The ALA Committee on Education invited two special guests to its meeting Saturday afternoon—Linda Smith, associate dean of the University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science, and Beth Paskoff, director of the Louisiana State University School of Library and Information Science—both of whom had stories to tell about attempts made by the university administration, in the face of severe budget constraints, to shut down or restructure the library school.
On March 5, the University of Illinois appointed a committee to see whether it could save any money by merging the library school with the college of media and the schools of labor and social work. Smith said the committee released its report on June 15, saying it could find no efficiencies in consolidating the four units. However, the report is awaiting public comments that are due July 1, and the university, feeling even worse budget pains, has launched a systemwide reassessment of all university operations.
At LSU, the chancellor announced in April 2009 that the library program would be merged into a new college that included the College of Education and School of Social Work, effectively causing the school to lose its autonomy. Paskoff said a task force appointed to study the financial advantages to the reorganization took more than a year to report back, finally agreeing on June 16 that it could find no benefit to the merger. On May 21, however, the chancellor announced plans to close the library school altogether. Although the situation looks discouraging on the surface, Paskoff and others began a letter-writing campaign to educate the board of supervisors (which must approve the chancellor's decision) on the value of the school to the state of Louisiana. Resolutions from the Association for Library and Information Science Education, the Medical Library Association, the American Association of Law Libraries, and the Special Libraries Association came flooding in, and an ALA resolution is underway at Annual Conference.
Paskoff pointed out that it would cost students from Louisiana $10,000 more to get a library degree in South Carolina, and in any case, "We bring in more real tuition dollars annually than we cost the university." The board of supervisors are to make a decision on the matter by July 16. A request for outside support is posted on the LSU SLIS website.
