Blank slate: Using systems thinking to develop an integrated LAM curriculum

摘要

In this paper, I describe an interactive thought experiment and workshop that I conducted at a recent European LAM conference. In this experiment, I asked participants to imagine that we are at the very cusp of creating the next-generation curriculum for a libraries, archives, museum (LAM) program, and that we have a blank slate. I offered a way to think about determining this curriculum, a way to think about it at the level of designing, by starting fresh, erasing, as best we could, the idiosyncratic aspects of each field in order to determine the shared foundational core. Central to this process were systems thinking, complexity thinking, and the notion of the integrated curriculum. This paper outlines the reasoning behind this process and provides a glimpse at the actual steps. I position current LAM curriculum in the context of convergence trends, or more accurately, re-convergence trends, and ask what exactly is converging. Next I outline a framework derived from a systems-thinking-oriented approach to creating curriculum, suggesting that this approach is helpful in describing and defining the state of LAM in Library and Information Science (LIS) from the perspective of each department creating an integrated curriculum. Finally, I provide a brief overview of the process I used to conduct a workshop around the notion of starting over, or from a blank slate.