UCB and UCLA programs

[Marcia J. Bates]

	This is in response to Sue Kamm's posting regarding Berkeley's and
UCLA's information programs.   As a graduate of the Berkeley MLS and Ph.D.
programs, I, too, am dismayed that UCB is not attempting to renew their
accreditation.
	But what I want to address in this posting is the UCLA library and
information program.  I don't agree with Sue Kamm's perception of it.
   	I've been at UCLA as a faculty member since 1981, since the days
that Bob Hayes was Dean.  The great stength of the UCLA
program, in my estimation, has always been that we COMBINE the library and
the information perspectives.   That, I think, is what Sue is referring to
when she mentions UCLA's early prominence in information science AND book
arts and history, and the efforts to teach MLS students how to move between
those two worlds--to talk intelligently to the systems people and know
about books, users, and the other human elements of information service.
	Well, that's exactly our goal STILL.   I teach our core
"Information access" course, which includes a lot about working with
users/patrons, including a class devoted to actually PRACTICING reference
interviews.  We have several children's courses taught by Virginia Walter,
former head of Los Angeles Public Library's Children's Services.
	I, like Elaine Svenonius (we arrived at exactly the same time), was
brought to UCLA to teach cataloging (my focus
is subject cataloging, and I did my doctoral dissertation on LCSH).  I have
been
active throughout these years in ensuring that we continue to hire people
in that area and continue to teach organization of information.  Several
years ago we reduced the core, not because we cared less about the
traditional subjects, as has been widely and misleadingly stated, but
because we wanted students to have better choice
beyond the beginning courses in what they took that is oriented to their
specialties.   Now, instead of having to take two quarters of traditional
cataloging (the old way), students take one introductory course to the area
of organization of information, then select further courses to meet their
specializations.  (As we are on the quarter system, our students have 6
required courses and fully 12 more to take to graduate.)
	This change has been widely misrepresented as the abandonment
of cataloging!  Nonsense!!  Now, the student interested in working in the
information industry can take a course in metadata or thesaurus
construction instead of academic library cataloging; the student interested
in archives can study archives registration instead of AACR2.  AND the
student interested in academic and public libraries can take full courses
in descriptive and subject cataloging.  What we have done is open out the
possibilities for the wider range of jobs that are now out there--without
abandoning the core expertises that identify the good information
person--whether called librarian or otherwise.
	After the budget-induced difficulties of the early-1990's, things
are now going very well at UCLA.  We've been able to hire several more
faculty and we're doing really exciting things.
	We have specialists in digital images, digital libraries,
electronic archives, information policy, information
retrieval, communication research, user-centered design of information
systems, AND cataloging and reference and library management/services and
children's literature.  (And by the way we still teach
descriptive/analytical bibliography--THAT tradition hasn't gone away
either.)
	We are producing people with the flexibility to apply classic
information skills to a wide range of environments and types of information
systems.  Instead of dismissing us, visit our program, visit our website
(http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/), and see what's really happening here.

				Marcia
				UC Berkeley, MLS 1967, PhD 1972

Marcia J. Bates
Professor
230 GSEIS Building
Dept. of Information Studies
Graduate School of Education and Information Studies
University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA)
405 Hilgard Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1520 USA

Telephone and Voicemail: 310-206-9353
Fax: 310-206-4460
Web: http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/facpage/bates.html

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