This article reports the findings of a study exploring the nature and extent of research on diversity in library and information science (LIS) doctoral dissertations from 2000 to 2009. By systematically examining the last decade of dissertations in the field, this study is meant to reveal the levels of interest in diversity research among doctoral…

Public libraries are heavily affected by political and policy-making processes that shape the funding, activities, and roles of libraries in society, with the explosion of information policy decisions in the past two decades significantly increasing the responsibilities of libraries while also increasing limitations on their activities. Research…

The "use" of library resources and services is frequently presented in library and information science (LIS) literature as a primitive concept: an idea that need not be defined when it is being measured as an operational variable in empirical research. This project considered representations of library "use" through the…

This prestige study surveyed full-time faculty of American Library Association (ALA)-accredited programs in library and information studies regarding library and information science (LIS) journals. Faculty were asked to rate a list of eighty-nine LIS journals on a scale from 1 to 5 based on each journal's importance to their research and teaching.…

The area of archival studies today transcends the professional field of archival science. It encompasses an ever-broadening array of disciplinary discussions and methodological approaches that are identifying, critiquing, and addressing the shifting social, cultural, philosophical, and political, as well as the technological, imperatives of record…

The need for postpositivist or antipositivist methods in the social sciences, including library and information science, is well documented. A promising alternative synthesizes critical realism and phenomenology. This method embraces ontological reality in all things, including human and social action. The ontology underlying the realist…

Literacy was once thought to be well understood and well defined. However, it has been argued that the digital world has disrupted previous notions of literacy, supplanting them with "new" forms of literacies--first in various new literacy studies and now in the library and information science (LIS) scholarship as it applies to information…

Criticisms of library and information science (LIS) research abound and most focus on method, in the broad sense. This article examines the discourse on LIS from the standpoint of rhetoric and argument. Rhetorical and argumentative strategies are used in almost all formal communication, and these strategies themselves communicate purpose and point…

Introduces Michel Foucault's "Archaeology of Knowledge" as a way of addressing Wayne Wiegand's charges of problems in the discipline of library and information science. Highlights include a discussion of discursive formations, or the ways in which a collection of texts are organized with respect to each other; and history as a discursive…

Focuses on utilizing organizational theory in understanding the progress of constructing a new departmental identity in a former library and information science school that was merged with an education school. Findings indicate that members of the former library and information science school faced pressure both to become more like education and…

Discussion of Wayne Wiegand's criticism of library and information science focuses on the ideas of Pierre Bourdieu to help form a new set of frameworks. Topics include social institutions and symbolic power; cultural production and librarianship; and classification as symbolic power. (LRW)

Reports on a series of publications of the International Federation of Documentation (FID) that includes many papers in the field of information science produced in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. (PF)

Responds to Wayne Wiegand's article that criticizes library and information science by suggesting a cultural studies approach to the field. Applies the work of Stuart Hall to a media stereotype of the female librarian based on the film "Party Girl" to allow new interpretations of media images of the profession. (Author/LRW)

A single listing of 1970 and 1971 master's theses and doctoral dissertations, arranged under the various library schools to which they were submitted is presented. Several tables showing the distribution of theses and dissertations among the schools over the period 1966-1971 are also included. (311 references) (Author/KE)

Discusses Wayne Wiegand's article that criticizes library and information science and its role in relations of power and knowledge, and suggests that the work of Antonio Gramsci can help understand how libraries and users are conditioned by history and politics. Considers Gramsci's Marxism; historical subjects and hegemony; and political strategy.…