LIBRARIANS BECOMING INFORMATION MASTERS.

Byline: Kate Murphy The New York Times

What is the gross national product of Belize? Who invented polyester? How smart is the average pig?

Five years ago, the best way to find answers to questions like these was to go to a library and ask the librarian for help in finding the appropriate books and periodicals. Today, the same information is available on the Internet, but finding it may still require the assistance of a librarian.

As technology has made more data available than can be bound in books or cataloged by the Dewey decimal system, the field of library science has changed drastically. While it is still a discipline dedicated to finding, filtering, organizing, evaluating and presenting information, it now requires a great deal more technical expertise with electronic information and computer networks. These new demands, in turn, have opened a raft of new career opportunities, attracting considerably more people to the profession over the last decade.

In response, many universities have converted their schools of library science into schools of information and library science or, increasingly, just schools of information.

``Information has always been the focus of library studies, but recent technological developments mean that there are now vast stores of information beyond what is contained within the walls of libraries,'' said C. Olivia Frost, associate dean of the University of Michigan's School of Information in Ann Arbor.

As a result, becoming a degreed librarian these days means taking courses like implementation of distributed information systems, Web site design and network management.

``A third of the titles currently on our list are about the Internet; that's up from zero six years ago,'' said Patricia Glass Schuman, president of Neal-Schuman Publishers Inc. in New York, a supplier of textbooks to library and information science schools.

With their technological expertise, fewer recent graduates of library and information science programs are actually becoming librarians. Take John Powell. After graduating from the University of Michigan School of Information last year, he became database manager and Webmaster for the State Appellate Defenders Office in Detroit. ``The field is rapidly expanding to include a wide range of career opportunities,'' he said. ``It's not just cataloging books anymore.''

Powell's duties include maintaining a World Wide Web site linked to a database of legal research as well as conducting Internet training seminars for defense lawyers throughout the state.

Although there are no comprehensive job placement statistics for graduates of library and information science schools, officials at the American Library Association have noticed a marked increase in the number of professionally trained librarians pursuing nontraditional, technologically oriented careers. ``More and more, we're hearing titles like cybrarian, information specialist, Webmaster, knowledge navigator and database manager,'' said Elizabeth Martinez, the association's executive director.

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PHOTO John Powell, Webmaster for the Michigan State Appellate Defenders Office, says library science is ``not just cataloging books anymore.''

New York Times