2019 Keynote: Jaya Raju 
ALISE is excited to announce the 2019 ALISE Annual Conference keynote speaker, Jaya Raju, PhD.
Shaping LIS Education for Blended Professionals in a Pluralist Information Environment: Global Reflections
“Disruptive innovations” have increased demand for information technology (IT) skills in contemporary library and information agencies, creating an increased need for pedagogical skills on the part of library and information science (LIS) professionals so they may empower users with knowledge and skills to navigate a complex digital information terrain. Hence, LIS professionals with both technology and pedagogical skills have become increasingly critical in a digitized information environment. Librarians must now blend traditional skills with the information technologist’s hardware/software skills, and the educational designer’s ability to apply technology appropriately to teaching and learning.
In a troubling context of a disconnect between the increasing importance of pedagogical skills in public service positions and the global response from LIS schools to this skills demand, LIS professionals have turned to continuing professional development to prepare themselves for the teaching roles increasingly thrust upon them, especially in a technology-driven higher education information environment. Academic libraries are across the world the largest employers of LIS graduates; but, much needs to be done in LIS schools globally to enable graduates to develop a confident teacher identity, and credibility as teachers among students, academics and other university constituencies. LIS schools also have a significant role in repositioning the LIS discipline such that the emerging LIS-related IT knowledge and skill sets are pedagogically and epistemologically embedded in LIS curriculum design and development.
In the context of this confluence of knowledge and skills requirements for the LIS professional, and responding to the conference theme, this keynote address draws on early findings from a global phenomenological probe into curriculum development directed at the hybrid LIS professional located in a pluralist information environment, and requiring cross-disciplinary competencies spanning LIS, IT, Teaching and Learning, and perhaps other cognate areas. It explores challenges, ideas, and thinking in LIS education from preliminary empirical findings from Africa, Asia, and South America (representing the global south), and Europe and North America (representing the global north), to stimulate debate and discourse on the repositioning of LIS as it broadens its disciplinary space in response to a technology-driven information environment.
Meet Jaya Raju
Jaya Raju is Associate Professor and Head of the Library and Information Studies Centre at the University of Cape Town. She has a PhD in Information Studies. She has researched and written extensively in the area of LIS education and its implications for the LIS services work environment. Jaya Raju has served on the Editorial Advisory Board of the South African Journal of Libraries and Information Science and as its Editor-in-Chief from 2013 to 2018. She also serves on the Editorial Advisory Boards of the Journal for Gender, Information and Development in Africa; International Journal of Information, Diversity & Inclusion; De Gruyter’s Open Information Science, and, the Russian Journal of Library and Information Science. She is co-editor of the ALISE Book Series on LIS education and research. She has published in peer-reviewed national and international journals and presented papers at local, national and international conferences. She is currently Co-Chair of IFLA’s Building Strong LIS Education (BSLISE), an active global network of LIS educators and researchers. In 2018, Jaya Raju became Subject Chair for Library and Information Science on the Scopus Content Selection & Advisory Board – an international group of scientists and researchers, representing major scientific disciplines, tasked with evaluating journals applying for inclusion on the Scopus indexing list.
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