Background Notes

Data Sources: The data were taken from the ALISE directories, 1986/87 through and including 1997/98. These directories include personnel of schools of library and information science in the US and Canada, and around the world. No corrections to errors in the data were made (such as the omission of a faculty rank which is known to the author) because such corrections could not be made to all data.

Schools vary in their consistency: some include doctoral students and some do not, for example. The author has not looked at directions given to schools in completing data surveys, only the results of these directions. This indeed could be problemmatic.

The article and website include US/Canadian institutions and members and American Library Association-accredited institutions only; non-accredited institutions and those outside North America narrowly defined are coming soon.

Data Categorization: Individuals listed in the section entitled "Institutional Members" were placed into one of the following categories: Professors (Full-time and Part-time), Associate Professors (Full-time and Part-time), Assistant Professors (Full-time and Part-time), Lecturers/Instructors (Full-time and Part-time), Adjuncts, Summer Session, Visiting, Administrative personnel, Emerita/us, Librarians, and Other. The majority of those in the "other" category were individuals for whom no academic rank was given, only the designation "part-time" and the like. Visiting took precedence over any other designation, as did Summer Session and Emerita/us, to identify full-time ranked faculty attached on a relatively permanent basis to some school.

Data Analysis: Data were entered into Excel 5.0 for analysis. No tests of significance were performed because "signficance" is left to the discretion of the ALISE Board. If they are concerned about the loss of a group, it is significant. If they are not, it isn't. The interpretation of significance in this particular context is a marketing decision as much as a statistical one.

Data Presentation: The following software packages were used in constructing this site: MS Excel 5.0, Photoshop 4.0, HTML Editor 1.0, Netscape 3.x and 4.x, Fetch 3.0.3.