2009 ALISE Conference

5

Building Rapport between LIS and Museum Studies

Jeonghyun "Annie" Kim, Ph. D.
Assistant Professor
School of Library and Information Management
Emporia State University
Emporia, KS  66801
jkim5@emporia.edu
Building Rapport between LIS and Museum Studies

Over the past several decades, the LIS community has adopted theories, methodologies, philosophical bases and assumptions from other academic disciplines to solidify its domain. Many of the ideas from cognitive science, psychology, management science, systems science, communication science, organizational science, and computer science have positively contributed to the emergence of new research areas in library and information science. This has resulted in a broadening of the library and information science curriculum. Recently, museum studies has been tendered more attention. Several archives programs in LIS (e.g., Pittsburgh’s museum archives, FSU’s museum informatics, etc.) try to incorporate the subjects (or contents) of museum studies. Conferences called “Museums and the Web” and “International cultural heritage informatics meetings” are attended every year by myriad museum studies researchers and LIS participants. This synthesis of studies has produced a new domain called “museum informatics.” It is an emerging, interdisciplinary field of study, which studies the sociotechnical issues that arise when people, information, and technology interact in museums (Marty, Rayward, & Twidale, 2003).

This is the challenge: How do we promote cooperative relationship between LIS and museum studies? This might be answered by recognizing similarities and differences between LIS and museum studies’ curriculum. So, this study analyzed the curriculum offered by museology or museum studies degree programs in the United States to ascertain the nature of museum studies education. In addition, it analyzed the museum informatics curricular practice of LIS graduate program in the United States to identify the current state of museum education in LIS schools.

The study began by identifying museum studies programs that offer undergraduate and graduate programs. Schools that offer a graduate certificate program are also included in this study, but they will be analyzed separately and later. However, training programs provided by a museum institution or society were excluded in this study. Programs were identified from:  U. S. News, Worlds Report and Smithsonian’s Museum Studies Training Program Directory (http://museumstudies.si.edu/resources.html), Committee on Museum Professional Training’s member program (http://www.comptaam. org/aboutcompt/memberprograms.html). First, the program descriptions in each program were viewed on the open web to characterize the museum studies education: the number of credit-hours, the number of required courses, the area of interests, and other requirements were collected. In addition, course titles and short catalog descriptions were collected to identify curricular trend and content.

Then this study examined museum informatics courses in Library and Information Science programs accredited by American Library Association. Course titles, course descriptions, and syllabi were collected. The courses on the topic of museum studies were identified based on their titles and descriptions where museum was mentioned as a term (e.g., museum informatics, museum archives, etc.).

The results of this study will be expected to provide implications for museum education in LIS schools. This will inform how best to design interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary curricula approach in LIS to support the education of museum professionals.

References

Marty, P.F., Rayward, W.B., & Twidale, M.B. (2003). Museum Informatics. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 37, 259-294.