Museum Informatics Across the Curriculum: Ten Years of Preparing LIS Students for Careers Transcending Libraries, Archives, and Museums

Library and Information Science (LIS) students are increasingly interested in pursuing careers that transcend traditional boundaries between libraries, archives, and museums. To help students achieve these goals, the LIS programs at the University of Illinois and Florida State University have offered courses on museum informatics—the sociotechnical interactions between people, information, and technology in museums—since 2001 and 2003 respectively. An examination of the evolution of these courses over the past decade provides a unique opportunity to explore their relevance and value to LIS students, their ability to meet student needs and educational goals, and their integration into the LIS curriculum. Through a content analysis of course syllabi and assignments, this article examines how the teaching of museum informatics in LIS programs has evolved in response to course evaluations and research publications documenting the changing nature of information work in museums. It discusses key milestones in the evolution of the course from examining museums as a unique information organization to helping students acquire the knowledge they need to work across all types of cultural heritage institutions.