This is a three hour course for juniors, seniors and graduate students that meets once a week. The course will cover: organization, representation, and access to information; categorization, indexing, and content analysis; data structures for unstructured data; design and maintenance of such databases, indexing and indexes, retrieval and classification schemes; use of codes, formats, and standards; analysis, construction and evaluation of search and navigation techniques; and search engines and how they relate to the above.

This is an introductory course for IST students covering the practices, issues, and theoretical foundations of organizing and analyzing information and information content for the purpose of providing intellectual access to textual and non-textual information resources. This course will introduce students to the principles of information storage and retrieval systems and databases. Students will learn how effective information search and retrieval is interrelated with the organization and description of information to be retrieved. Students will also learn to use a set of tools and procedures for organizing information, will become familiar with the techniques involved in conducting effective searches of print and online information resources and will build a vertical/specialty search engine.