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Former colleague Trevor Dawes has written a thorough piece about a name change proposed by the faculty of Rutgers' School of Communication, Information and Library Studies (SCILS). They have voted on and approved a new name, School of Communication and Information, and it is now awaiting approval from the Board of Governors.

Trevor received e-mail from a current SCILS faculty member after getting involved in a discussion of the name change on a listserv. I find part of that e-mail[1], specifically the rationale for the name change, absolutely puzzling:

We just have so many programs now — we can't possibly cover all of them in our school's name. School of Communication and Information is something of a compromise name, but it does encompass all our departments and programs in the school.

So in order to cover more programs, the name of the school ought to communicate less? Does dropping "Library Studies" somehow represent Journalism, Media Studies, and Informatics students more?

I fail to see how removing "Library Studies" makes the name of the school more meaningful. Why not follow this rationale to its logical conclusion, then, and shorten the name to School of Information? Or iSchool? Or how about "School?" Yes, that's it, "School!" Then all the departments and programs are equally well-represented. Huzzah, faculty!

I should be clear about my objection. I don't mind SCILS becoming an iSchool. In fact, I think my education there could have benefited from a more iSchoolish curriculum. But any problems with the school then were not related to the name, and I doubt they are now. What I object to is the oddball rationale for the name change, and the notion that in order to affect change and improve the school, well, clearly a change in name will do the trick! It's putting the cart before the horse, especially when the MLIS program lacks a core curriculum[2]. This is change in name only and that is perhaps a missed opportunity.

Notes

1. Taken out of context, true. [↩]
2. An opportunity for real change, though I will admit that there are good arguments against having one. [↩]

While doing some reading for a little talk my colleague, Ed Summers, and I are giving at code4lib 2009, I came across a paragraph that sparked a crazy thought. So crazy that it's not crazy at all. So not crazy that I am sure other people have thought of it. But nonetheless, here I am writing about it just in case.

From Sarah Currier's paper on SWORD (emphasis mine):

One of the most frequently cited barriers to academics depositing their teaching materials into repositories is the keystroke-count involved in logging into a repository, uploading the resource, creating metadata, perhaps selecting a licence, and publishing the resource. It was a quick win, therefore, to create a drag-and-drop desktop tool to allow a single keystroke deposit of resources, including multiple resources in one action. For a repository that supports automatic metadata generation, administrative metadata can be created at the point of entry to the repository without the user needing to create any.

And I wondered how many repositories supported automatic metadata generation. I wondered how many repositories supported automatic generation of rich metadata. And lastly I wondered, might this be a more or less natural role for catalogers: augmenting stub metadata records or doing original cataloging for institutional repository deposits? Especially at a time when many of them are being reclassified as acquisitions specialists or digital projects managers?

Potential issues and questions:

• Author ignorance: Maybe catalogers are already doing this and I'm a moron?
• Scale: Is it realistic to expect to be able to "keep up" with repository deposits?
• Granularity: Does cataloging at the level of articles, and perhaps at even finer granularities, introduce challenges?
• Duplication: If pre-prints are cataloged in the IR, for instance, will they need to be cataloged again later?
• … there are others I thought of on my commute this morning but have since forgotten them. Feel free to add comments.

I will admit here that I've been somewhat out of the (academic) institutional repository space a while, and cataloging is something I don't share thoughts about very often because my exposure is limited to having taken one course a couple years ago.

I assume there's a body of research about this out there somewhere but I figured I'd post this anyway.