The continuing professional education role of ASIS: Fifty years of learning together, reaching out, seeking identity

Abstract

A brief review highlights those events in the history of ASIS that have contributed to its evolution as a significant source of continuing professional education. The role of conferences, publications, and workshops is discussed in terms of their contribution to the formation of a professional identity. The article concludes with conjecture about the appropriate niche for ASIS as a continuing education provider in information science.

Author Gender in American Documentation, 1950-1969

“…In a broader study that included several variables related to authorship (Mukherjee 2009), a bibliometric analysis of JASIST between 2000 and 2007 covered patterns of author collaboration, geographic distribution of authors, nature of references, the distribution of papers under various headings, including authorship pattern and nature of collaboration, geographic distribution of authors, nature of cited and citing references, prolific authors and authors who were frequently cited. The role of the ADI and ASIS in professional education during the period covered by a relatively specialized study (Varlejs 1999). Lastly, a fascinating general review of ADI and its successors covered a period of 75 years, and, while not focusing specifically on gender, did provide a very useful context in which to place other studies of IST organizations and journals (Williams 2012).…”

History of information science

“…The Cold War decades, which matured into a relatively stable set of technologies, tasks, markets, and sponsors, saw what many interpreted as the emergence of a clear, uncontested, and permanent professional identity for information science. There appeared to be a fairly well‐marked employment territory, there were signs that a science with its own theory might develop, and there were reasons to expect that high‐status university information science departments would become full, independent, and self‐determining members of the university community (Kline, 2004; Varlejs, 1999).…”

“…Such works also make claims of institutional continuities and assert a huge domain for information science. Like Farkas‐Conn (1990), they trace the birth of America's major new information science organization, the American Society for Information Science (now American Society for Information Science and Technology) from Otlet through America's science advocate, Watson Davis, whose work had ties to America's intellectual and university elites, their academic expectations, and their social/political connections (Varlejs, 1999).…”

Regional information science: Education and disciplinary precept in the Los Angeles Chapter of ASIST, 1961–2011

“…At the disciplinary level, the American Society for Information Science and Technology and its predecessors have provided venues for advancing the practice and discipline of information science in several areas within the profession including curricular, continuing, and applied educational practice. In particular, the several conferences, workshops, and publications that have been dedicated to continuing education topics have been sustained by professional relevance and continued membership support (Varlejs, 1999; Vaughan & Hahn, 2005), beginning with the American Documentation Institute (ADI)‐sponsored Working Symposium on Education for Information Science in 1965 (Redmond, 1985, p. 80; Farkas‐Conn, 1990). Subsequent conferences in the 1970's focused to a greater degree on educational activities such as tutorials, which joined conceptual course content with specific technological tools professionals are tasked with using in the field (Varlejs, 1999).…”