As part of its charge to develop and formulate standards of education for library and information studies, the COA reviews the Standards for Accreditation of Master’s Programs in Library and Information Studies on an ongoing basis. The current Standards were adopted on January 15, 2008.

The COA develops standards for accreditation through a consensus-building process that involves various communities of interest, including educators, students, and professionals in library and information studies. Throughout the standards-development process, the COA seeks, receives, and uses comments and suggestions from the communities of interest in both the United States and Canada.

The following is a brief description of  each page in the right-hand navigation. If you have questions or trouble navigating the site, please contact Laura Dare in the Office for Accreditation at ldare@ala.org.

Page 1: Standards Review Plan Tentative Timeline

Standards review and development is an ongoing, five-year process. The current cycle was begun in 2008 following the adoption of the 2008 Standards. The COA develops standards for accreditation through a consensus-building process that involves various communities of interest, including educators, students, and professionals in library and information studies. Throughout the standards-development process, the COA seeks, receives, and uses comments and suggestions from the communities of interest in both the United States and Canada.

The Standard Review Plan Tentative Timeline outlines this process. It includes both a complete list of constituent groups that are contacted during comment collection and the dates of upcoming rounds of comment collection.

Page 2: 2008 Standards

This page contains a link to the 2008 Standards for Accreditation of Master’s Programs in Library and Information Studies (PDF). We welcome and encourage you to comment on the current Standards. Comments can be made in the Leave a Comment section at the bottom of the page. Further instructions can be found on Page 2.

Page 3: Summaries of Comments Collected on the 2008 Standards

As stated above, part of the review process entails gathering comments from stakeholders. Via online survey, stakeholders commented on Standard I in 2010 and Standard II in 2011. A summary of these first two rounds of comment collection appear on page 3. We will post summaries of comment collection for the remaining Standards as they occur. Please see the Standard Review Plan Tentative Timeline for the dates of upcoming rounds of comment collection.

Page 4: Final Report of the Presidential Task Force on Library Education

The Final Report of the Presidential Task Force on Library Education was issued on January 13, 2009, to the ALA Executive Board (2008-2009 EBD#12.30) for “discussion and referral to the ALA Committee on Accreditation.” The report includes recommendations to the 2008 Standards (found on pages 21-38), and comments on the report were collected between May and September of 2009. This section of the site documents this comment collection process and includes the following:

• The full text document of the Final Report of the Presidential Task Force on Library Education (PDF)
• The COA response (PDF) to the Final Report of the Presidential Task Force on Library Education
• Comments on the Task Force recommendations made directly on this site (see comments section at the bottom of the page) between May and September, 2009
• Comments (PDF) on the Task Force recommendations sent directly to the Office for Accreditation
•  2008 Standards side-by-side with the ALA Library Education Task Force recommendations to the Standards (excel format).

Since the deadline for comments has passed, the comment feature has been turned off on this page.