This course explores the critical issues, practices, and evolving trends in the management of cartographic and geospatial data collections and services. It provides an in-depth examination of the roles librarians, archivists, and other information professionals play in the context of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), with a focus on both academic and government environments. The course also touches on GIS applications in the private sector, non-profits, and community-based initiatives.

This course builds on the body of theories, methods, and practices introduced in INF1330H and INF2175H. By drawing on the principles, concepts, and methods of diplomatics, an old archival discipline specialized in the form and function of documents created in business contexts, the first part of the course will uncover the physical and intellectual articulation of traditional records, both paper-based and electronic. Digital preservation issues, with particular regard to establishing and protecting the authenticity of electronic records, will be discussed at the end of this first part.

This course builds upon and extends concepts, themes, and theories ARM students were introduced to through INF 1330H. Through a focus on archival reciprocity, accountability, collaboration, and consultation this course introduces students to the field of community archiving and will explore the unique relationships that are formed between archives and the communities they both serve and represent. In particular, this course will explore the discourse of ‘community’ within the archival studies field with an eye to how it shapes and constrains particular modes of practice and process. Through a focus on both community-based and institutional archival practice, this course will prepare students for the unique ethical challenges of building non-extractive, reciprocal relations with source communities. Throughout the term we will be studying a range of archival projects and practices and we will hear from community archives workers and researchers involved in a range of localized archiving projects. By the end of term, students will have developed a nuanced and sophisticated understanding of the unique challenges and opportunities afforded by community-based archival work and practice.

This course can be used to fulfil the "Critical Perspectives" Professional Requirement.

This course (INF2108H — Digital Archives for Minoritized Material: Ethics and Praxis) will introduce students to the emerging field of digital research ethics, including ethical protocols for the online publication of non-digital materials in a scholarly archive or other collection and for the use and collecting of born-digital materials in our research. In particular, the course will model intersectional decolonizing, queer, transgender, feminist and anti-racist justice frameworks and methods that prioritize accountability to the communities whose materials are being collected and/or published as a significant component of scholarly rigor. For scholars and information professionals committed to a justice-oriented digital research ethics is of prominent concern today in the intersecting fields of information studies, digital humanities and digital media studies.

Exclusion: INF2308H: Special Topics in Information: Digital Archives For Minoritized Material: Ethics and Praxis

This course can be used to fulfil the "Critical Perspectives" Professional Requirement.

Explores the theoretical underpinnings and practical applications of information literacy courses and programs offered by librarians, archivists and other information professionals. Discusses the meaning of information literacy and its centrality to personal and societal development; critically appraises national and international standards and models for information literacy; explores teaching and learning theories and strategies; creates lessons plans and incorporates appropriate instructional technologies; explores theories and methods for assessment of learners, and evaluation of instructors, courses and programs.

Audio Cultures introduces students to critical studies of sound mediation and representation, including audio technologies, music performance and recording, and audio circulation, interpretation, and preservation. Specific course topics may include radio, podcasting, oral knowledge traditions and practices, new technologies and musical creativity, politics of noise and urban environments, voice commands and interfaces, AI voices and machine listening, and other aspects of mediated sound within information cultures.

Students will learn how to interpret sound as potential and actual information and consider its ethical and political dimensions. They will also discuss how oral, audio, and musical practices relate to art, memory, and heritage. Finally, they will reflect on the institutions where oral cultures are collected, kept, displayed, archived, performed, or developed and which provide access to knowledge. Course materials will draw from a range of audio cultures, past and present, including marginalized audio cultures within and beyond North America.

This course can be used to fulfill the "Critical Perspectives" Professional Requirement.

This course will introduce students to the professional practice of data librarianship and the unique service delivery models used for different audiences and their information environments: students and researchers in academic libraries and stakeholders and decision-makers in public libraries, government information services, and corporate business information centres. Each service model will be explored to build an understanding of how data assets are managed based on organizational purpose.

Topics will include the research data management lifecycle, data reference services, data collection and management in public libraries, and how data is used operationally in special libraries and corporate information environments. Data stewardship, governance, policy and privacy issues, and communities of practice will also be addressed. The course will take the form of lectures and in-classroom exercises that simulate real-life practice.

An introductory course in preservation issues covering both restoration of the artifact and preservation of content. Topics include composition and manufacture of paper, principles and ethics of restoration; restoration methods; archival conservation practices; rare book conservation practices; preservation microfilming, theory and practice; national and international preservation filming efforts; mass deacidification; organization, administration and funding of preservation efforts; new document substrates; and, emergency and disaster planning.

The application of theory in addressing the practical problems of developing archival programs and services in national and international archival systems. The focus is on how the essential functions of any archives are translated into practice in the context of national and international systems.

This course examines the creation, curation, conservation, and preservation of digital materials in both the public and private sectors and enables students to develop an appreciation of the principles of management of digital information in the context of digital longevity. Students gain an understanding of the organizational, technical, social, and economic challenges encountered when enabling the long-term availability of digital materials.

This course can be used to fulfil the "Technical" Professional Requirement.

Following Foucault and others, we can think of surveillance as a discursive technique which produces knowledge and identities. Surveillance infrastructures infiltrate and mediate everyday life. For example, internet “cookies,” shopping loyalty cards, and mobile phone numbers all individuate and identify us. These identifiers are used to index databases recording our web surfing activities, our movements, and our purchases.

Examines discourses, practices, and understandings of ‘diversity’ (and related notions) past demographics or other visible characteristics. Emphasis will be on cultivating a values-based diversity mindset, along with a critical reflection on the choices and values embedded in the design and use of information, its institutions, and its technologies; how these might be translated across different sectors (e.g., libraries, archives, museums, networked organizations, professional associations and major international organizations active in this area), and across different cultural contexts. Examples of issues addressed include: diversity of professional roles, practices, communities served; diversity considerations in preservation and digitization; diversity in the workforce; diversity as intellectual freedom; diversity as engine of competitiveness.

The purpose of this course is to study the impact of cultural diversity on the development of the public library as an information and cultural resources institution. It covers issues affecting the planning, organization and delivery mechanisms of multicultural resources, services and programs, including demographics and their relation to multicultural policies and planning; approaches to service delivery; collection development practices; impact of technology on information and access; staff competencies and user education programs; and communicating with and engaging the multicultural community.

This course can be used to fulfil the "Critical Perspectives" Professional Requirement

An overview of the theories and methods of collection development that situates public and academic libraries within the broad framework of the publishing industry. Covers issues relevant to the selection of print and electronic resources, with an emphasis on alternative literatures and independent presses. Discusses topics relevant to the management of collections, including policy formulation, the acquisitions process, vendor agreements, budgets, qualitative and quantitative evaluation techniques, liaison activities, withdrawal of materials, and collaborations.

A critical examination of the development and popularity of the comic book and graphic novel, the course will focus on the history, interpretation, collection, and consumption of these texts within a particular focus on: 1) library collection and acquisition and 2) textual and visual literacy. Through an investigation of the existing research, this seminar explores: how different audiences interpret the medium, the implications for how we read a text, how these materials redefine current attitudes towards youth and adult literacy, and how these attitudes affect collections development policies.

We will also examine the current state of the comics industry and how new digital applications increase access to these materials. As a result, the way readers interact with this highly visual medium changes. In the final week, we focus in-depth on a particular comic book genre and examine its role in the library setting and its popularity with North American readers.

This course examines the negative and positive unanticipated consequences of information technology at the individual, organizational, and societal levels. Students will learn to recognize these impacts, understand their causes, predict their future trends, and develop proactive measures to mitigate harmful impacts and enhance positive ones. Adopting a multidisciplinary perspective, this course integrates various theories and concepts, drawing on examples from past, present, emerging, and future information technologies. This course equips students with knowledge and skills to understand, predict, and influence the evolution of information technology amid the exponentially increasing ubiquity and power of intelligent machines and humans’ dependence on them.

This course can be used to fulfil the “Critical Perspectives” Professional Requirement.

This course is an introduction to the librarianship of ancient books and records in special collections, as well as to their custodianship in other GLAM institutions. It will look at the materiality of information from different cultures across the ancient world (c.3000 BCE to 500 CE) that are commonly encountered in special collections. The primary goal is to analyze the diverse modes of communication, physical features, types of content, uses, and actors involved to provide students the ability to create descriptive catalogue records and adequately preserve ancient information objects. This course also serves to address current issues with ancient items in special collections, as well as to redefine our understanding of ancient books through emic lenses, challenging Western notions and prejudice that have shaped historical discourse and modern practices for centuries.

Introduction to legal bibliography and the methods of legal research, emphasizing Canadian legal resources. Coverage will also include British, American and international legal materials. Teaching will cover primary and secondary legal resources, both in print and electronic formats.

Critical survey of the literature of business and finance with emphasis on bibliographies, reference materials, statistical materials and business services. New developments in the business information field and problems in business and financial libraries.

Students in this course will study how librarians support evidence-based healthcare: the integration of the best evidence into healthcare decision making. This course will provide an overview of the healthcare information ecosystem and systematic review methods. Topics covered include: the history of evidence-based healthcare; a critical understanding of the evidence pyramid; an in-depth investigation of bibliographic health science databases; and the roles of medical librarians in academic institutions, hospitals, and in under-resourced contexts.

The course takes a practice-based approach to learning exhaustive, reproducible, and transparent search techniques; to the use of international reporting guidelines and conduct standards; and to software required to organize, screen, and document search results.

Examines the nature and characteristics of documents, publications and electronic information produced by the United Nations system and other international governmental organizations. Discusses theoretical work, and assesses pertinent selection and reference tools.

This course explores the transformative role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the field of library and information science, with a focus on its social, political, and practical implications. Students will critically examine how AI technologies influence information access, data management, and the curation of knowledge. Topics include AI-driven metadata management, machine learning applications in cataloguing and discovery, and the ethical concerns surrounding bias, privacy, and surveillance in AI systems. The course will also address the challenges AI poses to intellectual freedom, equity in information access, and the shifting roles of librarians and information professionals in an AI-augmented landscape.

Through case studies, theoretical readings, and practical applications, students will gain the skills to navigate the evolving information environment shaped by AI and develop strategies to ensure ethical and equitable use of AI technologies in library settings. This course will prepare students to critically engage with AI technologies, fostering an understanding of their potential benefits while also addressing the risks and ethical considerations that these technologies bring to the information sciences.

This course will provide students with a forum for engaging in historically grounded explorations of the centrality of cultural texts and artifacts within contemporary childhood.

This course focuses on program and policy issues in information services for children and young adults. The objectives are to ensure students’ understanding of current issues and their contexts and to prepare them for professional leadership in service and facility design and management. The course draws upon guest experts in its exploration of issues. It combines in-person and online delivery. It is complementary to INF2139H (Young People: Collection Development) and INF2140H (Young People: Current and Emerging Information Practices).

This course adopts a technical historical perspective as a means to better understand the emergence of the online platform as the increasingly standard fulcrum of digital media dissemination, and, in cases, production. Modern online media platforms connect vast data repositories with web application frameworks that stream both content and interface to end users across a variety of digital devices. We will examine the historical foundations of these myriad technologies, paying attention both to standard-defining innovations, as well as those ideas that got lost along the way. We will look at code in all its forms: character codes, encoding formats, markup languages, and programming languages. We will look at how media software evolved from command-line service to "desktop" studio to cloud-based Web application. We will then creatively engage with this knowledge and design our own platforms. These platform prototypes will be presented and discussed in class.

Computer scientist Alan Kay declared the computer to be "the first metamedium" in 1984, the same year as the release of the first Apple Macintosh computer. Since that time, digital computing devices have seemingly confirmed Kay's observation by consuming all manner of media production and reception practices. Yet there is nothing fundamental about the "stored program" computer, first realized in the form of the EDVAC in 1949, that would suggest such a versatile role. Instead, such uses had to be invented by human actors, building on the binary logic of digital machines through the "shaping of the invisible," a phrase Kay borrowed from Leonardo Da Vinci. The essential medium upon which such fictions are shaped is code: code is the mechanism by which bits of transistorized memory are elaborated into the sights and sounds of digital multimedia, as well as the algorithmic constructs that control its production and projection. Code is at once theoretical and pragmatic, reflecting computer science theory but also conforming to best fit configurations in emerging contexts.

Cataloguing is an intellectual and skills-based set of practices involving the creation and organization of bibliographic data. It engages in theories and principles integral to many aspects of library and information services. Through the application of prominent international cataloguing standards, tools, and policies, the course addresses the impact of bibliographic data and records on information discovery, access, and local use.

Trusting records: concepts, methods, perspectives aims to deepen students’ understanding of the concepts associated with record trustworthiness and the methods that have been developed for ensuring it within the archival discipline and to raise their awareness of other disciplinary perspectives on record trustworthiness.

The corporate approach to knowledge management (KM) is oriented to information and communication technology (ICT) tools and their metrics. However, the scholarly approach, adopted here, is more concerned with understanding how and why people use information at work to build knowledge and make decisions (or fail to do so). This includes consideration of tacit and explicit knowledge embodied in people or embedded in the environment, all intimately bound to their human context. The purpose of this curriculum is to enable the selection and design of ICTs to effectively support knowledge workers. Barriers to effective KM are not technical, they are social.

Key topics explored in this course include: the nature of knowledge, learning and knowing organizations and communities, models of learning and knowledge use, the selection and design of KM tools, and KM roles in organizations.

Stresses analytical models of how problems are solved and decisions are made in information organizations. Introduces models and methods from organization theory, decision science, and information needs and uses studies.

This course can be used to fulfil the "Managerial" Professional Requirement

The course will introduce students to the legal framework that applies to the creation, management, preservation and use of public and private archival documents in Canada. The specific objective of this course is to provide students with an understanding of the fundamental concepts of the Canadian legal system and of the implications and challenges of the law for public and private sector archival institutions.

This course can be used to fulfil the "Professional Values" Requirement.