The course offers education, not training, in the automation of information delivery. It considers underlying principles, and theories-- some scientific, some social or moral, and some legal-- that may be brought to bear on any problem or issue of relating to this topic.
The course addresses three main areas: Traditional Library Automation, Systems Theory, and Information Systems.
In the last 30-40 years most of the functions of a traditional library -- including circulation, acquisition, serials, and cataloging-- have become automated. We look at what is involved in this.
Organizations like libraries have sometimes been seen as purposive systems with such features as goals or missions, inputs, outputs, an environment, and a controlling subsystem. This view sees a library as being merely a more complex form of a standard 'hard' system, essentially just like an air-conditioner which reacts and adjusts to changing conditions to produce the desired goal or mission. Hard systems theory, though widely influential, has been a disaster in use in management. Some critics have noticed that organizations like libraries are actually 'human-activity' systems in which many of the components are humans with consciousness, free-will, and each with their own views of the systems and the world. Human beings make a big difference. This has led to a 'soft systems' approach to organizations. Soft systems theory has been widely influential in Europe (though there are some that prefer to replace it with 'critical theory').
We will consider hard, soft, and critical systems theory, and the
methodologies arising from them.
The third area looks at the problem of how to design and implement a public information system (to meet diverse information needs). This will be conceived of not so much as a technical problem of computers, disk drives, and the like, but rather more of a socio-cultural one concerned with just exactly what you are trying to achieve with such a system.
In the past, libraries, in one of their roles, have been such systems. Future systems will be different in form to the traditional library, as there will be a shift from a books-in-buildings model to one of distributed electronic sources. Many issues arise. In addition to the technical and design problems, there are ethical and legal questions (concerning, for example, ownership, copyright, authentication, ...)
We may look at some of the following topics
For more information, contact Martin Frické