Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Research project!

The University of Texas got a cool grant to give scholarships to four people who want to do a doctoral program in digital librarianship. That isn't particularly up my alley, but it sounds really cool, nonetheless. It got me thinking about where were the best programs for learning about the theory of organization as it's applied to libraries, and metadata more generally. This is shockingly hard to find out. Does such a beast even exist, or do people have to carve out their own niches within their PhD programs in order to learn about it? I honestly don't know. More research on my part is obviously required.
It's times like this that I wonder if I am just too dumb to find the information that's out there, because I think that different PhD programs should be easy to find, rather than taking up a lot of my time.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

do people have to carve out their own niches within their PhD programs in order to learn about it?

Pretty much, yes. The thing to do is research what faculty are at what schools. You want to find a school that has several people you would like to work with as mentors, advisors, etc. In my experience (I applied to 4 PhD programs and have sat on a PhD admissions committee as a doctoral student rep), the most important thing in your application process is knowing what area you want to study, and being able to explain why you think that program is a good place for you to study what you want to.

To find out what schools have the most people working in your area, you'd know a bit about the literature in your area and be able to recognize faculty names. Also, you could see how many org of info type classes are regularly taught and if they are taught by full-time faculty or adjuncts. A place with a good org of info curriculum is probably the best place to be to study that topic. Plus, it gives you teaching opportunities.

"Wicked people never have time for reading. It's one of the reasons for their wickedness." —Lemony Snicket, The Penultimate Peril.