Computer-oriented librarianship -- quite a lot of universities with formerly just "library schools" are now calling themselves "library and information science" programs, and the "business-minded computer science" (mentioned in the now-deleted first writeup in this node) is called "information systems" or "management science" or something else at those universities. For library science, both the practical ability to access information in the many electronic forms available these days, as well as the legal, moral, and ethical issues surrounding that electronic info, are major portions of the necessary professional training.

Actually, information science as taught by UC Berkeley, SIMS program (School of Information Management and Systems) is to basic computer science as calculus is to algebra. Not only are some of the leading engineers from Xerox PARC, Stanford, MIT and of course Berkeley teaching, but it tends to set the standard for things like deep linking, distributed systems, or appropriate GUI design for data rich systems. It also deals with up to date issues such as MP3's,napster and so forth.

But true, IS at most universities it is a travesty.

At the State University of New York at Albany, we learned about information science while completing our MLS's. While none of what I learned in those particular courses had anything to do with computer science, there was much worthwhile information about legal and ethical issues involving libraries and the internet. Most libraries now have access to a variety of electronic databases, and the good ones also have reference librarians who trained to help you use them.

While a great deal of excellent information is available, some very senior professors were trained in the days when computers were something with vacuum tubes. I knew someone who wrote a thirty page seminar paper in a few days. He was told his original proposal to research science education on the internet was too broad, and narrowed it down to physics. A search engine turned up scads of hits, many of homepages of physics departments at other universities. Typing speed was not the only bottleneck here, but it was one of them.

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