Library and Information Science Professor

LIS Professors operate at the intersection of academic scholarship and professional education. Their programs exist to credential librarians, archivists, records managers, data curators, and information systems specialists — which means classroom content has to track closely with what the field actually needs, not just what journals are publishing. Striking that balance is one of the defining tensions of the role.

On the teaching side, a typical week involves preparing and delivering graduate seminars on topics like cataloging and metadata, archival theory, information retrieval, or data management planning. LIS is a professional school environment, which means students are adults with career expectations — they want to know why a concept matters before they learn how it works. Faculty who teach abstractly without connecting theory to practice tend to get poor evaluations and produce graduates who struggle in interviews.

The research side operates on the same schedule pressures as any other academic field: journal submissions, revise-and-resubmit cycles, conference papers, and the ongoing task of building a coherent scholarly agenda that review committees can evaluate at tenure and promotion. LIS research is genuinely broad — a department might include a faculty member studying digital preservation metadata standards alongside one studying public library programming for unhoused populations alongside another building natural language processing tools for archival description. That breadth is a feature for interdisciplinary scholars and a challenge for departments trying to maintain a coherent identity.

Grant writing is a significant and often underappreciated time demand. The Institute of Museum and Library Services runs the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian program and the National Leadership Grants — two major funding streams that LIS faculty pursue actively. NSF's Human-Centered Computing and National Archives grants from NHPRC round out the landscape. Faculty with active external funding carry prestige within their departments and often have more control over their time as a result.

Service obligations accumulate as faculty gain seniority. Program accreditation through the ALA Committee on Accreditation requires significant faculty documentation effort every seven years. Curriculum committees, doctoral admissions, and faculty searches all pull on the same pool of tenured and tenure-track faculty, and the service load at smaller programs can become genuinely burdensome.

The culture of LIS academia tends to be collaborative and professionally oriented compared to some humanities disciplines. Faculty often co-author with doctoral students, co-present at ALA or ASIST alongside library practitioners, and maintain consulting or advisory relationships with institutions doing work aligned with their research.

Education:

• Ph.D. in Library and Information Science, Information Studies, or a closely related field (required for tenure-track)
• MLIS or MLS from an ALA-accredited program (common secondary credential, particularly for practice-oriented positions)
• Ph.D. in a cognate discipline — computer science, history, communication, education — acceptable for some specializations

Teaching credentials and experience:

• Graduate teaching assistantship or instructor of record experience during doctoral training
• Online course design and facilitation fluency (most LIS programs run hybrid or fully online cohorts)
• Familiarity with learning management systems: Canvas, Blackboard, Moodle

Research and publication:

• Peer-reviewed journal publications commensurate with career stage — search committees at R1s expect at least one to two published articles from doctoral candidates
• Conference presentations at ASIST, ALA, SAA, iConference, or equivalent venues
• External grant experience as PI or co-investigator, especially IMLS or NSF funding history

Technical and domain competencies:

• Metadata standards: RDA, MARC, Dublin Core, Schema.org, EAD, PREMIS
• Digital preservation frameworks: OAIS reference model, Levels of Digital Preservation
• Data management: DMPTool, FAIR data principles, institutional repository systems (DSpace, Fedora, Samvera)
• Information retrieval systems, database architecture, and knowledge organization theory
• Archival theory and practice: appraisal, arrangement, description, access

Professional engagement:

• Active membership in ALA, ASIST, SAA, or domain-specific divisions (ALISE is the organization specifically for LIS educators)
• Reviewing for peer-reviewed journals or serving on editorial boards
• Involvement in ALA accreditation review panels or standard-setting bodies

Soft skills that distinguish strong candidates:

• Ability to translate technical content for students coming from non-technical backgrounds
• Consistent follow-through on doctoral student mentorship over multi-year timelines
• Transparent communication with professional communities about research findings and implications

The academic job market in Library and Information Science has followed the broader pattern of American higher education: a shrinking number of tenure-track openings, a growing proportion of non-tenure-track and contingent positions, and significant concentration of strong opportunities at a relatively small number of well-funded programs.

That said, LIS is not in freefall. Several factors distinguish it from more contracting fields. ALA accreditation requirements constrain how thin programs can run their faculty-to-student ratios, creating a floor on faculty headcount. The practical nature of the degree means students continue enrolling even in uncertain economies — libraries hire during recessions, and records management and data governance roles in the corporate and government sectors have expanded significantly.

The hottest hiring areas within LIS faculty searches in 2025–2026 include data science and data librarianship, health informatics, digital humanities, AI and algorithmic systems in information contexts, and community informatics. Candidates who can credibly teach and publish in these areas face a materially better market than generalist information organization scholars.

The ALA-accredited program landscape is also shifting. Some programs have merged into larger iSchools within their universities, gained headcount and resources, and become more competitive for interdisciplinary hires from computer science and social science backgrounds. Others have faced enrollment pressure and staffing freezes. Candidates should research program health — enrollment trends, faculty size, recent grant activity — before investing heavily in a particular application.

For practitioners considering the academic path, the professor of practice and clinical faculty track has opened in meaningful ways. Programs are actively seeking faculty who can teach practicum supervision, special collections management, embedded librarianship, and data services with real operational experience behind them. These positions rarely lead to tenure but often offer long-term renewable contracts at salaries that have converged somewhat with tenure-track ranges at teaching-focused institutions.

The longer-term outlook depends on how university library systems themselves evolve. If academic libraries continue to restructure toward digital and data services, LIS curriculum will need to follow — and programs that make those curriculum pivots quickly will attract students and the faculty positions that come with enrollment. Programs that remain tightly focused on traditional library operations face the most pressure.

Dear Search Committee,

I am writing to apply for the Assistant Professor position in Library and Information Science at [University]. My research focuses on automated metadata generation and its implications for archival description workflows, and I am completing my Ph.D. in Information Studies at [Institution] this spring with a dissertation examining how GLAM institutions are evaluating and integrating machine learning tools into descriptive practice.

I have published two peer-reviewed articles on this topic — one in the American Archivist examining practitioner attitudes toward AI-assisted appraisal, and one in Information Processing and Management on metadata quality evaluation in NLP-generated finding aids. A third article under review at the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology extends that work into linked data environments. My research has been supported by a doctoral fellowship from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

In the classroom, I taught a graduate section of Information Organization independently during my third year, developing all course materials and assessments. I redesigned the cataloging module to incorporate hands-on work with OpenRefine and reconciliation against Wikidata, which gave students practical exposure to the linked data workflows increasingly common in large research libraries. Student evaluations averaged 4.6 out of 5.0.

I am also a working archivist. Before my doctoral program I spent four years as a processing archivist at [Institution], which shapes how I talk about theory — students can tell when an instructor has handled a backlog.

I would welcome the opportunity to discuss how my research agenda and teaching experience align with your program's directions.

[Your Name]