A survey of networking education in North American library schools - Libraries and the Internet: Education, Practice & Policy

Each responding school acknowledged that networking concepts and resources have been, or are in the process of being, included in their curricula. Respondents were unanimous in their belief that networking concepts and resources should be included as part of the LIS curriculum.

Curriculum Content

The first part of the questionnaire assessed current topic coverage in LIS programs. A summary of the school responses to the range of resources and services appears in Table 1. Previous studies of professional use of Internet resources have found electronic mail to be the main resource used by professionals in special libraries (Tillman & Ladner, 1992). Almost all the responding schools indicate inclusion of the three main services available over the Internet: electronic mail, remote login (particularly for library catalogs), and file transfer capabilities. Resource discovery and navigation tools--particularly Archie, Gopher, Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS), and HYTELNET--are currently being used by more than half of the schools responding.

Table 1
Networked Resources and Services Currently Taught
                                                  Number of Programs
Resource/Service                                     (n = 37)
Electronic Mail                                         34
Interest Groups, LISTSERVs                              35
Directories                                             20
Remote Login                                            30
Library Catalogs                                        36
Database Services                                       33
Campus-wide Information Systems                         32
Bulletin Boards                                         29
Electronic journals                                     26
Freenets                                                24
Other                                                    3
FTP (file transfer)                                     34
Internet Utilities
Gopher and Veronica                                     31
Archie                                                  28
Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS)                    25
HYTELNET                                                21
World-Wide Web                                          15
Knowbots                                                 9
Commercial Databases and Vendors
DIALOG                                                  33
OCLC                                                    26
OCLC/EPIC                                               22
OCLC/First Search                                       18
BRS                                                      8
Nexis/Lexis                                              6
WilsonLine                                               2
Infomart                                                 2
RLIN                                                     1
CAN/OLE                                                  1
Data-Star                                                1
Infoglobe                                                1
Medline                                                  1
Westlaw                                                  1
Other Resources
Compuserve                                               2
Prodigy                                                  1
CD-ROM servers and products                              1
News readers                                             1