The Overlooked Factor: The Resource Issue as the Shaper of Library and Information School Curricula

Abstract

A survey of the constraints upon capacity for curriculum change and flexible response in the face of the growth of information technology (IT) as they affect Schools of Library and Information Studies (SLIS) in England and Wales revealed that critics of SLIS were ignoring a vital factor in commenting upon an apparent inability to develop the curriculum quickly enough. This factor was lack of resources. SLIS resources were fixed to ‘historic costs’ circumstances which severely limited their ability to break new, capital-intensive, ground. The main competitors for the IT market – computer schools – have a stronger historic-cost base. The blame for SLIS lack of resources and inadequately skilled and experienced staffing for IT needs does not entirely lie with SLIS themselves. The poor ‘image’ of the field as a low resource, humanities-based activity has not been adequately combatted at any level by official representative bodies of libraries and information workers. SLIS themselves have gone as far as they are able with severely limited resources which have had a harrowing effect upon the minds of their senior staff which bodes ill for the future.