| Class Description | This course focuses on the concept of the digital data and digital library (DL) along a number of
dimensions: (1) definitional dimension (what is and what is not digital data and digital library), (2) technical dimension (designing and building digital libraries that store, organize, and manage digital data), (3) service dimension (infrastructure and services supporting the use of digital data and digital libraries for various purposes), and (4) social/political/legal dimension (what external forces will shape digital libraries). The
course will examine matters including representation of information in digital libraries, existing and emerging mechanisms for retrieval, and the political and legal forces that may shape the digital library environment. Students will incorporate these lessons into a term-long project – the planning and design of their own digital libraries.
This course will give students a thorough grounding for understanding, evaluating and working with a
wide variety of digital libraries. This is a distance course with individual assignments that give students opportunities to investigate some of the specific issues surrounding digital libraries. Guest lectures, class exercises and discussions, short papers and a term-long project will provide experiences and learning opportunities for pursuing topics in greater depth and gaining proficiency in understanding and communicating technical and pragmatic issues surrounding digital libraries. Students will be provided with a format for designing their own digital libraries, using lessons learned in class readings, lectures and
discussions. Students completing this course will possess their own project plan for a digital library that will be suitable for implementation either in other IST courses, or in their professional settings
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