The crisis we face is less to make research more relevantto local concerns of practitioners, or to revamp once more a set of coreclasses or accreditation standards, but to demonstrate our authority as aprofession in dealing with information issues at both theoretical and practi-cal levels, within academia and beyond.

overly concerned with influencing professionals ratherthan other faculty

This lack of attention to quality considerations runs deeper than manywould admit.

While accreditation is considered the bulwarkfor ensuring standards, there exist significant discrepancies between thequality of research and educational experiences offered across accreditedprograms. Similarly, there exist considerable discrepancies in quality ofstudents admitted to and graduated from LIS programs. It is difficult toquantify these issues, however, since discussions of quality and admissionsstandards are among the most divisive topics raised in faculty deliberationsor practitioner discourse, and there is almost no vehicle for their formaltreatment in the literature and conferences of the field.

the formal positioning oflibraries apart from information science is a rhetorical displacement activ-ity, taking our attention from the important issues and into an argumentover labels.

step was to determine if a conceptual core of knowledgeand skills existed for the field.

educators were out of touch

The implication is that females are contributing to the development of LISeducation by teaching both library science-oriented courses and inforina-tion science-oriented courses

To explore the magnitude of gender division within curricular offerings,we sampled and evaluated the male to female teacher ratio of a collection ofcourses categorized as either male or female in their orientation. Thecourses chosen reflect only conventional assumptions and findings re-ported by Hildenbrand on course-gender relations, cross-referenced withGorman's article and a review of curriculum components we conducted in2004.27

Notwithstanding any possible glass ceiling effects,we anticipate that greater equalization of gender at all ranks should occurover the next decade

educe scholars to consultants and threaten the status of LISschools in the eyes of the academy

Thiscasting of the field into two divided camps is nothing new, but it is no longerclear that this division reflects the reality of many LIS programs."

The argument is based on a belief that the field hasshifted from a focus on libraries as spaces, where ordered collections areoverseen by skilled professionals who serve as guides to users, to a focus oncomputational aspects of retrieval, where digital access interfaces peopledirectly, and remotely, with unfiltered information.

For present purposes wewill treat librarianship as being a commonly understood label for the workof credentialed practitioners involved in management and provision of ser-vices within a library or similar setting.