School of Information Management & Systems
Spring 2003.
285
Design of Library Services. Michael Buckland.
Why take this course?
1. Libraries are intrinsically interesting institutions. Academic, public,
school, and special (mainly 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, architecture, marketing,
personal values, and how to cope as a professional in an organization
--- all in a situation in which the means for 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 and likely
to be helpful to students intending a career as an information manager
in any context.
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 this course and also both 245 Organization
of Information in Collections, and 290 Classification and
Bibliographical Representation (scheduled for Fall 2002)
provides a plausible basis for claiming
that the SIM's
Master's degree constitutes a suitable preparation for working in a library,
even though accreditation has been deferred.
Librarians need people with the strengths that SIMS provides. For
students who take the right electives I have been writing letters to
help explain to libraries that, with these electives, the MIMS degree
should be acceptably equal to an accredited Masters degree
(Text).
If that is not enough, ask me and I think of some more.