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Sign up for our monthly email alertsTradition in Transition
A History of the School of Information Sciences, University of Pittsburgh, 100th Anniversary, 1901-2001
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SUBJECTS
Library & Information Science » Information Science & Technology
Library & Information Science » Library & Information Science (General)
Children's & Young Adult Services » Collection Development
Children's & Young Adult Services » Children's & Young Adult Services (General)
Library & Information Science » Library Education
Library & Information Science » Children's & Young Adult Services
Library & Information Science » Library History
DESCRIPTION
Published as part of a year-long celebration of the centennial of the School of Information Sciences, this volume interweaves anecdotes about individuals with facts and dates to provide a detailed history and a picture of the people who made the School what it is today. Several threads emerge as this history unfolds. The first thread began with the programs that educate librarians to work with children and youth (still a major thrust of the School) and with many "firsts" that helped shape the values and traditions of the School. Programs to prepare people to work in school library media centers, in archives and records management positions, in all types of libraries, and in professional positions managing and providing access to information in a wide range of specialties and organizations developed rapidly.
A second thread began with the interdisciplinary and emerging field of information science in 1963 and brought together, under the University's leadership, visionaries from different scientific disciplines and from business and industry. A third thread is in telecommunications, initiated in 1986, with leaders from engineering, computer science, business and policy, which began with a Master's degree and expanded to include a PhD track in telecommunications and a track in Wireless Systems.
This fascinating narrative focuses on the individuals who shaped the values, curriculum, teaching, learning, research and scholarship, and service to educate librarians and, later, information professionals in a very wide range of specializations. These individuals also were leaders in shaping the discipline itself, and they are among the most highly regarded of educators and scholars in the field.
Pitt's School of Information Sciences has long been an innovative leader in the field and the first to introduce many technologies, and to introduce, as well, courses in the areas of ethics and policy. The School started the first Information Ethics Forum in 1989. Programs like medical librarianship and biomedical informatics were pioneering efforts in the 1980s, the telecommunications program was the first in any information sciences school, and the wireless and geoinformatics curricula and laboratories , begun in the 1990s, serve to keep Pitt on the leading edge of education in the information sciences. This fascinating narrative actually describes the evolution of a profession using the history of one of its leading educational institutions as a lens. Of interest to all library and information science educators, as well as students interested in the history of education and the development of the various facets of information science.
