To anticipate future trends for doctoral education in library and information science (LIS), we examine the historical progression and current landscape of doctoral degree programs in the United States and Canada. By providing a comprehensive rendering of the history and current state of LIS doctoral education, this work provides data not previously available. Data for this work come from MPACT, a database that provides listings of 3,014 LIS dissertations conferred by 38 ALA-accredited schools between 1930 and 2007. This work discusses degrees offered and focuses on changes in the landscape within the last ten years, in addition to an evaluation of schools that produce future faculty for ALISE institutions. Results confirm the health and activity of LIS doctoral programs in North America.

Keywords: education, LIS history, dissertations, survey, MPACT, doctoral education

Introduction

The doctor of philosophy in library and information science (LIS) originated as a research degree within a professional school—creating from the beginning the perpetual argument of whether information and library science is primarily a practicing profession or a researching discipline. Professionalization of library science arguably occurred in the latter part of the nineteenth century, marked by the formation of the American Library Association and the establishment of Library Journal in 1876 (Brough, 1972). This was followed in 1887 by the foundation of the School of Library Economy at Columbia College by Melvil Dewey. Further formalization of library science as a discipline occurred during the early twentieth century with the organization of the Association of the American Library Schools (1915), the formation of the Board of Education for Librarianship by the American Library Association (1923), and the foundation of the Graduate Library School at the University of Chicago in 1926 (Houser & Schrader, 1978).

The Graduate Library School at the University of Chicago heralded a new standard in graduate library  education. Prior to the opening of this school, degrees were defined by the number of years of given programs; for example, the Board of Education for Librarianship defined a Bachelor of Arts degree plus one year of study as a professional degree and a Bachelor of Arts degree plus two years of study as a graduate degree. There was also considerable debate over the need for the professional degrees of Bachelor of Library Science, Master of Library Science, and Doctor of Library Science. The Graduate Library School was chartered in order to provide what some claimed had not been previously provided:

facilities for development of the cultural, literary, bibliographical, and sociological aspects of librarianship as a learned profession built upon ideals and charged with responsibilities as definite and as vital in their implications as those of any other learned profession, and requiring similar academic preparation to insure its highest development … [this school] … should be an organic member of a university group, with the background, atmosphere,resources, and equipment afforded by such affiliation. (Lester, 1940, p. 6)

As this was the first graduate school for library science, none of the founding faculty held doctoral degrees in librarianship. Instead, their backgrounds included degrees in higher education, history, and theology (Houser & Schrader, 1978). However, they all stressed the need for research in the graduate education of librarians— one faculty member remarking that “graduate work means research, and research means the extension of the boundaries of knowledge” (p. 42). Another faculty member asserted that “the most important single responsibility of the School is to meet the standards of scholarship and research maintained by other graduate departments of the University” (Houser & Schrader, 1978, p. 43). In this way, the Graduate Library School championed the idea that research and a theory-based education could serve the needs of practicing professionals and would be a necessary component of professionalization (Houser & Schrader, 1978, pp. 46–47).

The Graduate Library School at the University of Chicago, which was established in 1926 and began instruction in 1928 (Carroll, 1970) offered doctoral degrees from its inception and was the only source of doctoral degrees in library science until the opening of doctoral programs at Illinois and Columbia in 1948. Since then, 38 schools have offered LIS doctoral degrees. However, many of the original schools offering doctoral degrees have since closed (including The Graduate Library School at the University of Chicago) and new schools now dominate the doctoral landscape of LIS. A timeline of these openings and closings and the number of doctoral dissertations conferred during these times provides greater insight into both the history and future of LIS doctoral education.

Literature on LIS doctoral education is fairly scarce. A few surveys covering select time periods have been compiled, but none of these are comprehensive and the majority lack data from the last few decades. In addition to the surveys, there have been a few bibliographies on library science dissertations; however, these vary considerably in their inclusion criteria, and the most comprehensive include dissertations based on content, not the school/program in which they were completed. While a useful tool in gathering literature, these bibliographies do not provide us with an accurate portrait of doctoral education in LIS schools.

The goal of this work is to describe the past and current landscape of LIS doctoral education by providing a quantitative timeline of all dissertations granted by U.S. and Canadian schools of LIS and evaluating the placement of the most recent graduates. By providing a visual, comprehensive, and up-to-date rendering of the history and state of LIS doctoral education, this work will provide a backbone of data that has not been previously available. This information can be interpreted in the context of other historical information in order to understand the changes in doctoral education and provide a tool for predicting future trends of LIS.

Literature Review

Many historical works on LIS briefly mention the rise of the advanced graduate degree, but do not treat it singularly nor discuss it beyond its inception. While these provide valuable contextual information on the progression of LIS education from a training/apprenticeship model to that of a degree-granting discipline, they do not focus with any depth on doctoral education and LIS dissertations (Berelson, 1949; Bramely, 1969; McNally, 1993; White, 1976).

One of the early comprehensive reports on doctoral education in LIS was conducted by Danton (1959) in the late 1950s. Danton reviews six doctoral programs that awarded doctorates between 1930 and 1959, lists the 129 dissertations produced in these schools by name, title, school and year, and classifies them into categories by content. Danton further examines the objectives of the programs, attrition and retention rates of LIS doctoral students, and the positions held by recent doctoral graduates, and then discusses the value of the doctoral degree to the profession and the discipline. The study is a rich source of data on early LIS dissertations and doctoral studies; however, this information is sorely in need of updating as the number of doctorates in the field has gone from just over 100 in 1959 to more than 3,000 as of 2007.

Abrera’s (1987) literature review on doctoral programs, dissertations and graduates uses the Danton study as a chronological anchor, studying the literature in the “pre-Danton period” (1926–1958) and the “post-Danton period” (1960–1980). Abrera classifies the contemporary literature on doctoral programs, dissertations and graduates as being either quantitative or non-quantitative. Of those studies examined in the post-Danton period, only 23% (14) of the studies were quantitative (no quantitative studies were identified in the pre-Danton period). Those quantitative studies were further categorized by type: one citation analysis, six surveys, and six examinations of lists of dissertations. Abrera noted that although there were a number of studies on the different aspects of doctoral programs, dissertations and graduates, very few publications covered all three aspects. Thus, Abrera called for further quantitative research in this area. Houser’s (1982) literature review on the doctorate in library science provides more examples of the scarcity and brevity of literature on this subject, highlighting the lack of evidence in the various histories of LIS and then describing the bibliographic survey of Danton as well as those by Cohen (1963) and Schlachter and Thomison (1974). However; the inclusion criteria for the latter two surveys were based on content rather than the school at which the degree was conferred and are thereby less useful for the examination of LIS doctoral education.

Three surveys require mention here as they have provided broad evaluations of LIS doctoral education: the first is Bobinski’s 1986 survey and the other two are those done by Whitbeck in 1989 and 1990. Bobinski’s survey of LIS doctoral programs in the U.S. and Canada uses school catalogs, the ALISE Statistical Reports, and the bibliographies by Schlachter and Thomison (1974) and Davis (1980) to trace the developments of doctoral education from 1930-1980, with special emphasis on the late 1970s. Using this information, Bobinski’s report lists the 24 schools offering doctoral degrees up to 1980 and discusses the number of degrees awarded, the full- and part-time enrollments, tuition, fellowships and assistantships, and admission and program requirements at these institutions. Additionally, Bobinski surveyed thirteen deans of doctoral degree-granting LIS programs. One of the questions assessed the impact of the doctoral program on the Master of Library Science (MLS) degree to which the plurality of the deans responded that it was a “healthy” impact with some going as far as to call the Ph.D. “a necessity since without it the program would be a small, marginal professional school on campus” (p. 711). Bobinski’s survey was able to capture the opinions of more than half of the deans at doctoral degree-granting institutions at the time. However, this survey (comprising four questions) provided only a glimpse into LIS doctoral education and is now more than two decades out of date.

Whitbeck’s (1991a) original study ofLIS doctoral programs surveyed sixteendoctoral degree-granting schools with a wide-ranging questionnaire. The study, a follow-up to a 1970 study by Carpenter and Carpenter (1970), addressed a number of issues relating to doctoral education including: admissions criteria, the lengths of time it took students to complete major milestones in their programs (e.g., qualifying exams and graduation), institutions from which applicants had received previous degrees, time between previous degrees and entering the doctoral program,methods for choosing doctoral committees and chairs, and the positions of employment for past graduates from the programs. Whitbeck’s (1991b) subsequent study examined similar data a year later, but also incorporated data from the ALISE statistical reports and included an open-ended survey. The open-ended questions investigated the perceived problems for doctoral programs, important criteria for admissions, new curricular trends, and the employment opportunities for new graduates, among other issues.

The remainder of the literature on LIS doctoral programs and dissertations examines singular populations (Franklin & Jaeger, 2007) or issues—such as the effects of doctoral programs on faculty productivity (Petigrew & Nicholls, 1994), online Ph.D. programs (Klinger, 2007), citing patterns of LIS dissertations (Buttlar, 1999), and the teaching load of faculty at doctoral degree-granting institutions (Koenig&Hildreth, 2004). While these contribute to the understanding of doctoral degree programs, there is a need for a current and comprehensive examination of LIS doctoral programs and dissertations conferred.

Methodology

This work will examine all LIS dissertations conferred between 1930 and 2007 in the U.S. and Canada. The dataset for this work comes from the MPACT database (http://www.ils.unc.edu/mpact/), which provides a comprehensive listing of the 3,014 LIS dissertations conferred by 38 ALA-accredited schools in the United States and Canada between 1930 and 2007. University of British Columbia and University of South Carolina currently offer a doctoral degree in LIS; however, since no degree had been conferred at the time of this writing, they were not included in this study. This d ataset, which includes dissertation committee, title, and abstract information, was primarily collected using ProQuest’s Dissertations and Theses database. For each school, the database was searched using the keyword information systems or library science. Previous studies on MPACT showed this to be the most inclusive set of search terms yielding a much higher rate of return than using ProQuest’s subject function or another set of keywords. Although this returned a high rate of dissertations that were not within the field, we chose to go with an inclusive search strategy rather than an exclusive one, for fear of missing any potential dissertations. The results were then manually examined to determine whether the dissertation was conferred by the appropriate school/department (for example, the above search returned dissertations from education, computer science, business, etc.). In some cases, this meant examining more than 500 results to add less than a dozen dissertations to the dataset. Also, the information regarding the department/school appears on the dissertation itself and not the bibliographic surrogate, so this information varied by dissertation and school. In some cases, the conferring department/ school had to be discovered by examining the information on the document for advisor name(s) and acknowledgements. Unfortunately, the Dissertation and Theses database does not allow searching by exact departments/disciplines, and the department names vary across the LIS discipline; therefore, this method provided the most thorough way of gleaning names of all authors for the given time period. In cases where there were significant problems finding complete data, the list of authors was augmented by contacting the individual schools and requesting lists of recent doctoral graduates. The dataset was additionally verified using WorldCat, online public access catalogs (OPACs), and bibliographies (such as those by Bobinski, Danton, and Davis). Formore information on how the MPACT database was populated and verified, please see Marchionini et al. (2006) and Sugimoto et al. (2008).

Once this list of graduates was compiled, a descriptive analysis was made of the number of degrees offered by each school for all years. In addition, the names of the graduates from the last ten years were compiled and checked against the ALISE directory, to provide an analysis of the number of graduates who are currently employed by ALISE member schools.

Results and Discussion

This section will first provide a description and general overview of LIS doctoral education from 1930 to 2007 with a focus on evolution by decades. The second part of this section will provide a visualization of the dissertations awarded with respect to geographic distributions. The final part will focus on the most recent decade of doctoral education, with an emphasis on implications for the future.

General Doctoral Landscape: 1930–2007

There have been 3,014 dissertations conferred in the 38 ALA-accredited LIS programs in the United States and Canada between 1930 and 2007. Figure 1 provides a visualization of these degrees over time.

As can be seen in Figure 1 and in Table 1, there was a dramatic increase in the number of LIS dissertations conferred in the 1960s and again in the 1970s, with the average number of degrees rising from 6.5 in the 1950s to 16.1 in the 1960s and 61.4 in the 1970s (Table 1).

Figure 1. LIS dissertations granted between 1930 and 2007.

Table 1: Average Number of Degrees-per Year Conferred, by Decade.

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Degrees per year	2.4	4.3	6.5	16.1	61.4	70	73.9	83.5
Decade	1930-39	1940-49	1950-59	1960-69	1970-79	1980-89	1990-99	2000-07

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Table 2: Dissertation Activity by Institution (each bar represents a single year, height of bar represents number of degrees conferred that year).

This increase may be due to the increased number of schools granting doctoral degrees during those time periods. As shown in Table 2, only one institution (University of Chicago) was granting LIS doctoral degrees in the 1930s and 1940s. However, in the 1950s, four additional schools began granting doctoral degrees and, by 1970, there were 11 schools granting degrees. Additionally, Abrera has made a convincing argument that the increases in the 1970s were due to the Higher Education Act of 1965 (Title II-B). The number of degree-granting institutions nearly doubled in the 1970s and saw relatively smaller increases over the next few decades. In addition, there is a rising trend in the number of total graduates during each decade since 1930.

Although seven of the schools have closed, this does not indicate a stagnation of the LIS doctoral landscape. On the contrary, with a nearly 13% increase in the average number of degrees conferred from the 1990s to 2000–2007 and five new schools conferring their first degrees in 2000–2007, it shows the landscape is merely changing.

In addition, the first institutions to offer degrees are not necessarily those that have graduated the largest number of doctoral students. In fact, when ranking the institutions by the total number of degrees granted, two of the schools within the top ten did not offer their first degree until the 1970s (Table 3). There is a long tail in terms of the number of doctoral degrees granted by each institution, with the majority of institutions each contributing less than 3% to the total number of doctoral degrees conferred between 1930 and 2007.

Further examinations of the LIS doctoral landscape can be made by grouping the schools according to the decade in which they first conferred doctoral degrees (see Table 2). Five schools first offered degrees between 1930 and 1959. Of these schools, three no longer offer doctoral degrees: the University of Chicago granted doctoral degrees for 65 years, Columbia University granted doctoral degrees for 48 years, and Case Western Reserve University granted doctoral degrees for 29 years. As can be seen in Table 2, the University of Chicago dominated the landscape until the 1950s, when Illinois, Columbia and Michigan began granting degrees. Columbia University then began to command the scene granting
as many as 11 degrees in one year. However, Illinois and Michigan are the only two of these initial institutions still offering degrees (notably, they are also the only ones to be a part of large state university systems). Illinois has granted more degrees (186) than Michigan (167) and has seen an upward trend since 2003, while Michigan has seen a downward trend since 2004. It is interesting to note that in 2016, with this trend, Illinois will be the longest continuously running doctoral-degree granting program in LIS (66 years).

Six institutions graduated their first doctoral students between 1960 and 1969. Of these six institutions, two no longer offer doctoral degrees (Berkeley and the University of Southern California). The University of Pittsburgh has shown a very steady dominance, granting the highest number of doctoral degrees of any institution in LIS history (358). However, Pittsburgh saw a decline in the number of degrees awarded after the 1980s and has granted fewer degrees since 1990 than Rutgers—Rutgers has granted 136 between 1990–2007, while Pittsburgh has granted 123. Madison has maintained a small albeit steady number of doctoral degrees (96 total; 2.34 per year, on average); Indiana’s output has been more irregular, but has seen a greater number ofgraduates (165 total; 4.13 per year, on average).

Ten schools offered their first doctoral degree between 1970 and 1979. Of these, only one school (Minnesota) is no longer granting doctoral degrees. Florida State University (FSU) has produced the greatest number of doctoral graduates of these ten (217). FSU’s output has remained relatively steady, while the University of North Texas has been graduating an increasingly larger number of students in the past few years, graduating as many as 18 in 2007 (the most doctoral degrees to ever be granted in a single year by an LIS school). Syracuse, Maryland and Drexel have also seen increases in the number of their graduates in recent years, but not as dramatic as the increase seen at North Texas.

Table 3: Total number of LIS Doctoral Degrees Granted by Each Institution.

Name of institution	Doctoral degrees granted:	Percentage
University of Pittsburgh	358	11.88%
Rutgers University	243	8.06%
Florida State University	217	7.20%
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign	186	6.17%
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor	167	5.54%
Columbia University	166	5.51%
Indiana University	165	5.47%
University of Chicago	144	4.78%
University of North Texas	144	4.78%
Case Western Reserve University	133	4.41%
University of California, Berkeley	101	3.35%
University of Wisconsin, Madison	96	3.19%
Syracuse University	78	2.59%
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill	78	2.59%
Simmons College	74	2.46%
Drexel University	65	2.16%
Texas Woman’s University	61	2.02%
University of Texas, Austin	58	1.92%
University of California, Los Angeles	56	1.86%
University of Toronto	53	1.76%
University of Maryland	51	1.69%
SUNY, Albany	49	1.63%
University of Southern California	49	1.63%
University of Western Ontario	48	1.59%
University of Hawaii	36	1.19%
University of Missouri	21	0.70%
Emporia State University	18	0.60%
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities	17	0.56%
SUNY, Buffalo	16	0.53%
University of Alabama	14	0.46%
University of Arizona	11	0.36%
McGill University	9	0.30%
Long Island University	7	0.23%
University of Washington, Seattle	7	0.23%
Université de Montréal	6	0.20%
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee	6	0.20%
University of Tennessee, Knoxville	4	0.13%
University of Kentucky	2	0.07%
	3,014	100%

The following decade (1980–1989) saw an additional 4 schools granting doctoral degrees in LIS. Of these, only one is no longer granting doctoral degrees (SUNY, Buffalo). The other schools have seen fairly steady output since their inception, granting 2.79 (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), 2.54 (Texas Woman’s University), and 2.15 (University of California at Los Angeles) doctoral degrees per year. All schools in this category have seen a decline in the number of graduates in recent years.

Eight new schools began granting doctoral degrees between 1990 and 1999 (Figure 6). Of these, SUNY, Albany and the University of Hawaii have produced the greatest number of doctorates (49 and 36, respectively). However, in 2007, the University of Arizona granted 11 doctorates, more than was granted by any other school in this category since their inception. McGill and Emporia State also saw increases in the number of graduates in 2007.

In recent years (2000–2007), five schools have granted their first LIS doctorate. While it is still premature to tell what the trajectory of these schools will be, it is noticeable that Université de Montreal and University of Washington-Seattle have seen increases in the number of graduates each year since they granted their first degree. Long Island University and University of Washington-Seattle have each graduated the largest number (7) of graduates in this time period.

Geographic Distribution

Examination of the geographic distribution of LIS doctoral degrees shows an uneven landscape. The degrees are highly concentrated in the Midwestern and Northeastern United States and Southeastern Canada. The other three states in the United States contributing a large number of degrees are California, Texas, and Florida (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Map of LIS dissertations granted in the U.S. and Canada between 1930-2007.

Aside from these states, relatively few degrees have been conferred in the western United States. This may be a reflection of the lower proportion of schools per state and the delayed opening of schools in the western part of the United States as compared with the eastern part of the country. Future work could be done to examine whether the geographic distribution of LIS doctoral degrees differs significantly from the pattern of the doctoral degree programs in other disciplines.

Recent Doctoral Landscape: 1998–2007

There have been 841 LIS doctoral degrees from 33 institutions conferred in the last ten years, for an average of 84.1 per year. As with the general landscape of doctoral degrees, the last ten-year period also has a long tail, with more than 85% of the schools contributing less than 5% of the total graduates each. The top schools, in terms of production of graduates over the last decade, can be seen in Figure 3. As the doctoral degree is one of the major requisites for teaching in a library school, the number of doctoral graduates who become faculty members is an important calculation. A student who becomes a faculty member affects both the profession (as an instructor for those in the professional degree) and the discipline (as a producer of research, a large component of a faculty position). Checking the names of all 841 graduates from 1998-2007 against the 2007 ALISE directory provides some of these data. Out of the 841 LIS doctoral graduates in the last ten years, 25.56% are currently teaching at ALISE schools in some capacity (lecturer, adjunct, or full-time) and 22.12% currently hold full-time positions in ALISE schools. The University of North Texas has the largest number of students from the past decade currently in full-time positions (21), followed by Illinois and the University of North Carolina (each with 18), Florida State (14), and Pittsburgh (13). However, although North Texas claims 11.29% of the total number of recent grads in full-time positions, only 22.34% of their recent graduates are currently in full-time positions. The two schools which graduate proportionately more “future faculty” are the University of North Carolina and the University of Illinois—48.65% of the graduates from the last ten years from these programs are currently in full-time positions. Toronto is next, (47.83%), followed by Seattle (42.86%), and Western Ontario (41.18%). (See Figure 3 for details on the percentage of graduates from the last ten years in full-time faculty positions for all top-producing schools.) According to the 2004 ALISE Statistics Report, 92% of LIS faculty have earned doctorates. Of those, 58% hold doctoral degrees in library and information sciences (according to the report, these include: information systems and technology, information transfer, and information resource management). Of the non-LIS degrees, the most common are computer science (16%), education (15%), history (8%), communication (6%), and psychology (6%). Combining this dataset with the data above produces some interesting questions: if 22% of LIS graduates from the last decade are in full-time faculty positions and if 58% of LIS faculty members hold degrees in LIS, why are the remaining 78% of doctoral graduates not holding faculty positions? Are they not applying for these positions? Are non-LIS doctorates being hired over LIS doctorates? From a cursory look over the previous ALISE statistics (1999–2004) it appears that we may actually be in a decreasing trend of the percentage of faculty holding a doctoral degree in our field. This trend, along with the motivations of the 78% of doctoral graduates not holding faculty positions, suggests a need for further investigation.

Conclusion and Future Directions

This study has provided evidence that LIS doctoral education is still healthy and active in the United States and Canada. By examining the historical progression of doctoral degree programs, one can begin to see patterns that show the changes in the doctoral landscape and provide predictive powers for anticipating future disciplinary trends.

Three issues for further study are discussed below. The first is the relationship between the health of the doctoral program and the health and ranking of the school as a whole. Accreditation for LIS programs is currently only done at the master’s level; however, the impact of the doctoral program at these schools needs to be reconsidered. For example, in the most recent ranking by U.S. News and World Report (2008), all of the top 15 programs for LIS have doctoral programs. Of the top 25, only four programs do not have doctoral programs (these are Wayne State University, Kent State University, Catholic University of America, and Louisiana State University-Baton Rouge). It is necessary to further investigate the ways in which the presence or absence of a doctoral degree affects the professional degrees at these schools.

Another issue for consideration is the curricula at those schools that have the highest doctoral degree output. Noting the types of concentrations at these institutions and the disciplinary models taught at these schools may enable the researcher to predict future trends in the profession (both in terms of researching and practicing professionals). When the University of Chicago began granting doctoral degrees in the 1930s, the entire faculty had degrees in other fields, predominately history and education. The disciplinary models that they brought with them carried through and dominated the emerging field for years—the emphasis on history and education in the early literature of the field is apparent. Now we are hiring faculty from computer science, communication and psychology, among other fields. The implications and the effects of this interdisciplinarity need to be examined.

Lastly, we are faced with a new phenomenon: eight out of ten of the top-producing schools (Figure 3) and eight out of ten of the schools graduating the most future full-time faculty are part of the iSchool caucus (iSchools, 2008). The fact that the iSchools dominate the list of the most productive doctoral programs and those that contribute a large proportion of the future faculty for ALISE schools makes it necessary to further investigate the focus of the iSchool movement and the projected impact of these schools upon the trajectory of the discipline and the profession. Given the long tail of graduates from each institution, it is difficult for a single institution to bring about dramatic change for the discipline and profession; however, when the top-producing schools all belong to a singular movement and work together to re-brand the field, the implications are far-reaching.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Kathy Wisser, Paul Solomon, Gary Marchionini and the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments on this work. In addition, we would like to thank all the members of the MPACT team for contributing to this rich source of data.

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