Full Sylabus in Adobe PDF format (263 KB)

RATIONALE

Increasingly, libraries and other types of information organizations (e.g., archives, records management units, MIS) are driven by management and technology considerations. Focal areas in management include planning, organizing, budgeting, directing, staffing--as opposed to operational and transactional activities (e.g., answering the next reference question, cataloging the next book). Curricula in accredited schools of library and information science reflect this trend in that many schools now require one or more manage ment-specific courses. Many type-of-library courses (academic, special, public, school) emphasize management issues as well.

Whether or not students are full-fledged managers in their first position as an information professional, they will be very much a consumer of and unavoidably affected by the organization's management attitudes, policies, actions, and environments (those internal and external to the library). Upward mobility in the field necessarily means–like it or not--taking a management track.

COURSE OBJECTIVES

Normally, SIS students have little prior education or past experience in management. IS 550, then, assumes little or no exposure to historical or contemporary management terminology, concepts, theories, techniques, practices, and processes. Thus, this course is of an introductory nature, and its primary objective is that of assisting the student develop basic understanding in several management areas.bUnlike skill-specific courses (e.g. cataloging), this course's content is primarily intellectual vs. technical or technological. Texts, methods, and assignments used are appropriate to these assumptions.

More specifically, course objectives include development (through texts) and application (through case studies) of an understanding of:

1. The purposes of management study within the increasingly management-driven climate of information organizations.

2. Management terminology, management theories--including, to some extent, the persons who developed them--as well as management methods generally, with some emphasis on the library environment. Much of this is factual in nature and is gained through the principal course text, Stueart and Moran.

3. Basic management terms, concepts, and practices and their applications to library and information center environments in the specific functional areas of: planning, organizing, staffing, directing, controlling, and budgeting.

This objective is realized through the use of case studies which encourage reflection upon and application of what is introduced through objective 2, above. Here, insight, personal values, and emergent professional judgement are being realized.

4. The importance of being an enlightened and informed consumer of the management practices of others and learning to some extent the relationships of managing, being managed, and the implications of managing oneself as a resource.

EVALUATED WORK

The course requires two categories of work:

1. Study and understanding of the content of the principal texts. (The central thrust of the course's three [3] exams of equal weight will be on the primary text, Stueart and Moran [ca. 85% of exam content] plus auxiliary readings/assignments [ca. 15% of exam content]). Case study material is not included on the exams. A student-created review of the chapters in Stueart and Moran is supplied for your use.

2. Success with development of :
a. detailed development a cover letter and resume in support of application for a vacant position of interest to the student and meeting the student’s career interests, and
b. Success with individual effort in a written case analysis