The University of Arizona
Spring 2002
School of Information Resources and Library Science
Dr. Bill Edgar
Office Phone: 621-5220
E-Mail: bedgar@u.arizona.edu
Office: No. 2
Office hours: Mondays 1-2:30 and Wednesdays 2:30-4:00, or by appointment

Description: We will explore issues and theory within the topic of the management of information service organizations through selected readings from the LIS management and general management literature. Students will gain an appreciation of the history and foundations of organizations and management theory as well as an overview of the prominent contributions to this literature in recent years. Additionally, students will investigate in detail a specific topic of interest. Three credit hours.

Prerequisite: There are no formal prerequisites. However, in order that students taking this course will have some background in LIS, it is recommended that only those who are in their second or third semester of study at SIRLS take this course.

Class Meetings: Wednesdays 4:30 to 7:00. Please note that we will not meet Wednesday, January 16.

Required Texts: There are no required texts. However, there will be required readings, which will be placed on reserve at the UA Main Library.

• Paper 50 percent
• Class participation 30 percent
• Final Exam 20 percent

As a seminar, this course is different in important respects from many courses in SIRLS more heavily oriented around learning how to do something, e.g. collection development or reference and user services. Rather, this course is a chance for you to think deeply about issues within this topic as well as a chance to think deeply within a topic of interest to you. Therefore, the "feel" of the course will be different than many others. Rather than requiring many smaller assignments in which some finished product in turned in every week or so, this course will require that you complete certain readings, discuss them in class each week, and work steadily toward the completion of a major paper on a LIS management topic of your own interest.

Though this list is preliminary, the list of topics within LIS and general management we will explore will likely include the following:

1. Individual motivation
2. Individual rewards
3. Leadership
4. Power and politics
5. History and foundations of organizations, paradigms, and metaphors
6. Organizational structure and technology
7. Organizational effectiveness
8. Strategy and the organizational environment

Additionally, as mentioned above, we will discuss the topics covered in students' class papers.

The bulk of our required readings will be selected journal articles and book chapters placed on reserve in the UA Main Library. As the semester progresses, the mix of readings will shift from those that I select to those that class members select for use in completion of their class paper (discussed below). This will be a graduate seminar and adequate performance in it requires that you develop sufficient interest in the material not only to complete assigned readings before our meetings, but also to devote enough thought to the issues such that our meetings become an active forum for the sharing of interpretations, opinions, insights, and questions by all members.

Your contributions to our weekly discussions (attendance counts here) will constitute 30% of the semester grade. The final exam counts 20%. The remaining 50% will be based upon a paper. This paper must focus within one of the broad sub-topics within management of information service organizations and it must be submitted for informal collegiate review by an accepted authority specializing within the topic area. Thus, submission for publication is not required, much less acceptance for publication.

It is important not to consider this requirement for collegiate review as something to fear but rather as an opportunity to share your ideas with a colleague and to receive educated and useful feedback on them. In addition, the procedure through which you must write your paper is designed to give you effective practice in the process through which scholars in our field actually get their work published.

In order to help you organize the process of writing this paper, due dates for each step in completion of the final version of the paper will be posted. These will occur regularly as the semester progresses. However, I will provide feedback on your on your submissions at each step, as if I was co-authoring your work instead of requiring it for course credit. Only the final version of the paper will be evaluated for grading purposes.