Comparative Study Of Library And Information Science Education Based On Curriculum Analysis

Library and information science education is originated from librarian training programs, but developed ultimately by library service and relative practices. Therefore a community-based participatory research method was introduced into LIS education as mainstream, by simulating scenarios and cases of hypothetical research and services scenario to accomplish the training. After World War Ⅱ, library and information science education in global countries or regions is dominated by librarian professional certification and vocational education, and benchmarked by standardization and quality certification of library and information science education programs. However, with the extensive application of information technology to enhance and universal information literacy, librarians’working environments and roles have changed dramatically. Disprofessionization and iSchool movement gradually triggered a wave of continuous library and information science education renovations and innovations, which were characterized as diversified, multidisciplinary, multi-level development. This movement fulfilled the educational content of library and information education, but also brought a number of confusions. This paper tried to demonstrate the similarity and difference of course contents, curriculum structure, program objectives and other elements of the world typical LIS programs.In this paper, bibliometrics, coding technology, content analysis, social network analysis and text mining methods were introduced to diagnose the problems and arguments of library and information science education. This paper focused on current practices of library and information science education, distinguished the similarities and differences among areas, programs and subjects, recognized and explored several models and trends of library and information science education all over the world.During the research,the curriculum information of 155 library and information science education institutions were collected from the 461-organiztion database, mainly covering English-speaking or Chinese-speaking countries and regions, which contains a total of 13,750 identified courses and 11053 indexing courses with training certification, undergraduate, master’s and doctoral levels. By improving ALISE thesauri, Library and Information Science Curriculum Subject Classification Glossary, with 15 domains and 194 categories were constructed as indexing tools.Based on the cross-analysis of course type, course topics and geographic differences, and content mining of topic-topic co-occurrence networks, area-area co-occurrence networks and school-school co-occurrence networks, models of library and information science education were recognized by three dimensions.First, as far as course types and course structures concerned, library and information science education can be divided into two groups:the mature but traditional model, which contains US, UK and Canada; the emerging and aggressive model, which contains China’s mainland, Australia, South Africa and Chinese Taiwan Region.Second, as far as course topics concerned, library and information science education can be divided into three groups:North America model, which contains US and Canada; British Commonwealth model, which contains UK and Australia; the emergency model, which contains China and South Africa.Third, as far as the similarity of topic co-occurrence concerned, library and information science education model in China significantly differed from that in west countries, such as US and UK.Based on the analysis of curriculum categories, courses such as Information Systems and Information Technology, Multidiscipline, LIS Education, Development/Principles of LIS played significant roles in all kinds of library and information science education. While based on network analysis, it is also found that domains co-occurrence network showed more closely and cohesive than categories co-occurrence network, and the relationship between categories in the same domain appeared to be more cohesive than that of categories belong to different domains.Furthermore, above researches could also give some enlightens to library and information science education reforms and renovations in China. While according to the limitation on course-related information only, faculties and their backgrounds were totally ignored in this research, which should also be an important footnote of library and information education context, and this would be studied in the future.