chua

AYK

Yang

(2008) The shift towards multidisciplinarity in information science. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 59(13): 2156–2170.

Cronin

(2012) The waxing and waning of a field: Reflections on Information Studies education. Information Research: An International Electronic Journal 17(3).

10.

EBSCO (2012) Library Literature & Information Science Full Text (HW Wilson) Thesaurus. Available at: http://search.ebscohost.com/ (accessed 8 March 2012).

11.

Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) (2012) Thesaurus. Available at: http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/resources/html/thesaurus/about_thesaurus.html (accessed 5 March 2012).

12.

Hjørland

(2000) Library and information science: Practice, theory and philosophical basis. Information Processing and Management 36(3): 501–531.

13.

Holland

(2008) Information science: An interdisciplinary effort? Journal of Documentation 64(1): 7–23.

14.

Irwin

(2002) Characterizing the core: What catalog descriptions of mandatory courses reveal about LIS schools and librarianship. Journal of Education for Library & Information Science 43(2): 175–184.

15.

iSchools Organization (2014) iSchools Origins. Available at: http://ischools.org/about/history/origins/ (accessed 30 March 2014).

16.

iSchools Organization (2012a) Apply to Join: iSchools. Available at: http://ischools.org/about/apply-to-join/ (accessed 22 February 2014).

17.

iSchools Organization (2012b) The Characteristics of iSchools: iSchools. Available at: http://ischools.org/about/charter/the-characteristics-of-ischools/ (accessed 8 December 2013).

18.

Larivière

Sugimoto

Cronin

(2012) A bibliometric chronicling of library science’s first hundred years. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 63(5): 997–1016.

19.

Levitt

Thelwall

(2009) The most highly cited library and information science articles: Interdisciplinary, first authors and citation patterns. Scientometrics 78(1): 45–67.

20.

Library of Congress (2012) Library of Congress Subject Headings. Available at: http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects.html (accessed 2 March 2012).

21.

Lopatovska

Pattuelli

Bates

. (2012) iSchools and L-Schools: Converging or diverging communities? In: Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology Annual Meeting 49(1): 1–3. DOI:10.1002/meet.14504901056

22.

Meyer

Spencer

(1996) A citation analysis study of library science: Who cites librarians? College and Research Libraries 57(1): 23–33.

23.

Milojevic′

Sugimoto

Yan

. (2011) The cognitive structure of library and information science: Analysis of article title words. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 62(10): 1933–1953.

24.

National Communication Association (2014) What is NCA? Available at: https://www.natcom.org/about/ (accessed 22 February 2014).

25.

Odell

Gabbard

(2008) The interdisciplinary influence of library and information science 1996–2004: A journal-to-journal citation analysis. College and Research Libraries 69(6): 546–564.

26.

Prebor

(2010) Analysis of the interdisciplinary nature of library and information science. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science 42(4): 256–267.

27.

Pierce

(1999) Boundary crossing in research literatures as a means of interdisciplinary information transfer. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 50(3): 271–279. DOI: 10.1002/(SICI)1097-4571(1999)50:3<271::AID-ASI10>3.0.CO;2-M.

28.

Rayward

(1985) Library and information science: An historical perspective. Journal of Library History 20(2): 120–136.

29.

Shannon

(1948) A mathematical theory of communication. Bell System Technical Journal 27: 379–423 and 623–656.

30.

Shera

Egan

(1953)A review of the present state of librarianship and documentation. In: Bradford

(ed.) Documentation. 2nd edn. London: Crosby, pp. 11–45.

31.

Sugimoto

Russell

. (2011) Academic genealogy as an indicator of interdisciplinarity: An examination of dissertation networks in library and information science. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 62(9): 1808–1828. DOI:10.1002/asi.21568.

32.

Tsay

Shu

(2011) Journal bibliometric analysis: A case study on the Journal of Documentation. Journal of Documentation 67(5): 806–822.

33.

Wiggins

Sawyer

(2012) Intellectual diversity and the faculty composition of iSchools. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 63(1): 8–21.

34.

Jiang

. (2011) The state of iSchools: An analysis of academic research and graduate education. Journal of Information Science 38(1): 15–36.

35.

Zhang

Yan

JLS

Hassman

(2013) The intellectual characteristics of the information field: Heritage and substance. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 64(12): 2468–2491. DOI: 10.1002/asi.22941