NY Metro Area's only Ph.D.
in Information Studies receives state approval at C.W. Post Campus of Long
Island University
March 26, 1997 -- The only doctoral program
in Information Studies in the New York metropolitan area preparing students
for rapidly-expanding executive jobs in business as well as today's digitally-sophisticated
libraries will be offered beginning this September by the Palmer School
of Library and Information Science at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island
University in Brookville, New York. The Palmer School, which also offers
classes in Manhattan at Washington Square and in Westchester County, thus
becomes the area's only doctoral-level school of library and information
science.
The program addresses a demand that the Palmer School has experienced since
Columbia University closed its School of Library Service in 1990, according
to Dr. Anne Woodsworth, dean of the Palmer School, one of the creators of
the new Ph.D. curriculum and author of several books on information technologies.
The approval for the new doctorate was granted by the New York State Education
Department.
LeClerc Calls Program Critical. Dr. Paul LeClerc, president and chief
executive officer of The New York Public Library, called the goals of the
Palmer School's new Ph.D. program "critical to ensuring that libraries
everywhere have the expertise to guide their users through the increasingly
complex and technology-driven world of information access."
Palmer School graduates now are working at places as diverse as Kraft Foods
and Rolling Stone Magazine. "The Palmer School is pushing out the frontiers
in a transformed discipline," said Dr. David J. Steinberg, President
of Long Island University.
Steinberg added: "Anyone with a dusty memory of librarians and the
Dewey Decimal system needs to know that information professionals have a
much wider horizon tha n cataloging books on shelves; today they must organize,
marshal and present the vast explosion of knowledge that is the glory and
the curse of this society." The Palmer School was originally established
by Carl e ton Palmer, a trustee of Long Island University , with his wife,
Wi nthrop, an English professor and the first female member of the University's
Board of Trustees. Their daughter, Rosalind P. Walter, now serves as a trustee.
Multidisciplines. Students will study in one of two areas: Information
Organization and Access or Information Studies and Services. These areas
will cover knowledge representation, design and implementation of systems
for information storage and retrieval, information services, organizational
information management and information policy.Students will be required
to take elective courses in another discipline such as computer science,
management, psychology, economics and education, incorporating their insights
not only into course work but original research leading to the dissertation.
"The problems and challenges of working with massive amounts of information
have crossed over into many different fields," said Woodsworth. "The
Palmer School's interdisciplinary approach will fulfill a need for both
knowledge and technology managers in today's workplaces."
The program will admit a maximum of 20 students each year and has been designed
to accommodate part-time students who are working. "People now working
as librarians and information scientists will find it attractive,"
Woodsworth said, but the school believes the program also will appeal to
professionals who have master's degrees in other areas such as public and
business administration, health information management and computer graphics.
Policy Implications. Doctoral courses will include bibliographic
retrieval systems; human-computer interaction; the design of databases,
networks and information organizations; and information and society. Throughout,
the program will cover policy implications of the digital information environment.
Students can also take elective courses in a variety of information and
library science areas, such as electronic records, early childhood materials
and services, medical informatics, and archival management.
With a current enrollment of 400, the Palmer School also offers a master's
degree in Library and Information Science at C.W. Post, and in Manhattan
at Washington Square. In addition, the school has graduate certificate programs
in Archives and in Records Management. Selected master's degree and certificate
courses are also offered at Long Island University's Westchester Campus.
The Palmer School's bachelor's degree in Information Transfer, introduced
in 1996, also recognizes the need for an information literate workforce.
For more information about the new Ph.D. in Information Studies, candidates
can call Dr. Anne Woodsworth at (516) 299-2855 or e-mail palmer@titan.liunet.edu or
visit our web site: http://www.cwpost.liunet.edu/cwis/cwp/palmer/main.html
For more information call the C.W. Post Public Relations Office at (516)
299-2333 or e-mail cwpostpr@aurora.liunet.edu
March 1997 |
