"In an era of mass digitization of physical artifacts, and mass creation of born-digital objects, the challenges faced by cultural heritage institutions of all types are increasingly shared," writes SILS associate professor Jeffrey Pomerantz in his introduction to the 2011 winter issue of the Journal of Education for Library and Information Science (JELIS).
"Since the advent of the Web it has become increasingly obvious that libraries, archives and museums are doing similar work. These institutions have come to realize that they increasingly share overlapping education goals."
As the issue's guest editor, Pomerantz was charged with selecting scholarly articles that deal with the issue's primary theme: "Digital Library and Digital Curation Curricula."
Published quarterly by the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE), JELIS serves as the primary venue for the publication of research articles, reviews and brief communciations about issues of interest to LIS educators.
The issue contains articles on topics such as museum informatics' relationship to curriculm development, digital curation for digital natives, strategies to identify and respond to the needs of disaffected students, virtual environments and their implications in the classroom and a comparative evaluation of information and library science educators' level of competence expectations with respect to database management.
"At a time when both the profession and the pedagogy of LIS are changing rapidly, we hope that these articles will inspire readers to engage in some creative curriculum design," writes Pomerantz at the conclusion of the issue's introduction.
The current issue will be followed by a second special issue devoted to the same topic (Digital Library and Digital Curation Curricula) in the spring of 2011.
