Rutgers University's School of Communication, Information and Library Studies (SCILS) will be known as the School of Communication and Information (SCI) as of July 1, 2009. This was reported by libraryjournal.com. My initial response is that I cannot believe that this is the issue taking up the time of the Rutger's faculty and Board of Governors; it seems to be a stupid trivial thing to spend a lot of time debating. However the more I think about it, the less I know how I feel about dropping the term library. I remember hearing from two of my professors in two different classes that Dean Cronin would be in favor of dropping the term library from IU's SLIS title. While this is hearsay, I don't think I'd be in favor of getting rid of the term. Coming from a family of librarians, all who refer to themselves as librarians, that is one of my defining characteristics--whether I end up working in a library or not. I'm fine referring to myself as an information broker, mainly because that does not hold the same stereotypes "librarian" has. But to delete library from a title takes away from the students who, like me, are drawn to the idea of being a librarian.
One thing that really irritated me about the article that is linked above is that a student raised their hand or stood up to respond to the statement that opposition to Rutger's name change was external was not recognized to speak by the chair. To not take into account the people who are currently taking out loans to attend the school is irresponsible and shows a complete lack of support for the position these students hold. Bringing in donations from alumni for the school is one thing, but it is irrelevant if there are no students attending the school.
I suppose one could take the stance that a name is just a name and to quote Shakespeare, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." But could it be that dropping library from a school that graduates MLS or MLIS students would make it smell far less sweet?
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ReplyDeleteGretchen, as usual you have touched on a very elemental fact.
ReplyDeleteIn my travels in connection with libraries starting so far back I won't be specific, I have come away with the feeling that librarians have always been underappreciated, and many times, simply tolerated. Now, part of this feeling has to do with this (the male) society's opinion (which manifests itself in violence based statistics that I don't have offhand but could access if necessary) about women in general. Actually all we have to do is listen to the news or watch Oprah, Dr. Phil, etc. to figure that one out.
And, as we all know, the library profession has been very much a woman's territory.
Maybe I'm digging a little too deep here, but after living through a time (the 50's, 60's, and etc. ) where women were even more devalued then they are now, it doesn't surprise me that our society still does not give librarians the credit they deserve. I think librarians themselves may be partly responsible for this because I do not believe we support ourselves. We have never learned to be our own advocates. That's where all of you have to take over and change things for this profession.
Hmmmmmmmm I think I got carried away. As Gilda Radner used to say on Saturday Night Live, "never mind."
A childhood friend of mine will be getting her MLS from Rutgers next month and she had told me of her dismay about the name change. Rutgers is following the lead of a number of other library schools and I don't quite buy why this is happening...
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