This page contains descriptions for special topics offered at SILS (regularly offered courses are listed separately). Special topics courses are developed to cover emerging issues or specialized content not represented in the main curriculum. Not all courses are offered each semester—see the course schedule for availability.
Fall 2013
INLS 089-001: First Year Seminar: Social Movements and New Media (Tufecki)
INLS 490-161: Genealogies as a Digital Library Index (1.5 credits)
A genealogy can be used as an index into a digital library. We will explore the creation of core geneaologies that linke the ancestry of persons of European descent, and use the core geneology as an index into Palmers "History of the Modern World". Students will able to link their own ancestry into the core ancestry. Access to a 236,000 person reseach geneology will be provided. (Moore)
INLS 490-211: Introduction to Human Information Interaction (3 credits)
Introduction to foundational and core concepts of human information behavior, including models of information seeking behavior, information needs and use, user-centered design, and human computer interaction.* Undergraduate students only* (Murillo)
INLS 490-204: Going the Last Mile: Information Access for Underserved Populations (3 credits)
Two thirds of the world's populations cannot access the Internet. Over 20% of Americans have no access to the Internet. Millions of incarcerated individuals need basic education but cannot use the Internet. Even when connected, people in remote areas often lack the bandwidth to use multimedia-rich Web offerings. In this course we will investigate the special challenges of providing information services to marginalized populations in an increasingly digital world. We'll examine the economic, political, and infrastructural barriers as well as learn about innovative efforts to deliver digital information to the bulk of the world's people who cannot afford conventional technologies. (Missen)
INLS 690-030: Essentials of Human Resources Management (1.5 credits)
Prerequisite: INLS 585. Provides an introduction to the management of human resources in libraries and other information agencies. This course examines the increasingly important role of human resource professionals in today’s organizations. Important HR functions such as recruitment, selection, development, appraisal, retention, and compensation, will be discussed. In addition, the impact of external factors such as legislative and court decisions, unions and globalization on HR activities will be addressed. (Moran)
INLS 690-046: Planning, Implementing, and Auditing Trusted Digital Repositories (1.5 credits) (Tibbo)
INLS 690-141: Digital Forensics for Curation of Digital Collections (3 credits)
Students will learn about hardware, software and methods used to extract digital data that have been stored on removable media (ie: hard drives, floppy disks, USB memory sticks), as well as extracting various forms of metadata to be incorporated into digital curation workflows. This course addresses common storage devices and interfaces; write-blocking equipment and its role in acquisition of data; levels of representation; basic filesystem structures; role and importance of hash values and hex views of bitstreams; and software used to conduct data acquisition.
Students will have the opportunity to use a range of state-of-the-art digital forensics hardware and (commercial and open-source) software and explore ways that they can be applied by information professionals in a variety of collecting contexts.
INLS 690-150: Creating Resources for the Digital Curation Community (1.5 credits)
(Tibbo)
INLS 690-161: Digital Library Policies (1.5 credits)
Digital libraries make assertions about the digital contents, such as arrangement, descriptive metadata, access controls, completeness, and retention. We will explore the development of policies that enforces the desired digital library properties, and apply the policies to student collections management in the LifeTime Library. Students will be able to create a collection, define policies for managing the collection, and apply the policies to their own collection. (Moore)
INLS 690-163: Introduction to Big Data and NoSQL (3 credits)
Pre-requisite: INLS 523 or equivalent. Growth in data is outstripping Moore's Law. Traditional solutions are inadequate to handle applications in Big Data. We explore problems and solutions in this area through non-traditional NoSQL databases.and data-intensive frameworks of Hadoop and Map-Reduce. Topics covered include Google's BigTable and Map-Reduce, Amazon's Dynamo, Apache's Cassandra, HBase, and Hadoop.
INLS 690-172: Usability Testing and Evaluation (3 credits)(Capra)
INLS 690-189: Social Media and Society (3 credits)(Tufecki)
INLS 690-208: Web Archiving (1.5 credits)(Yoon)
The purpose of this course is to provide knowledge of the Web as a source for archival collection development. Through lectures, analysis of Web archives, and hands on work, students will gain insight on relevant issues regarding the nature and characteristics of the Web and the use of the Web in their archival work. About half of this course will expose students to existing and emerging tools for capturing Web content, with an emphasis on laboratory practice using the current generation of Web crawlers.
INLS 690-209: Trust in Repositories (1.5 credits)
This course will look closely at the concept of trust in digital repositories from different angles. From the repositories side, the class will discuss how repositories can develop trusted digital repositories (TDRs) such as that "trusted" information can be preserved. Students will have opportunities to work with several standards and tools to assess the trustworthiness of repositories (e.g.; TRAC, DRAMBORA). The course will also address from the users' side how users of digital repositories view TDRs and why it is important. (Yoon)
INLS 690-213: Rare Book Collection Fundamentals (1.5 credits)
What is the place of rare book collections in today's landscape of knowledge and information resources? This course provides an introduction to the fundamentals of defining, developing, and administering rare book collections. Learning will be accomplished through class lectures, outside assigned readings, and the hands-on examination of books as artifacts. (Funke)
Spring 2013
INLS 089-001: First Year Seminar: Social Movements and New Media(3 credits)
INLS 490-151: Privacy by Design (3 credits)
Within organizations, the management of privacy has typically been addressed through the lens of regulatory compliance. For this reason, privacy is often confused with security, or treated as a set of static compliance practices. In recent years, the mainstreaming of ubiquitous social technologies, the widespread adoption of behavioral tracking and targeting, and the turn towards "Big Data" informatics have illustrated the challenges with, and failings for a compliance-based approach to privacy within organizations. A quick scan of the headlines will reveal these failings: large-scale data breaches, mobile apps leaking personal information, social media sites exposing users. For these failings, organizations lose esteem in the marketplace and are exposed to both civil and criminal penalties.
In recent years, the Privacy by Design movement has sought to address these failings by advocating a strong, centrally embedded role for privacy within organizations. By designing for privacy, organizations are able to maintain regulatory compliance, provide a positive experience for stakeholders, and advance competitively in a marketplace that values privacy. A central challenge of implementing the Privacy by Design approach is a lack of human capital; the goal of this course is to provided exposure and training for individuals interested in advocating for privacy within diverse organizations (e.g.; libraries, IT firms, health care, government, NGO's). In taking this course, students will be exposed to a highly interdisciplinary perspective on privacy, with readings from philosophy, economics, sociology, law and the computer and information sciences, among others. Students will learn the fundamentals of privacy, and through group-based study, analyze the application of privacy in design and policy. In doing so, students will develop a framework for understanding, implementing, and advocating for privacy within organizations.
INLS 490-186: Web Information Organization (3 credits)
This advanced information organization course focuses on understanding and using the Web as a platform for building information systems. Students will learn how the Web has been designed to be used as a service platform, a data publishing platform, and an application platform. Specific topics to be covered include: resources and representations, URIs, HTTP, MIME types, REST, microdata, microformats, the Semantic Web, Linked Data, and HTML5. Although the course will involve some programming, the focus will not be on programming Web sites but on understanding and applying the organizational principles of the Web. Students will develop a deep understanding of information architecture, not at the level of individual Web sites, but of the Web as a whole. (Shaw)
INLS 490-202: Health Information Sharing in Social Media (3 credits)
This course provides an overview of health information sharing using social media. It will cover the nature of user-generated content and types of content that are shared online, as well as examine online interactions among various parties in the health information ecosystem, such as health information consumers (i.e. patients, caregivers, family and friends), health care providers, health information services, insurance companies, and pharmaceutical. The course will also discuss benefits/drawbacks of health information exchange over social media and examine how design can affect user experience of health information exchange. It will include examples from a variety of types of social media, including social networking sites, blogs, online support groups, and Twitter.(Chen)
INLS 890-089: Information Policy and the Future of Libraries (3 credits)
The seminar will proceed in three stages: The first week will be exploratory and establish the broad range of topical interest as determined by seminar participants, laying out key definitions, stakeholders and processes; the second stage will provide depth and detail for these topics selected as a focus for the seminar and sketch the primary sources of information; the third will make explicit the ways in which libraries and information services are affected by policy considerations and suggestion directions and strategies for defining the policies that determine the future evolution of the information professions. As a major ingredient of the seminar, participants will collaborate in constructing a Wiki that reflects their research efforts and that can serve as a resource for librarians and information professionals. (Marchionini/Dillon)
INLS 890-147: Youth Services in a Diverse Society (3 credits)
The purpose of this course is to prepare students to work as youth services librarians in today’s increasingly diverse society. Students will develop a theoretical base in critical race theory (CRT) and other cross-disciplinary theories and conceptual frameworks, while they explore issues relevant to working as a Library and Information Science Professional with diverse and marginalized populations. The course includes a 30-hour service learning component that provides students with the opportunity to put their knowledge into practice by working with youth in diverse library settings. (Hughes-Hassell)
INLS 890-154: Electronic Health Records (3 credits)
Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems are the backbone of modern clinical data management systems. In this class we will focus on EHR data standards with a strong emphasis on associated data management requirements, applications, services. (Mostafa)
INLS 890-190: Information Retrieval Experiments (3 credits)
INLS 890-194: Legal Issues for Libraries (3 credits)
INLS 890-204: Seminar in Course Design (3 credits)
Students will use advanced search skills and a variety of digitization technologies to create online courses and modules. The design process will focus on repurposing found objects, harnessing born digital documents, image creation and editing, scanning, practical web design, learning management systems (e.g., Moodle), and harnessing crowd sourcing to marshal hundreds of digital resources into a cohesive package for course delivery. The topics of the course will meld subject librarianship and digital course design. (Missen)
Fall 2012
INLS 089, First Year Seminar: Social Movements and New Media
Movements ranging from uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and beyond to “Occupy” protestors in the United States have been using new media technologies to coordinate, to organize, to intervene in the public sphere as well as to document, share, and shape their own stories. Using a range of tools from Facebook to Twitter, from satellite modems to landlines to ad-hoc mesh networks, these movements have made their mark in history.
The objective of this course is to enhance our conceptual and empirical understanding of the interaction between the new media ecology and social change. We will explore various approaches to studying social movements and social change and look at specific cases.
Governments and powerful institutions are also responding to the challenge posed by the emergence of the Internet as a mundane and global technology. From increased surveillance and filtering capacity, to delivering propaganda over the Internet to their own, from “hacking” of dissident websites to sophisticated methods of censorship, governments around the world are broadening their repertoire of social, technical and legal tools for control and suppression of --and through-- the Internet.
We will explore the integration of new media tools within these movements as well governmental and institutional responses to these developments. We will also discuss the rapidly changing and contested terrain for shaping the infrastructure of global connectivity. Materials for this class will include readings, videos (not to be viewed in class but as material to be viewed), and a variety of visiting speakers (both in person and via Skype). (Tufecki)
INLS 490-046, Data Management and Curation (3 credits)
This class will explore the full range of data curation lifecycle activities starting with the design of good data, through content creator management, metadata creation, ingest into a repository, repository management, access policies and implementation, and data reuse. Speakers from the arts, humanities, social sciences, and sciences will discuss data requirements in their fields and data curators will discuss challenges and current best practices as well as resource allocators. Data management plans for various funders such as NSF and NIH will be explored and federal funders will join in this discussion. (Tibbo)
INLS ;490-161, Building a Personal Digital Library (3 credits)
This class will prepare students to implement their own personal digital LifeTime Library. The collection that is assembled at SILS will be maintained throughout their academic career, and will be available for migration to their own laptop when they graduate. Topics covered will include: creation of a personal digital library including organization of the material, creation of descriptive metadata, management of the collection, and sharing of the collection.
The LifeTiime Library will be based on the integrated Rule-Oriented Data System (iRODS). The iRODS software implements policy-based data management. Up to 250Gigabytes of storage space will be provided for each student. During the course, we will investigate choice of user interface, automation of digital library management functions, enforcement of management policies, and assessment of collection properties. Students will be able to use the LifeTime Library to manage class material, organize multi-media material, archive personal data collections, and share selected material.
Students will be asked to test the digital library, help evaluate the functionality, and generate ideas for improving the system. Students are encouraged to think of themselves as the innovators in the development of digital libraries that will be used by other students. (Moore)
INLS 490-172, Personal Information Management (3 credits)
Personal Information Management (PIM) is the study of how people organize and manage information in their daily lives, including to-do lists, calendars, email, address books, and file management. In today's digital age, many devices including cell phones, computers, PDAs, and music players play a role in PIM. This course will focus on major issues in PIM research, including information organization, human cognitive and memory issues, task continuity across devices, mental models of information, usability issues, and the role of technology in PIM. The course will be structured as a readings and discussion seminar with a semester-long research project. Students will become familiar with current PIM research and will design and implement a research study of PIM. Students will also prepare "a day in the life of my PIM" presentations to share aspects of their own personal information management techniques and challenges and to stimulate classroom discussion. (Capra)
INLS 490-188, User Experience Design (3 credits)
This course will provide an overview of user experience (UX) design. We will cover some of the basic concepts and techniques used to create useful and purposeful information systems, as well as the basic process for leading such projects. This course is practical in nature, and focuses on how people will interact with information systems. The outcome of the design process is a series of blueprints for the system. We will not discuss how to build systems, but rather, you will learn about how to shape strategy and structure design in order to empower end users, and as a result, create good business for the project’s stakeholders. (Velasco-Martin)
INLS 490-189, Social Media and Society: A Theoretical and Empirical Overview (3 credits)
This course examines the increasingly important technologies of connectivity from a theoretical and empirical perspective. We will explore the evolution, implications and complications of social media in multiple spheres of life including sociality, community, politics, power and inequality, education, knowledge, and information. Our emphasis will not be on any one current platform (such as Facebook or Twitter) or even a particular device. Rather, we will study how different configurations of connectivity encourage or stifle different socio-cultural practices and values. This course will provide conceptual and methodological foundations for studying and evaluating current and future developments in this area. (Tufekci)
INLS 890-186, Making the Humanities Digital (3 credits)
What can you do with digital libraries and archives? This seminar will examine how and why humanist scholars are turning to computational tools to "distantly read" digital texts. Topics to be investigated include: the creation of digital texts, computational methods and tools for the study of digital texts, visualization of textual relationships, interdisciplinary work in the humanities, and critiques of the digital humanities. Implications for libraries and archives and museums will be emphasized throughout.
The course will meet once a week and will be organized as two parallel threads. The first half of each meeting will be devoted to discussing readings and developing an understanding of the theoretical, philosophical, and political dimensions of the topics. The second half will be devoted to hands-on work, using and making tools for humanistic exploration of digital texts. Interested or skeptical graduate students in the humanities, information and library science, and computer science are all encouraged to participate. (Shaw)
INLS 490-040: Information From Processes (3 credits)
A discipline approach to studying information will examine information in a variety of contexts. The emphasis will be on the rigorous examination of how information is produced by processes. Certain domains and types of processes will be emphasized, such as coding, secrecy, representation, natural language, and the economic value of information. The main text will be Information from Processes (available online through Davis Library) with other supplemental readings. (Losee)
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