The UNC School of Information and Library Science (SILS) is the information school of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The school offers a bachelor's degree in information science, a master's degrees in library science and information science, a master's degree in digital curation, and a doctoral degree in information and library science as well as an undergraduate minor, graduate certificate programs, and a post-masters certificate.
History The school was founded by Louis Round Wilson and opened in the fall of 1931. The U.S. News & World Report ranks the third among information and library science programs nationwide, as well as first in digital librarianship and health librarianship.
Accreditation Degree programs are accredited by the American Library Association (ALA). The Master of Science in Library Science (MSLS) has maintained its ALA accreditation since 1934, and the Master of Science in Information Science (MSIS) program has maintained accreditation since its inception in 2000. There were 26 full-time teaching faculty members and about 17 adjunct and visiting faculty members at SILS in 2017.
The school officially changed its name from the School of Library Science to the School of Information and Library Science in 1988 after a faculty vote in 1987, recognizing the growing role information management would have on society.University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, School of Information and Library Science (2007). Illuminating the Past: A History of the First 75 years of the University of North Carolina's School of Information and Library Science. Minneapolis, MN: PhotoBook Press.
Now, SILS offers an undergraduate major and minor, two master's of science degrees, professional science master's degrees, dual master's degrees with both their undergraduate degree and other programs at the University, several graduate certificates, and a doctor of philosophy in information and library science. One of SILS' newest degrees, a professional science master's (PSM) in digital curation, is the first master's degree in the nation focused on digital curation and is offered entirely online.
In the fall of 2017, SILS had 160 undergraduate students either pursuing a major in information science or a minor in information systems, with an additional 254 graduate students enrolled.
Deans Louis Round Wilson (1931-1932) Susan Grey Akers (1932-1954) Lucile Kelling Henderson (1954-1960) Carlyle J. Frarey (1960-1964) Margaret Ellen Kalp (1964-1967) Walter A. Sedelow Jr. (1967-1970) Raymond L. Carpenter Jr. (1970-1971) Edward G. Holley (1972-1985) Evelyn H. Daniel (1985-1990) Barbara B. Moran (1990-1998) Joanne Gard Marshall (1999-2004) Jose-Marie Griffiths (2004-2009) Barbara B. Moran (2009-2010) Gary Marchionini (2010–2024) Jeffrey Bardzell (2024-2025) Diane Kelly (2025-2026)
Facilities In 1995, Manning would undergo renovations, including updating its large lecture hall and the information and technology resource center. Today, SILS classrooms are equipped with computer projection and instructor workstations. SILS also maintains a wireless network with access points throughout the building. Since 2016, SILS has offered students the opportunity to experience virtual reality, expanding to offer an entire virtual reality room in 2017. SILS also has a 3D printing station, where students can submit designs of 3D models to be printed. Additionally, SILS offers a Digital Media Lab with access to professional video and audio recording equipment, a teleprompter, green screen, audio mixer, and video and audio editing software. As part of the university library system, the SILS Library features advanced electronic capabilities and an extensive collection of materials. The Information and Technology Resource Center integrates a computer lab and electronic classroom area with extensive library collections and services.
Library The SILS Library consists of over 100,000 volumes and approximately 1,300 serials titles are checked in every year. One of the collections SILS houses is the professional collection (Library of Congress classification), which consists of materials in information and library science, and related fields. The juvenile collection (Dewey Decimal Classification), designed to support courses in children's literature, school librarianship, and children's librarianship in public libraries, consists of the Easy collection, juvenile fiction, juvenile non-fiction, juvenile historical (non-circulating), pop-up books, and audio-visual materials. It is the only full-service children's collection on campus.
Projects
Digital Project Repository The SILS Digital Project Repository was created by information and library science graduate students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (originally developed by SILS students Matthew Bachtell and Ying Zhang for Dr. Gary Marchionini's Digital Libraries course). The DPR serves as an archive and showcase of student work. The "Pathfinder Digital Library", as it was then called, housed two archived pathfinders and provided organized lists of externally linked pathfinders. The project was later taken over by SILS students Becca Cahill, Adam Webb, and Kristen Wilson, who renamed it the SILS Digital Project Repository (DPR) and expanded its scope to include portals, digital archives, and other HTML format projects. These students archived about sixty pathfinders and other projects during their administration of the site in hopes of preserving projects housed on impermanent student webspace. In spring 2006, the DPR was adopted by Lori Eakin, Emily Riley, and Ellen Whisler, who worked to collect detailed metadata for projects housed on-site and off-site in preparation for future development of the DPR.
ibiblio.org ibiblio, a collaboration between the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Center for the Public Domain, has been a vehicle for knowledge sharing since 1992, first as an original Sun Microsystems SunSITE, then as Metalab, finally resting on the ibiblio name in 2000. ibiblio is a free and vibrant exchange of ideas among a large community of contributors who share their knowledge across disciplines. It is one of the major distribution hubs for Linux software and has been a significant supporter of Linux development efforts since its inception.UNC News 2004 In addition, it started the first internet radio stream by rebroadcasting WXYC, the UNC student-run radio station. It also takes credit for the first non-commercial IPv6 / Internet2 radio stream. The site, which enters its 19th year of existence in October, is run by the School of Information and Library Science and the School of Media and Journalism, by director and UNC professor Paul Jones.
LifeTime Library LifeTime Library is an online comprehensive file-hosting site that is available to the school's incoming students. The program is designed to store documents and photos for students so they can have access to them forever. Gary Marchionini, dean of the school, said LifeTime Library is the first program of its kind to be used by a university in the nation. With the program, students can permanently store and later retrieve computer files that are usually kept on hard drives and social media sites. The program's data is stored on a series of disks managed by the school and other departments. Two years in the making, the LifeTime Library has benefited from research projects funded by the National Science Foundation and other prestigious sources. Users can fine-tune their libraries, setting up policies and new capabilities, and therefore Marchionini expects the libraries to provide new learning experiences for the school's students. Eventually, researchers would like to see it synchronize with multiple devices. Business partners may be recruited to help with costs.
DigCCurr This three-year program brings together key international figures in digital preservation from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Italy, and New Zealand, to serve on an Advisory Board. serve to integrate the curriculum and the experiential components at UNC-CH.
DataNet In October 2011, the National Science Foundation awarded nearly $8 million over five years to the DataNet Federation Consortium, a group that spans seven universities, to build and deploy a prototype national data management infrastructure. About half of the award supports research and development at the school. This consortium (led by The Data Intensive Cyber Environments research group at SILS) addresses the research collaboration needs of six science and engineering disciplines: oceanography, hydrology, engineering design, plant biology, cognitive science, and social science. The infrastructure project supports collaborative multi-disciplinary research through shared collections, data publication within digital libraries, and development of reference collections in archives.Faculty research: digital innovation lab. (2012, Spring). Information & Library Science @Carolina, 77, 36. Retrieved from
Collaboration with RENCI RENCI at UNC-Chapel Hill opened in the summer 2007 in the new Manning Information Technology Services building located on South Campus. The site supports the use of visualization technology and advanced computational methods to explore issues in science, engineering, the arts, humanities, and social sciences. This state-of-the-art facility gives RENCI the opportunity to collaborate with UNC faculty on new and existing multidisciplinary research projects. The institution works with scientists who study critical issues and form research teams that involve faculty members at universities across North Carolina and the U.S. and that are positioned to bring major research projects to North Carolina. In October 2012, SILS professor & RENCI chief scientist Arcot Rajasekar is the principal investigator of one of eight new Big Data research projects receiving awards from the National Science Foundation (NSF) with support from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Rajasekar's project, “DataBridge – A Sociometric System for Long-Tail Science Data Collections,” will use socio-metric networks similar to LinkedIn or Facebook to enable scientists to find data and like-minded research. It is expected to improve the discovery of relevant scientific data across large, distributed, and diverse collections. The funds provided by NSF for the DataBridge project total $1.5 million.
Programs
Undergraduate Program UNC-Chapel Hill is the only university in the state of North Carolina offering a bachelor's degree in information science, to prepare its graduates for a variety of careers in the information industry, including information architecture, database design and implementation, Web design and implementation, and information consulting, as well as for graduate study. The Minor in Information Systems provides students with an understanding of computing, multi¬media, electronic information resources, and the Internet that complements the student's major field of study. Students concentrate their studies in the junior and senior years.
Dual Bachelor-Master's Program Introduced in 2011, the Dual Bachelor's - Master's program is intended to enable Information Science (IS) majors to obtain both their BS and MS degree by early planning of an undergraduate program that integrates well with the graduate degree requirements for either an MSIS or an MSLS within five years. Of the 24 iSchools in North America, only four offer an accelerated Bachelor's - Master's program of any sort; and other than these four iSchools, only one of the 58 programs accredited by the American Library Association offers an accelerated Bachelor's - Master's program.
Graduate Program