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Management of Digital Information (MDI)

Management of Digital Information (MDI). Xia Lin Drexel University Philadelphia, PA. Preparing Faculty in Management of Digital Information (MDI). The IMLS project at Drexel Recruit and prepare future faculty members whose research and teaching will impact various MDI areas.

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Management of Digital Information (MDI)

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  1. Management of Digital Information (MDI) Xia Lin Drexel University Philadelphia, PA

  2. Preparing Faculty in Management of Digital Information (MDI) • The IMLS project at Drexel • Recruit and prepare future faculty members whose research and teaching will impact various MDI areas. • Enhance the doctoral curriculum with MDI focus. • Develop a model of interdisciplinary training for doctoral students in the areas of MDI and DL.

  3. MDI • The central issue of digital libraries is digital information organization and management. • Building collections of digital materials • Creating metadata and other advanced indexing schemas • Providing access to a variety of digital resources • Understanding user’s information needs in the digital environment

  4. Online MLS program on MDI • Completely online. • Training students to design and use library and information resources in a wide variety of settings • digital librarian, • knowledge management specialist, • systems librarian, • Internet content librarian, • competitive intelligence analyst, • web developer.

  5. Skills and Knowledge for MDI Students • Knowledge of established technologies • And hand-on technical skills • Understanding of emerging technologies • Competencies in both technical and public services. • People and management skills • Comfortable with the digital environment.

  6. Elective Courses for MDI • INFO608 Human Computer Interaction • INFO622 Content Representation • INFO624 Information Retrieval • INFO652 Internet Information Resource Design • INFO653 Digital Libraries • INFO780 Information Architecture

  7. MDI Online is Popular

  8. Moving MDI to the Doctoral Program • The PhD program has grown from 12 active part time students in 1999 to 57 this year with 18 of those being part-time. • The leadership of the College • The growth of sponsored research • The size of the faculty doubled • More Ph.D. students major in “Information Systems” than “Information Sciences” • They are all required to take two foundation courses • Topics in Information Systems • Topics in Information Science

  9. Current IMLS Project • Recruitment of five IMLS fellows for doctoral study • Educate them with a solid foundation of digital information organizing • Provide them with opportunities to observe and participate MDI/DL education and research. • Prepare them to teach MDI/DL courses upon their graduation.

  10. Recruitment Activities • Prepared a recruitment brochure • Mailed to all Drexel LIS alumni from the classes of 1985 to 2004 • Distributed in several conferences • ASIS annual conference • ALISE • Information Architecture • ALA LITA • Information Visualization • Mailed to all the deans/directors of ALA accredited schools.

  11. Recruitment Activities • Electronic dissemination • LISTSERVs, • AFAS-L, ASIST, BLACKLIB, Diversity-L, Reforma • discussion boards • ACRL, LITA • Website postings • The Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute • UNESCO Libraries Portal • Our own Web sites

  12. Which one is more effective? • Brochure • Electronic distribution • Web site • ? • Brochure seems to be the winner!

  13. Feedback of Recruitment • Generated a lot of interest • Got a lot of inquiries • “I’m glad you are working on this” • Broadened the general awareness of our MLS and Ph.D. program

  14. Recruitment Results • We got five students with diverse backgrounds and interest • One with more than 10 year’s library-related work experience • One from a under represented minority group • One with a CS Master (all others with MLS) • All are extremely interested in working/researching in digital environment.

  15. Recruitment • Much difficult than we thought • Among the first three offers, two were declined. • Difficult to find a good balance of LIS background and technical background. • Not able to get any good working “systems librarians” to come to the Ph.D. program. • Very difficult for them to give up their jobs to accept the fellowship. • Doctoral study is a long time commitment.

  16. Next Step • Developing a foundation course on MDI for the Ph.D. program • IMLS fellows are required to take it; others are encouraged to take it. • It will focus on theoretical underpinnings of digital information organizing. • Students will be required to participate in real world digital libraries projects. • Working with the University Library and Philadelphia Free Library to implement this.

  17. Theoretical underpinnings of MDI? • Information organizing principles • Traditional indexing and cataloging rules and how they might be transferred to the digital environment. • From Metadata to Knowledge representation • From thesaurus to Ontology to Semantic Web • Information Use in the Digital environment • How digital collections are built and used? • Citation patterns/link patterns in the digital environment • User-centered Information Organizing • Personalized information access • Social indexing

  18. Questions and Discussion?

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