Title

Digital Services

Note: There is a close relationship between this pathway and the Emerging Technologies Pathway. This pathway focuses on the technical and usability aspects of building digital platforms for users. The emerging technologies pathway focuses more on the user experience. Students might want to mix and match classes from both pathways.

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 other information-based services. This migration has encouraged the emergence of new LIS disciplines that have various titles such as digital collections coordinator or digital initiatives & Integration librarian, or digital library architect, or digital learning services librarian, or digital repositories coordinator, or digital services technician, or digital technologies development librarian.

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:

  • 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

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

Recommended Coursework

Required Courses:

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:

Recommended Courses:

Select from the following:

Special session MLIS Students may wish to consider taking courses from the MARA degree program to transfer to their MLIS degree as many MARA courses are very relevant for this career pathway. Important: MARA is only offered in special session and is only available to special session students. Visit the MARA Courses as Electives page for additional details.

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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