Press Release

National Librarian Shortage to be helped by Unusual Cooperative Effort
Simmons College Graduate Library Degree to be Offered at Mt. Holyoke in Western Massachusetts

BOSTON, MA. (April 26, 2001)–In an unusual cooperative effort to help lessen a national shortage of librarians, Simmons College in Boston will expand its geographical reach to offer men and women a masters degree in library and information science in western Massachusetts on the Mt. Holyoke College campus this fall.

The Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS), which has the largest library and information science masters program in the nation and places librarians around the world, will offer the program Saturdays and during the summer in South Hadley, MA, using facilities of Mt. Holyoke College, to make it easier for the large number of commuting students in western New England who work but also want to pursue a graduate degree in library and information science. Simmons faculty will teach the courses and the degree will be offered through the Simmons GSLIS, which has offered a degree in library and information science since the college’s founding more than a century ago.

Mt. Holyoke, the first women’s college in the nation, has offered its campus facilities as one way to help the national library shortage. According to national studies, there will be a shortage of more than 40,000 librarians by the beginning of the next decade.

Graduate students will be admitted to the Simmons program beginning in September. They can earn a masters degree in two years, on Saturdays and during the summer, at the Mt. Holyoke College Library site. All privileges, facilities and courses at the Simmons Boston campus will also be available.

Simmons GSLIS Dean James Matarazzo said the new offering is the result of numerous requests over the years of prospective students and library professionals urging Simmons to expand its program into western Massachusetts.

"There is a crucial need for more librarians across the country," he said. "Vacancies are going unfilled because of the lack of qualified personnel. Expanding our nationally recognized program outside the Boston area to more easily serve people in western and central New England can contribute significantly to solving the problem."

The Simmons GSLIS program is consistently ranked among the top in the nation. Graduates of the program include the library directors for MIT and Johns Hopkins University, the director of the District of Columbia Public Library, the executive director of the American Association of Law Libraries, the editor in chief of Library Journal, and past presidents of the American Library Association and Special Libraries Association.

Sheila Intner, Ph.D., is director of the Simmons western campus GSLIS program. For more information contact Terry Plum in Mt. Holyoke at 1-413-533-2400.

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