School of Information Management & Systems   Spring 2004.
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 (now scheduled for Spring 2004) 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 will think of some more.