It is a sad fact that far fewer people survive to celebrate a platinum wedding anniversary (seventy years) than they do a diamond anniversary (sixty years). No doubt that is the main reason why the former is much less well-known than the latter. Thankfully, the marriage of the doctoral program in library and information science to what is now the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois has lasted long enough to achieve platinum status—due to the longevity of both parties, as well as their compatibility. Of course, to wait to celebrate the marriage at the three-quarters-of-a-century mark might have proved even more impactful, but then the opportunity would have been lost to use the platinum anniversary to signal the recent change (2016) of name of the school—now, the School of Information Sciences—as well as the changing complexion of the doctoral program that the change of name partially represents.
The school's adoption of the information sciences rubric is reflected in the great diversity of doctoral studies now undertaken in it. The information sciences spectrum, as Marcia Bates (2015) illustrates, is one of great width, stretching—to cite just a handful of disciplines and subdisciplines—from library science, museum studies, bibliography, archival science, and the sociology of information, to records management, information management, information science, data curation, data analytics, information systems, and informatics. Nowadays, the research interests of the school's doctoral students map fairly closely onto this spectrum, effectively spanning the information sciences—hence the title of this issue of Library Trends.
