Organizational Structure and the Research of U.S. Library and Information Science Schools
Jiangen He, Wen Lou
U.S. Library and Information Science (LIS) schools are organized differently: some are independent, and others share a parent unit with computing, communication, education, or the arts and sciences. We ask whether their research differs accordingly, using 18,048 publications (2013--2026) by 1,602 faculty members at 44 ALA-accredited schools. We grouped the 15,934 publications with abstracts into 15 research themes with document embeddings and hierarchical clustering, and classified venues by field. Faculty members' research profiles differ by school type in themes and, more clearly, in venues, but type accounts for only 2.2% and 5.3% of the variation; most lies among faculty of the same school. The differences run from libraries and archives to computational research. Schools housed with computing spread over the most themes and publish most on security, networks, and urban computing, on clinical and biomedical informatics, and in computer science venues; schools housed with education spread over the fewest and concentrate most on libraries, archives, and computing education; independent schools stay closest to the average. Over the period, schools moved away from library research and LIS venues, but seldom toward the venues of their parent unit's discipline. Research appears to follow a school's faculty more than its parent unit.
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