School of Information Management & Systems. Fall 2002.

290-2 Classification and Bibliographical Representation Michael Buckland.

Why Take This Course?

Because organizing information is at the heart of Information Management and it is the distinctively special contribution that distinguishes this School from other departments on campus. There are two complementary approaches: (i) One can take a conceptual approach and study the principles of the organization of information, an examine illustrative examples in different application areas; or, (ii) One can take a pragmatic approach by examining a small set of mature systems in depth and drawing conclusions from them. SIMS 245 (next Spring) does the former; this course does the latter. Anyone wanting to specialize in the organization of information should take both.

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

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

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.