Study-Unit Description

Study-Unit Description


CODE LIA2325

 
TITLE Information Organization and Management

 
UM LEVEL 02 - Years 2, 3 in Modular Undergraduate Course

 
MQF LEVEL 5

 
ECTS CREDITS 4

 
DEPARTMENT Library Information and Archive Sciences

 
DESCRIPTION Organizing our lives and world is a common and necessary activity for individuals and institutions alike. In institutional contexts, we must organize records and information to facilitate and support operations, transactions, and relationships. In individual contexts, we must organize physical things, from kitchen cutlery to clothing, and digital things, from social media friends and posts and music files.

Yet, organizing is such a common activity that it is often done without systematic approaches or reflections. When organizing is taken for granted, challenges and inconveniences arise; however, when organizing is conducted in clear, structured, and routine ways, benefits and conveniences are realized. In many cases, especially in our daily lives, we often do not recognize that we are engaging in organizing practices – of organization, discovery, access and retrieval – and, in so doing, creating organizing systems (OS).

An OS is an intentionally arranged collection of resources and the interactions they support. Any set of resources, regardless of how heterogeneous – from records in offices to data in repositories, from cutlery in kitchens to boats in marinas, from songs on a smartphone to animals in a zoo – must be intentionally selected, organized, and managed to be useful and used, discoverable and retrievable, organized and managed. Thus, any ‘thing’ – record, fork, boat, song, animal, whatever – is transformed by an OS into a resource when it is described, arranged, and used to enable interactions with it. Any OS typically follow a common life cycle of resource selection, organizing, interaction design, and maintenance.

An OS is the foundation of all information management governance programs and systems. An OS unifies and integrates two previously, and erroneously, separated concepts and practices of information organization (IO) and information retrieval (IR). Although the organization of resources is fundamental to library, information, and archival sciences, it is a central issue for many institutions and professional fields employing different organizational strategies and descriptive vernacular.

This study-unit examines some of an OS’s main principles, characteristics, structures, and services. It explores some of the activities common to all organizing systems regardless of their nature or focus, whether public library or online search engine like Google, including identifying resources, organizing resources, designing structures and interactions, and managing resources. This study-unit therefore explores the significance of an OS for all institutions and individuals regardless of nature, scope, structure, or mandate.

Study-unit Aims:

The aim of this study-unit is to introduce the contextual foundation of information management through the disciplinary lens and framework of organizing systems for diverse institutional and individual settings. Its OS perspective provides a holistic information management approach spanning disciplinary silos and avoiding field‐limited terminology, while building the critical skills of resource organization and management.

Thus, this study-unit will provide: (i) an understanding of the principles, purposes, and roles of organizing systems, and (ii) a critical foundation upon which to base one’s knowledge and practice of the organization of information resources and systems that can be applied to various individual to institutional settings, from personal files, official records, and scholarly databases to libraries, archives, and administrations of all stripes.

Learning Outcomes:

1. Knowledge & Understanding
By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to:

• Demonstrate knowledge of the core concepts and principles of organizing systems, and by extension, information organization;
• Describe and analyze an OS and its main activities, characteristics, and principles in various settings, from a public library to an online search engine to a kitchen cabinet;
• Compare and contrast how organizing occurs in different contexts and domains;
• Ability to identify common principles of and design patterns for organizing activities and systems;
• Analyze, and distinguish among or between, different organizing systems and their various contexts;
• Design, select, and apply appropriate organizing systems for different kinds of purposes and settings;
• Perform assessments and evaluations of organizing systems for the needs of their particular context;
• Employ some foundational ideas and theoretical tools in Library and Information Science for further analytical, research, and managerial practices.

2. Skills
By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to:

• Apply the conceptual and practical tools offered by the OS framework to inform and guide records and information management and governance activities, initiatives, and projects;
• Apply analytical, assessment, and evaluation skills to the design, selection, implementation, management, and governance of different kinds of organizing systems such as information systems;
• Design, explain, apply, manage, assess, and report on organizing systems and their governance, structures, operations, management, and maintenance for diverse settings;
• Establish policies and procedures for the life cycle of organizing systems including resource selection, organization, interaction design, maintenance, and review;
• Illustrate, both conceptually and practically, how organizing assumes diverse forms even when the underlying principles remain the same;
• Select appropriate approaches to organizing information in different types of environments.

Main Text/s and any supplementary readings:

Main Text:

- Franks, Patricia C. (2013). Records and Information Management. London: Facet Publishing.
- G- lushko, Robert J. (2013/2016). The Discipline of Organizing. Cambridge, MT: The MIT Press.

 
STUDY-UNIT TYPE Lecture

 
METHOD OF ASSESSMENT
Assessment Component/s Assessment Due Sept. Asst Session Weighting
Presentation (20 Minutes) SEM1 Yes 50%
Assignment SEM1 Yes 50%

 
LECTURER/S Marc Kosciejew

 

 
The University makes every effort to ensure that the published Courses Plans, Programmes of Study and Study-Unit information are complete and up-to-date at the time of publication. The University reserves the right to make changes in case errors are detected after publication.
The availability of optional units may be subject to timetabling constraints.
Units not attracting a sufficient number of registrations may be withdrawn without notice.
It should be noted that all the information in the description above applies to study-units available during the academic year 2023/4. It may be subject to change in subsequent years.

https://www.um.edu.mt/course/studyunit