PROGRAM PRESENTATION

Chapter 2: THE SCHOOL AND ITS ENVIRONMENT


The Institutional Setting

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH) is one of sixteen constituent institutions of the University of North Carolina (UNC) system, chartered by the General Assembly in 1879. The university was the first public university in the United States to open its doors. The first class was admitted in Chapel Hill in 1795. In 1931, additional state-supported institutions were included in the redefined University of North Carolina. In addition to the now retitled University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, an agricultural and technical college (now North Carolina State University at Raleigh) and a women's college (now The University of North Carolina at Greensboro and co-educational) were added to the UNC system. Other campuses became a part of UNC in 1969 and again in 1971 creating the current 16-campus University.

The UNC Board of Governors is the policy-making body. It elects the president (currently Molly Broad), who administers the university System. Each of the 16 constituent institutions is headed by a chancellor chosen by the Board of Governors. Each institution has a board of trustees in part appointed by the governor and in part elected by the Board of Governors.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was originally conceived to provide educated leadership for the state and it continues to hold service to the state as an important part of its mission. From its classical core, the university added natural science in 1815 and conducted the nation's first geological survey in the 1820s. An astronomical observatory was built in 1831. By 1860 only Yale had more students. Graduate study began in 1876 and the first university summer school for teachers opened in 1877. Medical and pharmaceutical courses were established in 1879. In the latter part of the 19th century a teacher training program and a law school were incorporated. In 1897, the first woman student was admitted. Rapid growth occurred in the early 20th century. The schools of business, social work, library science, and public health were all established by 1936. A journalism school came later. In addition, an Institute for Research in Social Science was organized in 1924, the Institute of Government in 1931, an art museum in 1958. The Division of Health Affairs was formally organized in 1949 with schools in the five health professions: medicine, pharmacy, public health, dentistry, and nursing.

The university's 14 colleges and schools provide instruction in more than 100 fields, offering 95 baccalaureate, 175 master's, and 109 doctoral programs, as well as professional programs in dentistry, medicine, pharmacy, law, and library science. Through its programs the university remains faithful to its founding charge to "promote all useful learning for the betterment of humanity."

"The mission of the University is to serve all the people of the state, and indeed the nation, a center for scholarship and creative endeavor. The University exists to teach students at all levels in an environment of research, free inquiry, and personal responsiblity; to expand the body of knowledge; to improve the condition of human life through service and publication; and to enrich our culture." (Adopted by the Board of Trustees, April 25, 1986)

The university operates in both a central and a federated fashion. From the federated perspective, each academic unit enjoys substantial autonomy and is able to operate even when unanticipated changes in leadership at the top occur. Centrally, however, the university has benefited from a series of strong chancellors who have provided strong leadership on campus and who have represented the University well to the State and the outside world. We were saddened to lose our most recent chancellor, Michael Hooker, who died in June from a very rapid form of cancer. We are fortunate in that the Interim Chancellor William McCoy is extremely familiar with the University; he was chair of the Board of Trustees for many years and a long time supporter of the University. He has a fine management background as former CEO for Bell South, and as a native North Carolinian, he knows the leadership in the State and can interact persuasively with them on behalf of the University.

The School of Information and Library Science (SILS) has enjoyed a good relationship with former chancellors. Dean Joanne Marshall has met with Interim Chancellor McCoy who assures her that the School continues to occupy a central position in the university's future planning.


Brief History of the School of Information and Library Science

The School of Information and Library Science is part of UNC-CH, which is located in the Research Triangle, so called because of the large number of companies with major research facilities located in a specially set aside tract of land equidistant from three major research universities: Duke University, North Carolina State University, and UNC-CH. SILS takes its character from its parent university and its unique location. The school draws on the near-by corporations and government agencies as resources for guest lecturers, field trips, internships and collaborative research partnerships.

The School of Library Science (as it was then named) opened at Chapel Hill in the fall of 1931 with 29 students and five faculty members, although library education began at UNC-CH in 1904 when Louis Round Wilson began offering summer school classes. A Carnegie grant of $100,000 gave the school a strong start and enabled it to receive accreditation from the American Library Association in 1932. It has been continuously accredited by that body since. In 1987, the faculty voted to include information science in its offerings and to change the name of the school to the School of Information and Library Science to reflect its broader scope.

Approximately 250 graduate students are enrolled in the School's two master's programs: Master of Science in Library Science (first offered in 1951) and Master of Science in Information Science (initiated in 1992), a Ph.D. program (initiated in 1977), and a Certificate of Advanced Studies degree program (initiated in 1988). (See Chapter 7: Students for comparative numbers of students by degree program over the past several years) In 1998 the school began offering an undergraduate minor in Information Systems and currently has 65 students enrolled in that program.

Since 1985, the school has worked to integrate information technology into all facets of its curriculum, research and administrative activities. In 1992, SILS established the first departmental "Gopher" at UNC-CH and the first alumni listserv. In 1990, the school was the first to implement Windows and later the first to implement Windows 95. The school was selected by Microsoft in 1996 as one of 20 "early adopters" of Office 97. In October 1995, a new Information and Technology Resource Center (ITRC) in what was formerly the Information and Library Science Library was established. The old library reading room was renovated to create a new reading room and a new student computer lab and computer classroom. In the center of the room, a shared help desk is available with library circulation and reference activities on the side facing the reading room and a computer and lab help desk facing the computer lab. The new facility doubled the size of one prior computer classroom from 14 to 28 seats and increased available workstations from 31 to 50. In the Fall of 1996, Manning Hall was completely re-wired with category 5 twisted pair to the desktop, a fiber riser and a new Ethernet switch. As part of this major renovation, all classrooms were provided with video beam projectors and state-of-the-art instructor workstations. In 1997, additional infrastructure improvement including replacing and upgrading the school's four servers, adding a 100 MB full duplex FDDI connection to the campus network, upgrading faculty machines to Pentium II/266 with Windows NT and postscript laser printers. Lab machines were also upgraded. A new director of instructional technology position was created to provide computer support to the faculty and students. In January 1999, Room 303, which has been a university-scheduled classroom, will become part of the school's inventory. Plans to make the most effective use of it to alleviate some of the problems of insufficient space are being developed.

Dr. Lester Asheim, former dean of the Graduate Library School at the University of Chicago, joined the SILS faculty in 1975 as the first William Rand Kenan, Jr. Professor of Library Science. In 1989, Dr. Edward G. Holley, SILS dean from 1972-1985, was named the second Kenan professor of library and information science. In 1995, the school received funds to establish an Excellence in Teaching Award with Stephanie Haas as the first recipient. In 1996, a $250,000 endowment from Hugh McColl of Nation's Bank of America, established the Frances Carol McColl Term Professorship. The award of a salary supplement provides additional research and travel support for two years to a faculty member to recognize his/her research, teaching and service contributions. William Shaw was the first recipient; Robert Losee is the current holder of the award. In 1998, Dr. Gary Marchionini joined the faculty as the School's new Boshamer Professor of Information and Library Science.

SILS hired its first director of development in 1992 and its first director of communications in 1985.

In 1996, the school invited SunSite (now named MetaLab) to move into Manning Hall. SunSite was established as one of the first electronic depositories on the Internet with a mission to incorporate networked information into retrieval tools. MetaLab operates as an electronic library, publishing house, distribution center, and technology showcase. Today it is accessed over three million times per week and accounts for the highest amount of traffic of any site in the Southeast. Metalab's Director, Paul Jones, attends SILS faculty meetings and teaches one course a year for SILS.

In 1999, the school celebrated the 25th anniversary of a long term contract with the Environmental Protection Agency to provide library and information services in Research Triangle Park. This contract has provided financial support and hands-on learning opportunities for over 250 students since its establishment by then-Dean Ed Holley. Formal paid internships have been created with Glaxo-Wellcome and Duke University. SILS students also work part time in many campus units and are well regarded on campus. SILS maintains a "jobs-l" listserv which is heavily used by the library and information community.

The school has formal links with Charles University in Prague, Sheffield University in England, and the Royal School of Library and Information Science in Copenhagen. A joint summer program with the Bodleian Library at Oxford University was instituted in 1992. In March 1999, the School of Information and Library Science was ranked number one (tied with the University of Illinois's School of Library and Information Science) of all library/information science schools in the country by U.S. News and World Report. The rankings were based on the quality of faculty and graduate students, curriculum and faculty research. Five of the School's specializations were ranked in the top ten: health librarianship; information systems; school library media; archives and preservation; and services for children and youth.


Current Status

Nineteen full-time faculty and a varying number of part-time and adjunct faculty offer instruction and advisement. Research funding for the School exceeds $800,000 per year. Faculty research is varied and includes such topics as information retrieval, filtering, use of metadata, the role of information in people's lives, information policy, digital libraries and virtual communities, networking, evaluation of libraries and information systems, children and technology, collaboration, human-computer interaction, search engines, information systems as learning devices, international librarianship, children and school librarianship, health information needs and uses, cultural institutions and public libraries.

The school is located in historic Manning Hall (see Appendix B for map showing location of Manning relative to other central campus buildings). The building houses the school's classrooms, offices, computing laboratories and library. The library is a central place for students to meet and work. The students have a lounge on the second floor of the building. A public seating area has been created in the front foyer. Ph.D. student offices are located on the sixth level of the library; additional space is being sought for them. The school's library is a branch of the university library system.

The library has a spacious reading room with an extensive reference collection, public access terminals and seating for 40 people. It is staffed by a full-time librarian, an assistant and 13 student workers, and is open approximately 82 hours per work. The collection contains close to 90,000 volumes and 3,600 journal titles on all aspects of information and library science.

The school employs a full time director of information technology and services dedicated to supporting the computer and networking infrastructure in the school and a full-time director of instructional technology. These full time directors supervise two part-time student lab managers and five other students who work part time in the main lab. The lab is open approximately 82 hours per week. The main 54-seat computer lab for students is divided into two adjacent areas -- a computer classroom and an open use area. The computer equipment is state of the art with scanners, multimedia monitors, video conferencing cameras, laser printers, digital cameras, camcorders and the like. In addition to the desktop PCs and NT-based file servers in the school, several UNIX machines are available. A large selection of software is available on all PCs in the lab and in faculty offices. The school's policy is to remain current with the latest releases.

In addition to the school's public labs, SILS also houses MetaLab (described in the previous section, "Brief History of SILS"). Another research facility, the Interactive Design Laboratory located in the Library on level 4, was opened in 1998 to facilitate research and development in electronic information environments, such as digital libraries, electronic publications, distributed courses, and shared work spaces.



Revised 9/22/99