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Home – Programs – Career Pathways – Digital Services and Emerging Technologies

Digital Services and Emerging Technologies

The MLIS program requires 43 units for graduation. Within those units, five courses are required: LIBR 203, LIBR 200, LIBR 202, LIBR 204, LIBR 285, and either LIBR 289 or LIBR 299. Beyond those five courses, a student is free to select electives reflecting individual interests and aspirations.

The Career Pathway described here is provided solely for advising purposes. No special designation appears on your transcript or diploma. All students get an MLIS degree.

Description

Any information can be represented and stored as a string of bits. Therefore, the significant differences existing between objects, printed material, and even buildings or landscapes in the material world blurs in the digital environment. Library services are increasingly migrating to the digital environment in both the building of collections and in patron interactions. This migration has encouraged the emergence of new LIS disciplines that have various titles such as digital librarianship or emerging technologies librarianship. It has also led to the transformation of traditional concepts (e.g. bibliographic description to metadata standards). Working in this environment requires technological skills and experience, an understanding of metadata, and an ability to create and manage digital content, along with the managerial skills to lead change and collaboration.

This career pathway concentrates on the theories and supporting techniques related to:

• Creation and maintenance of digital libraries
• Management of digital collections
• Mediation and representation of cultural heritage in the digital environment
• Economics of digital repositories
• Quality and sustainability of digitization initiatives

Students pursuing this career will develop skills and expertise in the following areas:

• Defining user needs and development of usable and accessible services in the digital environment (including but not limited to using technology to do outreach via Web 2.0 technology, connecting with patrons who want to interact with the library via their mobile devices, using social networking sites to connect with users)
• Selection strategies for building a sustainable digital collection with emphasis on ownership and rights
• Techniques of converting digital materials from one format to another to ensure the continuing accessibility of vast heterogeneous collections of digital data stored over time in diverse formats
• Ontologies and metadata schemes
• Open source catalogs
• GIS

Employment Opportunities

• Build and manage virtual public library branches
• Oversee technical issues of digital conversion
• Manage digital collections and digital repositories
• Implement digital initiatives between museums, archives and libraries
• Provide services in academic environments to distance learners

Students who concentrate in this specialization may work as:

• virtual services managers
• knowledge integration librarians
• digital assets managers
• digital media managers/librarians
• digital archivists
• digital collections managers
• metadata librarians

Core Theory and Knowledge

• Able to implement and manage emerging technologies in a library or any information environment
• Understand the nature of digital information, its main features, and transformations of information in the digital environment
• Develop and maintain a working competence in prevalent digitization technologies and methods
• Familiarity with the prevailing national and international metadata schemes, classification systems, and ontological frameworks
• Management of user-centered design through the whole process of the development of an application
• Understand the intellectual and economic factors involved in digitization

Recommended Coursework

Required Courses:

• LIBR 203 Online Social Networking: Technology and Tools
• LIBR 200 Information and Society
• LIBR 202 Information Retrieval
• LIBR 204 Information Organizations and Management
• LIBR 285 Research Methods in Library and Information Science
• LIBR 289 or LIBR 299 Culminating Experience

Note: For this career path, LIBR 202 is the most important course. If you are not comfortable with the material and format of LIBR 202, then this is not the career for you.

Foundation Courses:

• LIBR 240 Information Technology Tools and Applications
• LIBR 242 Database Management
• LIBR 246 Information Technology Tools and Applications: Advanced
  Classes on Web 2.0 and XML are especially important. Select at least one programming class.
• LIBR 251 Web Usability
• LIBR 259 Preservation Management
• LIBR 281 Seminar in Contemporary Issues
  section on metadata
• LIBR 284 Seminar in Archives and Records Management
  Particularly sections on digitization, preservation, electronic records, curation of digital media
• LIBR 294 Professional Experience: Internships

Recommended Courses:

Select from the following:

• LIBR 243 Systems Analysis
• LIBR 247 Vocabulary Design
• LIBR 281 Seminar in Contemporary Issues
• LIBR 282 Seminar in Library Management
  Particularly sections that focus on managing social media and project management
• LIBR 283 Marketing of Information Products and Services

Effective leadership and management (of people and information) is critically important for all types of work environments and clients.

We recommend that students consider also selecting some courses from the Leadership and Management career path to complement or supplement core skills in other areas.

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