527 Another top library job goes to non-librarian

The 2003-2004 GSLIS newsletter arrived last week and I’m just now getting a look. The new Dean of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, John Unsworth, is featured. He is a specialist in humanities computing, not library science. He also became a tenured English professor without publishing a book. Here’s the notice of his appointment from the Champaign-Urbana, Illinois newspaper:

“John Unsworth may not be a librarian, but many at the University of Illinois think he is the perfect leader for their top-ranked library school.

Unsworth is an English professor who specializes in 20th century fiction, has an interest in the cultural aspects of publishing, and is director of an institute supporting computer-based humanities research.” News-Gazette, March 26, 2003

So I’m listening to him this morning on RealOne give a presentation at a March 2004 Library Colloquium. Although he says in his “Letter from the Dean” that his mission is to underline the “and” in the school’s name--planning to hire two faculty in the traditional library areas of cataloging/classification and youth services--I suspect that eventually libraries may just become an extension, in heart if not in deed, of the computer/technology departments of our various institutions.

I also noticed, what has slipped by me before, that U of I GSLIS refers to its Master’s degree as MS, rather than MLS, even for those of my era. In my bio and resume, I’ve always written, MLS. So I pulled my diploma off the shelf, and sure enough, it clearly says, Master of Science. Not a word about which graduate school. No mention of “library.” Truly, I’d never really looked that closely.

Still, I think it would only be wise for Dean Unsworth take the equivalent of those "core" courses that used to be required before you could officially take the graduate level courses. They were used both as preparation and to weed out the faint of heart.