The University of Arizona Spring 2004
School of Information Resources and Dr. Bill Edgar
Library Science Office Phone: 621-5220
E-Mail: bedgar@u.arizona.edu
Office: No. 2
Office hours: Mondays 1-2:30 and Wednesdays 1-2:30,
or by appointment
IRLS 696
Advanced Issues in Information Resources:
Management of Information Service Organizations
Description: This course will accomplish two objectives. First, 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. Second, we will explore issues and theory within a broader set of library and information science topics--e.g. information retrieval, human-computer interaction, ethics, or LIS management--that students wish to explore in their seminar paper. Therefore, 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 LIS topic of their own interest. Three credit hours.
Prerequisite: There are no formal prerequisites. However, in order that students taking this course 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: Mondays 4:00 to 6:30. Please note that we will not meet Monday, January 19 and Monday, March 15.
Required Texts: There are no required texts. However, there will be required readings, which will be placed on reserve at the UA Main Library.
Assignments and Evaluation:
As a seminar, this course is different in important respects from many courses in SIRLS more heavily oriented around using intellectual methodologies in order to learn 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 is graded 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 an LIS topic of your own interest. This paper will contribute original thought within this topic.
The list of topics within LIS and general management we will discuss will include the following:
Additionally, we will discuss the topics covered in students' seminar 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 managerial literature review counts 30%. The remaining 40% will be based upon a seminar paper.
Managerial Literature Review: The purpose of the managerial literature review is to provide the student with an in-depth understanding of the current "state of the art" articles both in print and on the World Wide Web concerning some specific management/organizational issue. References to material to support this literature review can be found in three primary places: Library Literature, Library and Information Science Abstracts, and ABI Inform. The first two are the bibliographic databases supporting library and information Science; the third is the bibliographic database supporting the discipline of management. All are available here at UA, though the resources they refer to may or may not be held by UA.
You should choose a topic from an area covered in the syllabus. Within the context of this broad topic area, you will select a narrow issue on which to focus. An example of this would be to choose to teams as the broad topic and then doing a literature review on the effects of groupthink on teams. Including management literature both within LIS as well as outside of LIS journals is highly recommended as other fields often address management issues prior to their appearance in LIS literature. There is no reason to re-invent wheels, but we often do.
You should limit the review to around 10-20 double-spaced, typed pages (plus bibliography appended) In addition to the print articles, students are highly encouraged to check out WWW sites that are pertinent to the selected topic. Cite the URLs in the bibliography. The literature review should identify the broad and narrow topic, briefly (very briefly) summarize each article used including any major findings; summarize the current thought on the topic; depict any emerging trends; highlight the implications for the future of LIS; and include your thoughts and interpretations of the findings.
This is not simply an annotated bibliography nor is it an expository essay. You will not be expressing an opinion and then supporting your thoughts with evidence from the appropriate literature. You are looking for threads, trends, or issues coming up out of the literature (hence the term literature review). While a small part of the paper will be descriptive, what I am looking for is your ability to synthesize the literature on this topic and to analyze the implications for LIS. For example, does there seem to be a consensus of thought prevalent throughout the literature? Are there competing views/threads or are the articles all over the place in terms of point of view- and what does this mean to practitioners seeking guidance from the literature?
Seminar Paper: The seminar paper, an original contribution of thought 20 to 50 pages in length, must focus within one of the broad sub-topics within library and information science chosen by the student. The paper 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 students in the process of writing this paper, due dates for each step in completion of the final version are given below. These will occur regularly as the semester progresses. However, I will provide feedback on students' submissions at each step, as if I was co-authoring the work instead of requiring it for course credit. Only the final version of the paper will be evaluated for grading purposes.
Grading criteria:
A=90-100
B=80-89
C=70-79
D=60-69
F=59 and below
Attendance:
Attendance is expected because we do not meet many times.
Late Work:
Late work will lose one letter grade from the grade it would have gotten had it been turned in on time. However, the final seminar paper will not be accepted late.
Academic Misconduct:
Academic misconduct is unacceptable. The appropriate UA regulations regarding it will be enforced.