Edinburgh Napier University

  Library and information science (LIS) faculty, like their peers in other professional schools, are subject to the demands of at times conflicting jurisdictions: research productivity may clash with professional service, theory building with the development of craft skills. This paper takes one sub-field in library and information science, "Children and School" (C&S) and uses it as a probe to frame certain questions about academic, professional, and epistemological (A-P-E) norms. We suggest that compliance with norms in these three areas is a criterion of membership of a vocational academic discipline. Non-compliance with all three, however, appears to be the criterion set for a "new librarianship", recently advocated in the professional literature. By suggesting that "women and children first" should be the underlying philosophy of this new discipline, its proponents demand a rejection of existing A-P-E norms. We argue that the call for a "new librarianship" is a response to conflicts in jurisdiction which may be resolved by other means.