Page 66 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 43

066 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.9, 2017

Department was renamed as Department of Library Science and Information Science, Department
of Library and Information Science, or Department of Documentation and Information Science.
Such renaming was in accordance with the developing trend of integration of Library Science and
information science, which helped amalgamate subjects and majors. The second renaming was
to change “School (Department) of Library Science” into “School (Department) of Information
Management”. This renaming pushed forward the transformation from Library Science education
(LSE) to information management education (IME), which, to some extent, was more adaptable
to the needs for talents and professionals in the field of information science. However, the second
renaming also caused some new contradictions and problems. Many educational institutions in the
field of Library and Information Science just adopted new names to follow the mainstream, which
was not for the internal requirement of self-reform. Consequently, the curriculum setting and the
teaching content after the renaming failed to match “information management”, and it was difficult
to disentangle the relationship between information management and Library and Information
Science. Meanwhile, the renaming also aroused concern about the loss of discourse power and
marginalization of libraries and Library Science (Yu, 2016).

4.3 The contribution of LSE to society from 1978 to 2016

The development of LSE was unprecedented from 1978 to 2016, while LSE also made unparalleled
contributions to society. It is impossible for the author to count how many talents have been
cultivated by LSE over these years. We can see that many graduates majoring in Library Science
are now taking jobs as directors or deputy directors in the public libraries at different levels,
libraries at universities and colleges, and the scientific and professional libraries, not to mention
thousands of professionals have become backbone in the library sector. Nowadays, those who play
leading roles in the research and education of Library Science in China are mostly outstanding
graduates majoring in Library Science during these years. It is worth mentioning that, because of
LSE’s devotion to cultivating talents for more information professions these years, plus the new
information environment that offers more room for LSE, LSE has also trained a large number of
professionals for new information services in other sectors, including governments, enterprises
and institutions, banks, business agencies, Internet companies, and information security, most of
whom even became outstanding professionals in these sectors. Different from that before 1978,
LSE nowadays not only cultivates professional talents for society, but also produces and delivers
special knowledge to society. For example, information organization is being widely applied
in the organization and description of online information; information retrieval is becoming a
useful tool for the public to obtain information; theories and methods of information service are
applied beyond the library sector, which are used in various sectors and industries at present. As
the social contributions made by LSE become increasingly larger, LSE has gained more and more
recognition and attention from people.