The impact the MLIS program has had since it increased its technical offerings
For someone who can’t physically go to a library, reading an ebook on a Kindle or iPad can be one of the only ways they access books. An important advancement in modern libraries has been the shift towards offering extensive digital collections, including ebooks, digital journals, databases, and multimedia resources. Digital librarians have been at the helm of those efforts, transforming the profession as a whole. As the digital age has continued to evolve, it isn’t just about digitizing books and resources anymore—it’s about reimaging how libraries function and how they can better serve their communities.
Recognizing these trends, educational institutions are adapting their curricula to prepare future librarians for their ever-expanding roles. The master’s in library and information science at the University of Maryland College of Information is at the forefront of this shift. The program instills students with the skills needed to manage digital resources and implement digital strategies in various information organizations.
According to Joseph Sherren, MLIS program coordinator, the technical skills students learn are wide-ranging. “These technical skills or even the term technical applied to them include digital asset management,” he says. “They include data analytics, user experience to a degree too. So developing and testing user interfaces all in service to access, which falls outside of the immediate when we think of digital librarianship as just providing access to digital and digitized resources.”
All students take a foundational course. “[For the first part], we immerse them in the knowledge of how to search for information online, which I would argue is a digital literacy skill, which is somewhat akin to digital librarianship and a digital tool in their toolkit,” says Ryan O’Grady, lecturer and co-director of MLIS. “So you’ve got that, which is searching for information in order to know how to first start research, original research, but also compiling research from a number of sources. And the second part is this big buzzword, artificial intelligence (AI) and how AI is impacting our world, impacting our jobs.”
Bridging the Gap with Cultural and Community Partnerships
The MLIS program stands out for its extensive partnerships with cultural organizations, public libraries, and various community groups. These client-based collaborations are integral to the curriculum, providing students with real-world experience and addressing the critical and technical needs of these organizations.
Students in the MLIS program have the opportunity to work at prestigious institutions such as the National Agricultural Library, NASA Goddard Archives, Library of Congress, Smithsonian, and the White House Historical Association, among over 100 other organizations. A recent survey conducted by the field study coordinator Abbie Basile revealed valuable insights into the program’s impact. According to the report, nearly 20% of the 2023 field study opportunities focused on technical services, including cataloging, authority control, and ordering.
Many projects incorporated technical skills, even if they were not the primary focus. These skills included metadata work—which refers to the detailed information that describes, explains, and locates archival materials—digital asset management, project management for digital projects, electronic services assistance, and indexing in archives.
Some examples of recent projects include: helping clear a backlog of print materials to digitized formats at a national museum; creating metadata for newly digitized sources; assisting with the cataloging of legal materials at the Library of Congress; contributing to the digitization of local history collections at a public library; and performing metadata and cataloging work at a national museum.
Recent MLIS alum Charlotte Houghton, who currently works part time as a circulation associate at a local public library in Columbus, Ohio, was a digital curation fellow this past spring semester at the National Agricultural Library
“So one of the things I was focusing on was subject terms and how they accurately described what was in the collection. Or whether they did,” she says. “And that was an interesting look at how to apply some of the skills I had been learning in my metadata class. I saw the immediate real-world impact of this. Looking at these items, I was like, ‘It’s impossible to find anything, especially depending on what you’re searching for.’ So taking the aspects of different controlled vocabularies and the ways we encode and represent metadata for discovery and access, how can I take those aspects and apply them in a way that people can use them?”
Approaching Librarianship with a Spirit of Service
INFO Assistant Professor and former Co-Director of MLIS Katrina Fenlon recognizes that many students come into her metadata course expressing trepidation, nervousness, and anxiety about the skills that they’re going to be learning because they’re pretty obscure.
“Many of our students are coming from non-technical and humanistic backgrounds,” she says. “And many of them, not all of them, but many of them are drawn to the field less for its technical orientation and much more for its elements of service, social justice, the advancement of information access.”
Despite their initial fears, students are usually open and curious and demonstrate a readiness to learn advanced technologies within the library space.
“So I think of my class as a little bit of a conversion class. This is not something to fear. This is something to be very excited about. This is the future of work in this space is defined by these technical standards and by this set of skills and competencies. And you can do it. And in fact, by doing it, you’re going to advance all the objectives you came to the program with around increasing access, around advancing social justice, around improving people’s ability to use information.”
Becoming Information Professionals
Rob Simpson, archivist/librarian at the National Security Agency’s (NSA) National Cryptologic Museum, recently graduated from the program. He worked at the museum while in school and says the program made him think deeply about accessibility.
“Nobody accidentally stumbles onto us. You have to come here on purpose. And so making [materials] accessible was really important,” he says. “And we talked about that in multiple classes about accessibility, even if the classes weren’t specifically about digitization.”
“And so we started an effort here of digitizing the paper copies of the special research histories that we have, and now we’ve got close to 400 of them that are digital and available through our catalog. And so that project brought together multiple threads in different classes that I was taking. Anytime you’re talking about preservation or conservation, digitization is the ultimate step in terms of still giving people access to material that might be too fragile to handle.”
Recent graduates from the program are finding a direct link between the technical skills acquired during their studies and their career success. Nearly one-third of graduates from the last five years report that their abilities in areas such as database searching, HTML, and other internet-based skills were instrumental in securing their current positions.
The positive impact of UMD’s emphasis on technical skills is evident in the success stories of its alumni. Although the feedback is anonymized, several examples highlight the effectiveness of this training:
2020 alum: This graduate secured a position as a data systems architect at a university library. They credited the technical skills gained at UMD as critical in landing their first professional role in the LIS sector.
2021 alum: Working as a circulation/computer aide, this graduate develops and conducts catalog search workshops for patrons in a public library. They specifically noted that the technical skills and practical experience garnered during their field studies were instrumental in obtaining their current position.
2021 alum: Another respondent who now works as a digital operations specialist cited competencies in metadata, database management, and digital content management as key skills developed during their program that were vital in securing their job.
INFO’s comprehensive approach to blending technical skills training with practical field experience significantly enhances the employability of its graduates. As the job market continues to evolve, these technical competencies are proving to be a decisive factor in the career success of alumni. This trend illustrates the importance of educational programs adapting to the changing technological landscape, ensuring their graduates remain competitive in an increasingly digital world.