They all talked to me about the desire for collaboration across disciplines. Then I talked to faculty and found that it was really happening. While some information schools are dropping their connection with traditional libraries, Eisenberg finds this approach short-sighted. There are new libraries going up all over, in major cities and now on the Internet, and we need to keep those connections. But we will also help the profession transform itself.
Librarians are key players in our global information society.
The future of schools like ours is in being broad-based, in building connections with other schools and developing strong collaborative relationships. Students will have an important role to play in this new structure, which in Eisenberg s view positions them more as partners than simply as clients. For example, we need to build up our internships and placements. A traditional way to do this would be to hire a director to perform this function. But my model is to incorporate students into a unit that keeps track of internship opportunities and needs have the students develop and maintain a database.