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As we enter a new millennium, the opportunities for librarians are unparalleled. It is difficult to pick up a newspaper, magazine or listen to a newscast without finding some reference to the information age and the impact of the new information technologies on everything that we do from visiting the library to shopping for groceries. It is only a few years since words like Internet, Netscape, World Wide Web and e-mail entered our vocabulary. The terms e-commerce and ‘dot com’ companies are even more recent in origin. Even for those who read, early on, about the coming of the information age in the works of authors such as Daniel Bell 1 and Marc Porat, 2 the speed of change in the last 2–3 years has been breathtaking. Suddenly, information, the substance that librarians deal with everyday in print and electronic form, is at the centre of things. What does this changing landscape mean for health sciences library education in the 21st century? Although all of us appreciate the public’s new-found interest in information, we also realize that there are major challenges involved in dealing with the expectations that have been created in the media. Schools of information and library science are typically small in comparison with other professional schools such as business, medicine, nursing, social work, education and journalism. The 1998–99 Association of Library and Information Science (ALISE) Directory lists approximately 2100 full and part-time faculty members gathered from 65 institutional members (56 with American Library Association accredited programmes) and six international affiliate institutional members. Of these, only a dozen or so full time faculty list ‘medical libraries or information centres’ have an area of specialization in teaching and research. The ongoing Kellogg-ALISE Information Professions and Education Project (KALIPER), funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, provides an example of general curricular trends in North American library and information science (LIS) education based on a deans and directors survey. 3 The full study results expected in 2000 will make use of in-depth case studies, school Website analysis, ALISE statistics and interview data gathered by five scholar teams. The survey shows that LIS education is experiencing major change in a number of areas, much of it due to the rapid changes in information technology and the explosion of the Internet. Although the schools’ core missions generally continue to focus on the selection, organization and dissemination of information and recorded knowledge, the environments and information mediums in which the schools see their graduates working are expanding. In addition to libraries, LIS schools see an expanding market for versatile information professionals who can function in a wide range of print and electronic information environments in many different types of organizations. New courses, both in a basic core and in specialties, are being added, and even within existing courses rapid change in content from year to year is reported. Some schools have added undergraduate majors or minors in response to heavy market demand. Some schools are also moving towards more flexible evening and weekend courses to cater to adult learners. New technologies are removing the barriers to learning at a distance and several schools are exploring regional as well as international markets for their programmes. Numbers of interdisciplinary faculty, programmes and tracks are increasing as are joint programmes with other schools and departments. Although concern has been raised that library science may be losing ground in the midst of these changes (see the American Library Association Congress on Professional Education report at < http://www.ala.org/congress/>), the KALIPER study did not find this to be so. Concerns about the future of LIS education are revealed through documents such as the Special Libraries Association’s Competencies for Special Librarians of the 21st Century ( http://www.sla.org/research/competency/); the Council of Europe’s New Professional Profiles and Competencies for Information Professionals and Knowledge Workers ( http://www.culture.coe.fr/books/eng/ecubook20f.1.htm); and TFPL’s Skills for Knowledge Management Briefing Paper ( http://www.lic.gov.uk/publications/executivesummaries/kmskills.html). In the health sciences library field in particular, the National Library of Medicine funded a series of studies related to the education and training of health sciences librarians, one of which recommended the establishment of a centre of excellence for the education of health sciences librarians at Chapel Hill. 4 What will education for health sciences librarianship look like in the 21st century? How will LIS schools respond to the need for specialist training? What can we do in an environment where few additional resources are available? At Chapel Hill our strategy is to leverage our existing strength in health sciences LIS education and research through partnerships with other units. The school has had a strong relationship with the health sciences library on campus as well as the informatics programme in the School of Medicine. Shared course offerings and mentorship opportunities with faculty and practising librarians provide the basis for the programme at both the masters and PhD levels. Joint research projects with faculty members in various health affairs schools and institutes continue to be pursued. Another health sciences strength is found in the contract that the school has held for the last 26 years to provide library and information services to the Environmental Protection Agency in adjacent Research Triangle Park. Some student interns in the programme also work at the library of the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences. The university’s health sciences library also offers student internship opportunities. We are currently exploring the possibility of linking some funded internship positions with the existing and new course work, enhanced mentorship, and masters papers and doctoral dissertations requirements to create the basis for an in-depth health sciences specialization. Another potential area of collaboration involves the National Library of Medicine (NLM). This year the health sciences library is hosting two students who are part of NLM’s associates programme. The associates programme has been in place for many years as a 1-year post-masters programme at the NLM in Bethesda, MD. A recent innovation has been to provide an optional 2nd year of the programme where the associate works in a health sciences library to gain additional experience in the field. It is these kinds of creative solutions that meld and build upon existing strengths, as well as other partnerships with other LIS schools nationally and internationally, that will be required to make highest quality health sciences LIS education a reality in the new millennium.
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