See also FAQs. A rubric is available on BruinLearn, under the “Rubrics” menu item that appears on the left side of the page.
You can find examples of previous years’ submissions on BruinLearn, by clicking on the Specialization Dossier assignment–but please note that this year’s version has changed a bit.
For this assignment, you’ll work with a group to produce a dossier that offers an overview of an area of professional practice (a “subfield”) within the digital library and information professions.
Your target audience is your fellow students: smart people who are familiar with the basics of IS but still trying to sort out the landscape of jobs out there.
The dossier should include the following. Each section should be about 300-500 words.
- Overview: 300 words that summarize the main points you think your fellow students should be aware of.
- Typical tasks: What does a job in this field entail? What duties does someone with this specialization perform? Provide links to at least three job descriptions (either current or out of date is fine) at different levels of seniority.
- Professional context: Is there a professional association for this specialization? What conferences do people in this specialization attend? What journals publish in this area? Where are jobs posted? Are there other forums, such as blogs, listservs, or Discord sites, that your classmates should be aware of?
- Job-market outlook: Is this field growing? Shrinking? Are parts of it expanding while other parts contract? This will necessarily be impressionistic, rather than statistical, since you likely won’t have access to numbers. To gain a sense of this, you should read relevant professional literature (see 3, above) and check in with your expert.
- Skill snapshot: What collection of skills is expected in someone hired in this specialization at the entry level? Do you predict a growing demand for particular skills? In order to judge this, you’ll need to look at job ads, read professional literature, and speak with your expert.
- Training agenda: In order to enter this profession, what kinds of preparation should someone at your professional level undertake? Are there particular classes they should take? Should they be looking for particular kinds of internships? Should they target particular technical skills?
- Active questions: Every subfield has its own hot topics and big questions. For example, one hot topic in educational technology right now is how and whether edtech tools should incorporate generative AI. Tell us about two hot areas of debate within your subfield and, for each, write a paragraph summarizing the various positions. Please cite your sources.
- Labor trends: Are there particular tendencies within the field (e.g., unpaid internships, very low pay, temporary contracts, a history of discrimination) that your classmates should be on the lookout for? If so, how are professionals in this area agitating for change (e.g., union drives, advocacy campaigns, etc.)? What kind of structural change (e.g., an end to temporary contracts) would have the best chance of addressing these trends?
- Five ways to understand the profession. An annotated bibliography of the five most helpful resources you encountered in your research. These can be articles, books, a blog post, a podcast, a video: whatever you think will be most helpful to your fellow students. Each resource should be accompanied by a few sentences that describe the resource and explain why it’s helpful.