Thursday, August 27, 2009

What's KO core?

At my school, we require all LIS students in the Master of Information program to take a basic introductory course in knowledge organization (called "Introduction to Bibliographic Control") -- but what we haven't agreed on is the content of such course. We haven't even agreed on the core knowledge that students should have after taking the course. So this winter (2010) we will offer two versions of the same course; this one and this one.

So, of course, students ask: Which version should I take? My stock answer goes like this:
"The two variations of INF 1320 offer different approaches to building the core knowledge that LIS students ought to have re. bibliographic control/knowledge organization. The two variations represent two different educational paradigms within LIS — and as instructors we have chosen to construct our section of the course to support our belief and view of LIS education. So, it is not easy to give you an entirely objective answer to your question...

I think you need to consider what you want to gain from your graduate education -- would you like to gain a solid understanding of the systems and methods for organizing and representing material using tools traditionally used in the broad cross section of libraries or would you like to gain an understanding of theoretical concepts in knowledge organization and approaches to the design of systems for organizing information?

My sense is that both variations of the course will give you a foundation for your career. The foundation will just be quite different depending on which course you take."

But I guess that poses this question: Should we (as instructors of KO) agree on a core KO knowledge that we present to students in a required KO course? If that is not possible, perhaps a solution is to offer many different kinds of foundational courses and let the students themselves decides which kind of foundational knowledge they want/need. That would take the consumer orientated university a step further... but, I guess, it also reflects reality of the vast disagreements within the LIS education community.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

A category for everything

Yeah, finally... a system with a category for everything. Dilbert style. :-)

Monday, August 17, 2009

100 Best Blogs for Library Science Students

It is always difficult, if not impossible, to name the best of anything -- I suppose what's good and great depends on your perspective... but this [link removed] is a good list of good blogs for 'library's students. Though, IMHO Stephen's Lighthouse and InfoMatters ought to have been included... Of course, I'm happy to see Organizing Stuff on the list - and I feel the slight pressure to post more often...

Update, Aug. 20: Well, apparently, I made a fool of myself by linking to this list of "100 Best Blogs for Library Students" - one does not link to 'spammers' in the blogphere. See an excellent explanation here. I guess I hadn't thought though how one adds to to the credibility of sites by linking to it. It is obvious, once one think about it. I didn't. Ooops.