Mita Society for Library and Information Science Special Monthly Meeting "iSchool@Illinois: The Past, Present, and Future of Library and Information Science" (Speaker: J. Stephen Downie (Professor and Associate Dean for Research, School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign))

November 27, 2024

Abstract

The School of Information Sciences (iSchool) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign hosts some of the longest running, and highest ranked, Library and Information Science (LIS) programs in the United States. Its MS LIS program is ranked #1 by US News and World Report. Its Information Science (IS) PhD is the oldest LIS PhD in the USA. This talk will explore the long history of LIS education and research at the iSchool. It will introduce the wide range of LIS-related programs including our BS-Information Sciences, MS LIS, MS Information Management (MS IM), School Licensure, Certificate of Advanced Study (CAS), and IS PhD. The talk will discuss the common themes and goals that connect all the programs. The presentation will conclude with a discussion of the set of future challenges and opportunities that the iSchool@Illinois will be addressing over the upcoming decade.

Biography

J. Stephen Downie is the Associate Dean for Research and a Professor at the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Downie is the Illinois Co-Director of the HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC) where conducts cultural analytics research. Dr. Downie has also been very active in the establishment of the Music Information Retrieval (MIR) community through his ongoing work with the International Society for Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR) conferences. Dr. Downie is the Steering Committee Chair of the ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL). Professor Downie holds a BA (Music Theory and Composition) along with a Master's and a PhD in Library and Information Science, all earned at the University of Western Ontario, London, Canada.