'U.S. News' Survey Splits ALA

By Eric Oatman -- School Library Journal, 6/1/2005

U.S. News & World Report's rankings of graduate library information science (LIS) programs have become a topic of debate among members of the American Library Association's (ALA) council, the organization's governing body.

At issue is the fact that the U.S. News survey of LIS programs has not been updated since 1999. One council faction, consisting largely of public librarians, wants ALA to urge the magazine to survey LIS educators again. Academic librarians generally oppose the idea. "The public librarians get it," says ALA Councilor Karen Schneider. "They have people coming in and asking for this stuff. If [academic librarians] worked with people making the requests, they might change their minds."

The outdated survey graded 48 LIS programs by type and placed programs that train library media specialists and children's librarians into two separate categories. For both types of programs, Rutgers State University in New Brunswick, NJ, was ranked first, while Florida State University took the number-two spot.