This course reviews the principles of ordering and describing information and knowledge - archival, bibliographic, and object description, with emphasis on national and international standards and the problems relating to the methods of navigating digital resources to retrieve information and knowledge. The taught course will be supplemented with two weeks practical placement in a repository, and will provide an opportunity for students to create an archival finding aid for a collection.

Seminars 10 x 2 hours

ARTMED5012

INFOSTUD5011 

None

15% catalogue search and reflection

15% assessment of peer assessment

70% cataloguing project and reflection

Reassessments are normally available for all courses, except those which contribute to the Honours classification. Where, exceptionally, reassessment on Honours courses is required to satisfy professional/accreditation requirements, only the overall course grade achieved at the first attempt will contribute to the Honours classification. For non-Honours courses, students are offered reassessment in all or any of the components of assessment if the satisfactory (threshold) grade for the overall course is not achieved at the first attempt. This is normally grade D3 for undergraduate students and grade C3 for postgraduate students. Exceptionally it may not be possible to offer reassessment of some coursework items, in which case the mark achieved at the first attempt will be counted towards the final course grade. Any such exceptions for this course are described below. 

This course aims to:

■ Review the principles of ordering and describing information and knowledge

■ Look in detail at archival, bibliographic and object description

■ Examine in detail relevant international standards and the problems relating to the methods of navigating digital resources to retrieve information and knowledge.

■ Pay particular attention to relevant International Standards such as those administered by International Council on Archives.

■ Look at relevant national standards and the ways they relate to International standards.

■ Examine standards used by those in allied professions such as Museum and Library science.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

■ evidence a knowledge of the theory and application of the various tools and techniques used to organise and retrieve information * evaluate principles of archival, bibliographic and object description and ordering

■ indicate a knowledge of international and national descriptive and authority standards and thesauri

■ prove that they have acquired skills in indexing, and undertaken practical indexing work

■ gain experience of how description and catalogue information can be effectively displayed on-line, and an understanding of how this is presented and used by different constituencies.

■ critically evaluate work undertaken by others, and analyse this judiciously and diagnostically.

Students must submit at least 75% by weight of the components (including examinations) of the course's summative assessment.