School of Information Management & Systems   Spring 2000.   Michael Buckland.
290-1 Design of Library Services.

Why take this course?

1. Libraries are intrinsically interesting institutions. Academic, public, school, and special (meanly specialized, esp. if in a corporate setting) library services play an important role in the communities they serve. This course is designed to be suitable for people who are interested in library services without any intentional of ever being employed in one.

2. This course is unusual in drawing on all aspects of information management in the real world, combining economic, ethical, managerial, political, social and technical realities and we will talk about architecture, marketing, personal values, how to cope as a professional in an organization --- all in a situation in which the means of service are being fundamentally redesigned. In that sense it this course can reasonably be viewed as an extended case-study of information management in action.

3. You'll become a more effective user of libraries.

4. You might want to have an option on becoming a librarian. Librarianship is a established profession with a with long tradition of being useful, of public service, and innovation. Taking both this course and 245 Organization o f Information in Collections provides a plausible basis for claiming that the SIM S Master's degree constitutes a suitable preparation for working in a library.

If that is not enough, ask me and I think of some more.