Centennial History of Pitt's School of Information Sciences Published

September 17, 2001

PITTSBURGH—As part of its yearlong celebration, the School of Information Sciences (SIS) at the University of Pittsburgh, has published in cooperation with Scarecrow Press Tradition in Transition by Carol Bleier, a book that details the School's 100-year history.

Containing more than 100 photographs, the book focuses on the individuals who shaped the values, curriculum, teaching, learning, research, scholarship, and service of SIS in the education of librarians and, later, of information professionals in a wide range of specializations. These SIS pioneers also were leaders in shaping the information sciences discipline itself, and they are among the most highly regarded educators and scholars in the history of the field. The book combines anecdotes with facts to round out a portrait of the people and events that helped to make SIS what it is today: one of the premier schools of its kind in the world.

SIS now has two departments—Library and Information Science, and Information Science and Telecommunications—and offers an undergraduate degree in Information Science, three master's degrees, certificates of advanced study, and two Ph.D. programs. In 1999, U.S. News & World Report ranked the SIS Master of Library and Information Science program third nationally; health librarianship first; and both the children and youth and archives and preservation programs fourth. All of its programs are highly esteemed worldwide.

Pitt's School of Information Sciences has been a longtime innovative leader. It was the first to introduce many technologies as well as information ethics and policy courses and, in 1989, the first Information Ethics Forum. Medical librarianship and biomedical informatics programs were pathbreaking efforts in the 1980s; its Telecommunications Program was the first in any information sciences school; and its wireless and geoinformatics curricula, begun in the 1990s, serve to keep Pitt on the leading edge of education in the information sciences.

Tradition in Transition discusses, among other things, all of these "firsts" and the signature programs that helped shape the values and traditions of the School; the interdisciplinary and emerging field of information science that, beginning in 1963, brought together under the University's leadership visionaries from different scientific disciplines and from business and industry; and telecommunications, initiated in 1986, which began with a Master's degree and expanded to include a Telecommunications track in the Ph.D. in Information Science and such specializations as computer networking and wireless systems.

Tradition in Transition is available for $24.95. To order, or for more information, call

1-800-462-6420 or visit the Web site, www.scarecrowpress.com.

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