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Special Topic Courses

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 links on the right menu to see availability.

Special Topic Course Descriptions: Spring 2025

Advanced Qualitative Methods: Conducting Grounded Theory

Tripodi, Francesca | INLS 890-290 | 3 credits

This graduate-level course offers an in-depth exploration of grounded theory, a systematic methodology in the social sciences involving the construction of theories through systematic data gathering and analysis. Designed for students who have already developed a research question and proposal, this course will guide them through the practical and theoretical aspects of grounded theory, enabling them to apply this methodology to their research projects.

Community Archives

Chassanoff, Alexandra | INLS 690-323 | 3 credits

This course explores the concepts and practice of community archives, which can be loosely defined as collections of material(s) documenting one or many aspects of community heritage, collected and/or preserved by that community and its members. In addition to learning core concepts, theories, frameworks, and histories associated with community archives, students will also apply this knowledge to consider how community archivists implement collections in a variety of settings.

Design for Accessibility

Payne, William | INLS 690-324 | 3 credits

In this course, students will learn how to design interventions that can be used by people with diverse sensory, motor, and cognitive abilities. Students will encounter models of disability, accessible design frameworks, and common access technologies through readings and hands-on activities. Students will form teams and work with community partners to address a real-world need.

Disabilities, Libraries, and Information Science

Manzo, Robert | INLS 690-239 | 3 credits

This course introduces students to scholarly and public discussions about disability that are led by people with disabilities themselves. As information professionals, one of our responsibilities is to design services and/or research projects that improve the lives of people with disabilities.  An effective, ethical way of generating design ideas is to directly consult the people who will be affected by what we do. In this course, therefore, we focus on how disability is theorized in the interdisciplinary field of Disability Studies (DS) and, too, how disability is narrated in various forms of life-writing (e.g., memoir, autobiography) and spoken testimony. Secondarily, we also take a look at studies (old and new) on the information needs and behaviors of people with disabilities. Our end goal is to re-think what disability means and, by doing so, improve our professional practice to become more creative, ethical, and responsible.

Distributed Knowledge Graphs II: Construction and Maintenance

Shaw, Ryan | INLS 690-186 | 3 credits

This is a practice-based course in which we will build and maintain a knowledge graph for an external “client.” Students will get hands-on experience working with real data and building reliable processes for enriching, interlinking, and publishing it on the Web. INLS 620 or equivalent familiarity with the Resource Description Framework (RDF), the SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language (SPARQL), and the Web Ontology Language (OWL) is required for registration.

The Idea of AI

Fox, Michael | INLS 490-308 | 3 credits

This course revolves around the very idea of artificial intelligence, or AI. It covers such topics as: intelligence, understanding, and intentionality in the context of AI and various types thereof; speculative philosophy and ethics of AI given relaxed definitions of these concepts; the philosophical implications of merging with AI; and the creative representation of AI in literature and film. We will engage with leading philosophers and ethicists in the field, both contemporary and historical, reflect on stories by Isaac Asimov and Harlan Ellison, and critique the films 2001: A Space Odyssey and Her. We will also explore what some consider to be myths about AI. Overall, this course will teach you how to think critically about AI from philosophical, ethical, and imaginative perspectives.

The Information Exposome

Marchionini, Gary | INLS 690-089 | 3 credits

This seminar will examine the roles that information play in the lives of individuals and on society, and how our interactions with electronic information systems create a mutually reinforcing cycle of influence in our lives.  The evolving confluence of our needs to find and generate information and the social and behavioral consequences of our interactions with information systems is a new kind of exposome—the information exposome that has increasingly strong effects on our lives.

Information Matters: Intro to Information Science

Marchionini, Gary | INLS 490-089 | 3 credits

This course introduces students to fundamental concepts of information science and considers skills and strategies for finding, managing, evaluating, and using information in academic, professional, and personal contexts.  Information roles in professional life and trends in information technology are explored.

Financial Information Literacy

Ogburn, Joyce | INLS 490-285 | 1.5 credits

This course combines conceptual and realistic frameworks with information and tools to provide a foundation for life-long financial literacy. It applies the principles and techniques of information literacy to identify and explore relevant information sources. Topics to be covered include budgeting, saving, managing debt, banking, investing and stock markets, interest rates, renting and buying, insurance, risk management, taxation, estate planning, documentation and record keeping, being a consumer, and using calculators, tools, and AI in financial planning. These topics are placed within the larger framework of short- and long-term planning, behavioral economics, decision making, identifying values, goal setting, having critical conversations, and career development. In class exercises promote the application and discussion of key ideas. Students keep a financial journal throughout the semester. The class culminates in a 3-5 year financial plan that includes a budget, a summary of what is learned from journaling, financial values, risk tolerance, goals, and a detailed evaluation of relevant information resources. The outcome of the course will be both a plan and body of knowledge to underpin future learning and decision making.

Information Professionals in the Makerspace

Melo, Marijel | INLS 690-276  | 3 credits

Despite the increasing popularity of makerspaces across the U.S., there still remains little formal preparation or classroom training for emerging information professionals to design and run makerspaces. This course seeks to narrow that gap with a curriculum dedicated to making, makerspaces, and the information professional. In this course, students will critically engage with the conceptualization of the makerspace in a “T-shaped” manner. Vertically, students will develop a deeply practical, critical, and theoretical understanding of the makerspace and its remarkable adoption rate in libraries and communities across the U.S.; horizontally, students will develop a wide-range of technical skills in areas such as fabrication (laser cutting, 3D printing, and sewing), circuitry (paper circuits, electronic textiles, and soldering), reality (XR: AR/VR/MR), and micro-computing. At the end of the course, students will have engaged with a variety of topics including how to staff a makerspace, equity and inclusion, and ways to navigate ethical issues in makerspaces.

Real-time Data Science in the Makerspace

Melo, Maggie and Rajasekar, Arcot | INLS 490-001 | 3 credits

Data science is changing the way we do science, business and even everyday life. Data science spans multiple disciplines, and applies scientific methods, processes, algorithms and systems to extract knowledge and insights from structured and unstructured data. In this course, we are particularly interested in collecting and applying real-time data to gain insights and knowledge about environmental and ecological phenomenon around us. Realtime data from multiple sensors can be fused and analyzed to get a deeper understanding of micro-climates including those in and around buildings and communities. In this course, students will posit research questions about enviro-sensing, build sensor systems for gathering multiple-types of real-time data in order to test their hypothesis. Students will develop or refine existing skills working with fabrication technologies often found in makerspaces such as 3D printing, laser cutting, and sewing. Students will also gain experience in managing data life-cycles by developing data pipelines to gather, store, and analyze data to effectively extract and visualize useful information.

Storytelling: Designing Your Professional Narrative

Sturm, Brian | INLS 490-087 | 3 credits

This course will help you design and refine your professional communication skills to increase the engaging power of your self-presentation, particularly during interviews and other professional settings. We will focus on three aspects of your professional skills repertoire: how to analyze the “story” of the organization in which you want to work (corporate narratives), how you assess your own skills and develop an associated professional narrative, and how you merge those two in the moment of the interview or other professional context. It is a performance class, so expect to be doing a lot of presenting in front of the class and in small groups. Feedback will focus on those presentations to push you to increase the emotional value and intensity of your self-presentation.

Systematically Searching and Analyzing Scholarly Publications

Yu, Fei | INLS 890-267 | 3 credits

Due to the exponential growth of research publications, searching, identifying, and analyzing highly relevant research articles for a topic has become a fundamental but challenging skill for anyone in the research ecosystem. This course is designed to prepare students to participate in research activities by adopting a systematic approach to identifying and reviewing literatures for a topic of interest.

This course will cover (1) how to construct search queries and systematically search in both proprietary and free accessible citation databases (e.g., Dimensions, Scopus, & PubMed) as well as grey literatures; (2) how to effectively manage search results using selected reference management systems and apply software and automated tools for screening; (3) how to implement both basic and advanced bibliometrics measures and tools to analyze publications for quick insights. Particularly, a set of literature review management tools, bibliometric or network applications, and data visualization tools will be introduced, including Covidence, Dimensions/Scopus analytics, VOSViewer, and Tableau.

This course is project-driven, which not only serves for general research purposes but also provides a hands-on opportunity for those who are interested in developing a literature/scoping/systematic review or bibliometric study to survey the research landscape in a science domain. Therefore, students are encouraged to bring a work-in-progress (e.g., a paper or a thesis) and use this class as an opportunity to get to an acceptable level of progress on completing the literature/scoping review/systematic review. This course is particularly pertinent to students interested in research methods and visualizing data from areas/schools where systematic review searching is embedded in curricula and/or capstone projects, thesis, and dissertations (e.g., School of Public Health and School of Nursing).