Associate Professor Terry L. Weech has been appointed to a four-year term on the American Library Association’s Committee on Accreditation beginning in the fall of 2014. The Committee on Accreditation is responsible for carrying out the accreditation program of the American Library Association (ALA), which involves development of standards for library and information studies education programs.
The twelve members of the committee meet four times per year to review reports submitted by programs seeking accreditation or re-accreditation. Decisions on specific requests for accreditation are based on a program’s presentation documentation and data gathered by external review panels who visit the schools to observe and interview faculty, students, alumni, and employers. Based on this input the committee determines the accreditation status to be assigned to a program. As of the fall of 2014, there are fifty-eight library and information studies programs accredited by the American Library Association (ALA) in the United States and Canada.
Weech has been a member of numerous ALA external review panels over his many years of professional activity in LIS education. He has also served as chair of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) Library Education and Training Section and has conducted research on the equivalency of library and information studies education programs internationally and the transferability of LIS professional qualifications globally. He is currently a member of the IFLA Library Theory and Research Section Standing Committee and continues to work with members of this international group on the establishment of international guidelines for determining the equivalency of degrees in library and information studies.