10 - iassist quarterly

Undergraduate
education and

data:
The entry level

information specialist
experience

by Eleanor LangstafP

Baruch College, City University of New York

"The medieval historian M. T. Clanchy has

illustrated the reluctant acceptance of written

documentation in place of first-person witness

over more than three centuries of early English

history. 'Documents,' he tells us, 'did not

immediately inspire trust' People had to be

persuaded that written documentation was a

reliable reflection of concrete, observable events"

(Zuboff 77). Although it is true today that at

one level people will accept anything in writing

as probably authoritative, and all statistics as

incontrovertible, in most of our working

environments a higher level of sophistication

obtains. From time to time there may be an

urgent desire to replicate surveys available in

archival form, a survival from the 12th century

where the spoken word, direct experience, had a

'Presented at the International Association for

Social Science Information Service and
Technology (IASSIST) Conference held in

Washington, D.C., May 26-29, 1988

validity not available in documentary evidence.

The real problem, however, is more substantial,

and deals with the nature of information, with

those basic characteristics of information that

make it what it is: transferability without

diminution, growth each time it is used, its

accumulation at meteoric rates, the increasing

dependence of each new management decision

on prior cases. In the federal government, for

instance, according to Wilson Dizard, as early as

1979 there were 600+ database management

systems installed (Dizard 81); by 1990, it will

cost nearly $10 billion to maintain the

computers and $2 billion for modernization. Of
course, these levels of growth are reflected in

the private sector.

The impact of information technology on society

has been variously described in terms of

lessening labor or improving final quality.

Shoshana ZubofT, in her In the Age of the

Smart Machine characterizes it as resulting in a

comprehensive "textualization" of work, the

creation of a new symbolic medium, an

"electronic text" that increasingly mediates

between workers and their work, between the

body and the task. We are well aware of this

phenomenon: the surrogate level, in the index,

abstract and full data levels. In the information

process, work becomes abstract, the manipulation

of intangible symbols rather than concrete

objects. Zuboffs concern is with process, not

with the accumulated data it engenders, but I

suggest that where work is increasingly done in

a technological mode, no matter what attitudes

people may have about information, it continues

to increase and require management - a kind of

management which cuts across present functional

lines and which most futurists, such as Shoshana

Zuboff and Harian Cleveland in his The

Knowledge Executive , assert to be destroying

the hierarchical structure of organizations.

Although I have not observed this phenomenon,

except as it apparently engenders anxiety in

certain groups when discussed, it is one of the

justifications for the academic preparation of

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iassist quarterly - 11

end-users of infonnation (Atkins, passim;

Debons, passim; Porat, passim). So loo the

permanent growth of data is justification for

providing new kinds of information

intermediaries (Duffy, passim; Schmidt, passim;

Spivack, passim; Topics, 77).

What I would like to do this morning is to

describe to you, for the purpose of discussion,

the Infonnation Studies Program now in the

design stage at Baruch College, in the hope that

a such discussion will provide material with

which we can fine-time our work, to make it

more responsive to the workplace.

The Infonnation Studies Program is based on

three premises based on perceived need:

1. That infonnation has value to society, to

organizations and to individual professionals.

2. That personnel are needed who imderstand

and are able to organize and utilize

information effectively.

3. That to reach enough information users,

programs in Information Studies are needed

at the undergraduate level.

What is the Information Studies program? This

inter-disciplinary program focuses on the use

and users of infonnation as well as the

technologies involved. It provides students with

the conceptual bases they need to work in an

information environment and some professional

training. When taken as a minor concentration

it complements a major—business, one of the

social sciences, or one of the natural sciences.

Baruch College, offering as it does fully

accredited business, health care administration,

education and liberal arts programs, is in a

unique position to offer an Information Studies

program which is responsive to the needs of a

changing economy. One of the senior colleges

of the City University of New York, it has an

enrollment of about 14,000 and houses the

business programs of the university. There is a

growing need for information specialists in

business, science and education; the marketing

of information products is one of a growing

number of examples that dramatically illustrate

the viability of the Baruch meld of information

studies and business.

In 1981 Baruch College began to develop and

ofTer courses in the discipline of Information

Studies and at present has five advanced courses

approved by the Board of Trustees, and four

courses approved by the School. The design of

these courses is based on our view of the

nature of information studies.

In spite of the growth of programs for training

information professionals, and for some, the

concentration on that part of the spectrum of

information science which can be styled

information studies, the discipline is still in what

can be described as a pre-paradigmatic stage in

which the producers are characterized by

training in other, usually related, disciplines. In

common with the outer reaches of all

disciplines, confiicting views are held and

discussed among peers and with a general but

educated, thinking audience (Kusack, passim).

The product, the texts produced, are treatises

characterized by full discussion of the whole

subject in so far as it is known (for instance

Summary Results...). The assumptions of the

discipline are the assertions of the treatises.

Information Studies also has characteristics

common to the next phase of developmenL

The paradigmatic phase partakes of patterns

common in academic departments in which

research is carried out in response to specific

questions posed by the discipline. Thomas
Kuhn's paradigms—recognized scientific

achievements that define acceptable problems

and methods—provide a generally accepted

conceptual context for further investigation. The

audience contracts to one of peers only.

Communication moves from the treatise, a

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12 - iassist quarterly

literary fonn, to brief articles, written in highly

technical tenninology for that specialized

audience (Paulson, Chapter 2).

Information Studies in the United States exhibits

many of the characteristics of the

pre-paiadigmatic stage, especially in the kind of

publication it engenders—think pieces, forecasts,

theoretical approaches, essentially all assertions.

Have you counted the number of assertions I've

made so far?

Let's move to the more practical, more

descriptive kind of approach to the subject:

General objectives of the program are:

1. to contribute to the preparation of

undergraduate students for critical and

efTective participation in the complex

structure of today's information society;

2. to prepare undergraduate Information Studies

students for employment as information

specialists in a variety of agencies and

institutions;

3. to orient undergraduate Information Studies

students towards graduate education in

Information Studies or related fields;

4. 10 contribute to the academic preparation of

undergraduate students who will enter careers

or graduate education in related fields;

5. to provide course offerings that might be

utilized by other segments of the University

to augment their curricula.

Specific objectives of the program are to

prepare students who will, within the limits of a

minor subject specialization:

1. understand the nature and role of

information in society in general, and in a

variety of organizational settings;

2. understand how to find, evaltiate, and use

recorded information;

3. tmderstand how to organize and retrieve

recorded information;

4. acquire applied skills in information

processing technologies;

5. be able to analyze the information needs of

individuals, organizations and other social

entities;

6. be able to design and manage information

systems which meet specific information

needs;

7. be able to instruct others in the use of

retrieval systems;

8. be able to evaluate the efTecdveness of

information systems;

9. understand behavioral aspects of information

transfer including communications theory and

communication skills.

What valorizes information studies'" The

valorization process, still in the earliest stages,

stems from politics and from economics.

Information poses problems both political, in the

sense of well-ordered organizations becoming

chaotic in the face of too much information,

and economic in developing feasible ways of

dealing with information. Thus, we have talked

about the specific and practical ends of such

training, with the assumption that such training

will be part of the solution, not pari of the

problem.

The following are some of the courses we are

teaching, or plan to teach in conjunction with

such subject majors as international business,

managment, biology, education or business

communication. The latter concentrations we

might call the content courses; what follows are

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iassist quarterly - 13

the Information Studies Courses:

Online Information Retrieval . Juniors and

seniors learn database searching using several

databanks, and employ advanced strategies.

They download, edit and format bibliographies

and abstracts. A variety of software—gateways

and frontends—is examined and used.

Advanced Information Retrieval . Students learn

to prepare material for input into databases. An
indexing component presents automated indexing

using standard software packages for file,

periodical, and back-of-the-book indexing. An
abstracting component explores the writing of

indicative and informative abstracts, as well as

other forms of terse writing. Students prepare

an index for the alumni magazine, a permanent

responsibility of the class.

Information and Society . A discussion and

reading course covering policy matters and a

general range of information technology and

effects on society. The impact of

telecommunications, electronic media, transborder

data flows, etc., are studied. Students also visit

state-of-th^art workplaces.

Informational Writing and Editing in Computer

Environments . Efficient use of

computer-generated information depends on its

presentation. Students learn to reprocess

bibliographic, text, and numeric data in prim

and graphic forms usable in business,

government and non-profit organizations.

Science Information Retrieval . This course

teaches basic principles of information retrieval

in science and technology to students in

pre-medical, health sciences and natural science

programs using various interactive systems. In

addition to bibliographic databases, students gain

experience using databases to search for patents,

to track technological developments, and to

identify chemical substances. The purpose is to

develop, in a scientific environment, those

diagnostic, prescriptive and evaluative skills

needed for information-searching at entry level

in the modem science environmenL

Information Technologies . An overview course

designed to acquaint the student with several

categories of information technology: computers,

telecommunications and satellites, and

video/print reproduction/graphics.

Representative technologies are examined in

terms of fimctions, roles and design, and are

related to the management of information

resources. Term projects explore in depth

examples from each category. Field trips to

technologically advanced worksites acquaint the

student with the latest applications.

Management of Information Resources and

Records . General principles of information

organization: classification and filing, coding and

indexing, routing and copying are examined,

then applied to specific formats in print and

computer environments. Working with a

computer model of an information center for

both internal and external data, smdents make

information management decisions and test them

for relevance to organizational needs.

Management of External Numeric Data Bases .

Managerial principles and practice by which

external numeric data bases such as economic

time-series, surveys and polls are efTectively

handled in business, academic, and public

organizations provide the substance of this

course. Acquisition, organization, service, and

dissemination are considered. Students gain

familiarity with a variety of data sources

available from government agencies, data

archives, research institutions, private vendors

and scholars. They use mainframe computers

and microcomputers to work with actual data in

a laboratory setting to gain expertise with

secondary data files and the technical aspects of

data storage and retrieval.

This then is the program: what have we

omitted that should be added? What have we

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14 - lasstst quarterly

included that could be deleted? It is an

ambitious program. Does it respond to the

needs of an information societyTn

Sources

undergraduate preparation." Journal of

education for library and information science

26 (Summer 1985): 50-51.

Topics in health care financing 14 (Winter

1987):77-88.

ZubofT, Shoshana. In the ase of the smart

machine: the future of work and power .

New York: Basic Books, 1988.

Atkins, T. V. Survey of information industry

needs 1987. New York: Baruch College.

Part 1-2. Part 2 incomplete to date.

Clanchy, M. T. From memory to written

record: England 1066-1307 Cambridge:

Harvard UP, 1979. Quoted in Zuboff

Cleveland, Harlan. The knowledge executive:

leadership in an information society . New
York: Talley Books, 1985.

Debons, Anthony, et al. The information

professional: survey of an emerging field.

New York: Marcel Dekker, 1981.

Dizard, Wilson P. The coming information age:

an overview of technology, economics, and

politics . New York: Longman, 1985.

Duffy, James and William J. Jeffrey. "Is it

time for the chief information officer?"

Management review 6 (November 1987): 59.

Kusack, James M. "Librarians and the

information age: an affair on the rocks?"

(Part 1). ASIS bulletin 14 (Dec. 1987/Jan.

1988): 26-27.

Paulson, William. The noise of culture: the

literary text in a world of information .

Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP. 1988.

Porat, Marc Uri. The information economy:

definition and measurement Washington,

D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce/Office
of Telecommunications, 1977, ch. 7.

Schmidt Karen A. "The other librarians:

undergraduate library science programs and
their graduates." Journal of education for

librarianship 24 (Spring 1984): 223-32.

Spivack, Jane F., ed. Careers in information .

White Plains: Knowledge Industry-

Publications, 1985.

"Summary results of propositions related to

Summer 1988