time, more than $15 million in the school and the information movement in general.
Atkins organized activities to explore possible directions. Under a Kellogg-funded initiative called CRISTAL-ED (Coalition on Reinventing Information Science, Technology, and Library Education; www.si.umich.edu/cristaled), he gathered leading educators and thinkers from the library field and the broader information world. Participants explored the nature and possible futures of library education. Atkins liked to point out that the advice he got from these conferences was to think and act radically.
At the same time, Atkins convened a group of University of Michigan faculty with diverse perspectives; many had participated with him in past interdisciplinary projects. Several were SILS faculty, but most were from other departments, such as psychology, political science, economics, business administration, and computer science. In parallel with the CRISTAL-ED efforts, this group considered for more than a year how to institutionalize their mutual interests. A key strategy, ultimately successful, that emerged was to use Atkins’s role as dean of SILS to transform the school into something much broader. These efforts led to the establishment of the School of Information in 1996, the name being selected from a list of more than 100 possibilities in discussions led by George Furnas.
The initial set of professional programs reflected the new mission. In keeping with the U.S. tradition of the principal library science degree being at the master’s level, a collection of master’s of science in information (M.S.I.) specializations were created: library and information science (LIS), archives and record management (ARM), human computer interaction (HCI), information economics management and policy (IEMP), and a tailored option. LIS, HCI, and the customized program were initially the most popular, although the other specializations grew over time. Subsequently, the school expanded to nine MSI specializations. Interestingly, when SI went to the American Library Association (ALA) for accreditation, ALA accredited the entire MSI program, not just the LIS portion.
A concomitant change was a huge increase in sponsored research. It grew from a few hundred thousand dollars per annum to more than $10 million within a decade, radically changing the culture of the school.
Another high-profile university, the University of California at Berkeley, found its small library science school beleaguered. In 1992 it suspended its Ph.D. program and considered closing the school altogether. An external committee recommended shifting the focus to information. In 1994 Berkeley recruited Hal Varian from Michigan, where he had been active in the School of Information discussions, to be dean of the new School of Information Management and Systems. ALA accreditation was abandoned, a clear break from the past. In 2006 UCB adopted the name School of Information, joining Michigan and Texas.
Indiana and Pennsylvania State University adopted pure startup models, both in 1999. Indiana’s School of Informatics was independent of its School of Library and Information Science; Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology stood alongside its Department of Computer Science. Penn State hosted the first iSchool conference.
During the mid- to late-1990s, other schools enlarged their missions in different ways. Some changed their names, others retained older names while broadening disciplinary coverage— the University of Illinois is a strong example of the latter.
What were these changes about? The core vision is that information, technology, and people are considered to interact and to be of roughly equal significance. Launching this required a decidedly interdisciplinary approach, with experts in each area sharing insights into meaningful syntheses of the three components. The information component was populated from the fields of library science, archives, and information retrieval. Technology came mostly from computer science, but could include a range of information appliances, such as telephones, handhelds, and embedded systems. People were initially represented by psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and management specialists. How to meld this interdisciplinary mix became a central energizing thrust at the early iSchools.
Of the 21 schools in the iSchool organization, 15 have library science in their genes, but other developments were also significant. Some computer science schools have broader missions,
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