Specializations

The Kent State University MLIS program offers courses that fall within 7 cluster areas and 19 associated pathways.

During my time in the Kent State University MLIS program, I specialized in the Museum Studies pathway, with a secondary focus on courses related to the Information & Knowledge Organization cluster area, especially those related to the Cataloging & Metadata and the Museum Documentation & Cultural Object Cataloging career pathways.

Museum Studies

The Museum Studies pathway is one of three pathways associated with the Cultural Heritage Informatics & Stewardship cluster area within Kent State University's MLIS program.

Museum Studies Pathway

There is no agreed-upon single word to describe all museum workers. For lack of that word, here we use museum professional. But this field-wide disagreement perhaps arises because there is not one profession, but several museal professions that consist of a range of activities undertaken in a museum (e.g., collections work, administration, visitor services, exhibit design). In this program, we approach the education of museum professionals in a holistic way, from a museological perspective, that provides education in the whole range of activities, skills, and theory about/in museums. This is done in the broader context of information science, rather than from a specific content area; that is, the framework is from LIS but specific knowledge and skills are museum-focused. Students are taught within a broader context, one that understands that LIS is about the interaction of people and information and this foundation cuts across all types of information institutions and information work. The intent of this specialization is to embed and integrate the thinking and training across information institutions such as libraries, museums, and archives. For this reason, there are many pathways a student can take that includes museum studies.

Cultural Heritage Informatics & Stewardship Cluster Area

Cultural heritage informatics (CHI) is an emerging field of interdisciplinary research and practice concerned with the role of information and computing technologies (ICTs) to support the creation, capture, organization, and pluralization of culture, in whatever form, as heritage.

Cultural heritage stewardship encompasses numerous allied disciplines including archival studies, librarianship, preservation of heritage materials, and museum studies. They share a common goal of the protection of cultural heritage in all forms, both tangible and intangible.

While there is a focus on existing data, datasets, and metadata and ways to link them, CHI also necessarily includes identification and exploration into appraisal, data capture, preservation, data processing, curation, forensics and reconstruction, visualization, documentation, access and discoverability, as well as development of innovative technologies to empower and support engagement with ICTs as tools for communication and remembering of culture.

Descriptions for the Museum Studies Pathway and the Cultural Heritage Informatics & Stewardship Cluster Area were retrieved from the iSchool website

2023_Revision_Museum Studies Pathway.pdf

Museum Studies Pathway Advising Sheet

Information & Knowledge Organization

Information & Knowledge Organization Cluster Area

Information and Knowledge Organization (IKO) is concerned with the standards, processes, practices, and associated technologies for representation and organization of information objects for future access, use, and discoverability in any environment.

There are a number of career paths within the information organization domain. You can select one or can combine more than one to create your plan of study. These include career paths in:

Archival Description
Cataloging & Metadata
Metadata Design and Architecture
Museum Documentation and Cultural Object Cataloging
Taxonomies, Ontologies, and Semantic Analysis

Description retrieved from the iSchool website

Cataloging & Metadata Pathway

Information professionals responsible for the representation of resources of all types in libraries, digital libraries, special collections, and other information settings. This includes the areas of bibliographic and metadata creation; database maintenance; authority work and vocabulary construction; and bibliographic and authority data processing, analysis, and visualizations. Whether cataloging in a library environment or creating metadata in any environment, cataloging and metadata professionals will be familiar with:

Resource description theory and practices.
Relevant description standards, such as Resource Description and Access (RDA), Cataloging Cultural Objects (CCO), and Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS).
Metadata schemas, including DCMI Metadata Terms (Dublin Core), Visual Resource Association Core (VRA Core), Encoded Archival Description (EAD), Data Catalog Vocabulary (DCAT), etc.
Linked data principles.

They will be familiar with categorization, classification, and representation theories, and knowledge organization systems (KOS), including classification schemas, subject vocabularies, name authority files, and genre terminology. In addition, they will be familiar with record structures, frameworks, and encoding schemas, such as MARC 21, BIBFRAME, EAD, VRA, and DCterms, expressed in RDF, XML, and other standard formats.

Museum Documentation & Cultural Object Cataloging Pathway

Information professionals engaged in describing and documenting works of art, architecture, cultural artifacts, and images of these objects. These professionals are responsible for keeping accurate information about the objects in their care, including items in museum collections, visual resources collections, archives, and libraries, with a primary emphasis on cultural objects. Among other responsibilities, professionals may be inputting data about new acquisitions, researching images for catalogues, developing online guides, working as museum registrar, or collections manager. Documentation is essential to all aspects of a museum's activities. Collections without adequate documentation are not true "museum" collections.

Descriptions for the Cataloging & Metadata pathway and the Museum Documentation & Cultural Object Cataloging pathway were retrieved from the Information & Knowledge Organization document from the iSchool website included below:

2023_Revision_IKO Pathway.pdf

Information & Knowledge Organization Advising Sheet

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