School of Information Management & Systems Spring 2004.

290-15 Classification and Bibliographical Representation. Michael Buckland.

Why Take This Course?

This class is designed for students who fit in one or more of the following categories:

1. Anyone wanting the option of working in any kind of library or for an online bibliographic service needs have the material that is covered in, and only in, this class. 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).

2. Anyone expecting to work in an environment that deal with objects that will need careful, detailed description and organization (e.g. museum objects, archives, spare parts,...), this course will be highly relevant.

3. For anyone interested in the organization of information and wanting greater depth than SIMS 245, this course provides a detailed case-study. Of all the application areas that this School is concerned with, library cataloging and classification is the longest developed and most sophisticated. But, be warned, this course will deal directly with lots of practical, useful stuff which provides the reality with which theories must deal, and we will be using a textbook based on library practice.

4. Doctoral students who have chosen Field 2: Organization and representation of information or Field 5: Information retrieval and so need a grounding in how bibliographic data sets are designed and created.