LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE
DATA COLLECTION PROJECT
A Collaborative Effort by:
The Association for Library and 			             		                    American Library Association
Information Science Education			                       		         Committee on Accreditation
____________________________________________________________________________________________

August 1, 2001

Dear Colleague:

For a number of years, the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) and the Committee on Accreditation (COA) of the American Library Association have cooperated on statistical data collection from the library and information science programs.  We again invite your continued participation in this year's effort.

Two changes in data collection this year will have an impact on your reporting.  Up until this year, data for faculty collected in Part I, the non-confidential faculty questionnaire, were for the academic year just completed.  Data for most other parts of the survey are for the current year (often a snapshot for the fall semester) unless data for the previous year is the only data available, e.g., graduates of the past academic year.  We would like to have the faculty data better reflect the current status of the faculty at our schools rather than year-old data.  We would like to do this without, however, losing a year’s worth of data.  Accordingly, this year we have modified the Part I (Faculty) questionnaire.  This modification allows us to  obtain data for the last academic year, 2000-2001 and also, where appropriate, data for fall 2001.  We apologize for the extra work this year but we hope that it will provide for more up-to-date faculty data in the Report, while providing for the continuity of data begun two decades ago.

The second change involves Student data.  For the past two years we have collected student data for ALA-Accredited Master’s - Library Science, ALA-Accredited Master’s - Information Science, and Other Master’s.  Because  few schools have accredited information science programs, although many have unaccredited information science programs,  most IS enrollment is reported under “Other Master’s”.  In that category the IS programs are combined with master’s programs that are neither  LS nor IS.  As a result we lack a good perspective on enrollment in IS master’s degree programs.  To remedy this, this year the ALA-Accredited Master’s - Information Science category is changed to Master’s - Information Science.  Thus, any school with a separate information science master’s program, whether ALA-accredited or not, should report these data here.  “Other master’s” will now truly reflect master’s degrees other the LS and IS offered by our schools.  Schools with a combined single degree in library and information science should continue to report those student data under ALA-Accredited Master’s - Library Science.  We believe that this change will produce better insight into the growth and change of our IS programs.

Data collection forms for your statistical reporting are available now as Rich Text Files for downloading at http://ils.unc.edu/ALISE/.  Although you will be receiving the questionnaires electronically, the completed questionnaires must be submitted to the ALISE co-editors. in hard copy.  In the electronic format you will receive the following items:  Faculty Part I, Faculty Part II (Confidential),  Students, Curriculum, Income and Expenditure, and Continuing Education.  Additionally, the letters of transmittal for both ALISE and COA and a submission checklist also are included at http://ils.unc.edu/ALISE.. 

Completed questionnaires are due October 15, 2001.  A full set of completed questionnaires is to be printed and mailed to ALISE.  In addition,  certain sections of the questionnaires must be submitted directly to COA (see attached Checklist).  This year COA will accept submissions electronically via e-mail attachments.  If you submit to COA electronically, you will only need to send one (1) paper copy. If you chose not to submit to COA electronically, you still will need to send the customary five (5) paper copies. You may submit either the entire questionnaire or just COA required information to the Office for Accreditation for COA review. 

Sincerely,

Evelyn H. Daniel			Jerry D. Saye			Karen O’Brien
			Co-editors					Program Officer
Library and Information Science Education Statistical Report	Office for Accreditation