This year, the MI (Master of Information) Curriculum Committee embarked on a full review and revision of the MI Competencies. These competencies are the measurable skills, abilities, and behaviours required to be a successful IM professional. All courses and learning experiences incorporate these competencies, and students will have the opportunity to gain these competencies through participation in all aspects of the program. These metrics are particularly important for the continued accreditation of MI program (by the ALA – American Library Association).
The new competencies were recently approved by SIM’s governing body, School Council. The full list can be viewed here and below.
- Adaptation: Information managers anticipate and adapt to trends in information management, support organizational change, and promote a learning culture within the organization.
- Collaboration: Information managers work effectively in teams and cultivate a culture of collaboration within the organization and build relationships with stakeholders.
- Commitment to equity, diversity, inclusion, accessibility, and decolonization: Information managers practice and critique the principles of equity, diversity, inclusion, accessibility, and decolonization for participating in an inclusive and socially just society.
- Communication: Information managers communicate effectively, listen actively, and are receptive to feedback and suggestions.
- Digital and technological literacy: Information managers safely, responsibly, creatively, and effectively use technologies. They assess IT requirements of the organization or users and develop and implement IT strategies that support the organization’s mission.
- Evidence-based practices: Information managers promote evidence-based decision making and policies. They use adequate methods to produce, assess, synthesize, evaluate knowledge to support the organization’s activities.
- Leadership: Information managers advocate the strategic importance of information for their organization or community, promote the professional values of the field, support the development of their peers, and mobilize people and resources towards the achievement of collective goals.
- Learning: Information managers are reflexive, life-long learners who adopt a creative and innovative approach to their work.
- Management: Information managers effectively manage projects, people and resources, and ensure that the information assets and practices of the organization support its values, mission and objectives.
- User-centered design: Information Managers engage users and adapt services to their information needs and behaviours.
Marie Elizabeth DeYoung hung out a perfect line of clothes a week before she died. “That’s my last line,” she said as her sheets dried in the wind and sun just as they were supposed to do. A day later, Marie spent the last day in her Halifax home putting her documents into folders – one for legal documents, one for subscriptions, one for appliance manuals, one for bank and credit card accounts. A librarian by vocation and by disposition, she saw putting files in the right folders as a first principle. A principle with a purpose. Get yourself organized, and you might just put the precious time you have on earth to good use. Marie did just that. In her last year of life, after major surgery, Marie seized the day by taking one final trip to Europe. She always flew business class, stayed in good hotels, dined well and came home after a few days to her spotless home on a leafy Halifax street to watch Jeopardy on her ancient cathode ray TV. Earlier in the day, pre-Jeopardy, Marie would tune her stereo to CBC Radio to listen to classical music while she read a book. A glass of fresh water was left on an end table for Alice, her cat. A half dozen or so novels, borrowed from the Halifax Public Library, were stacked neatly on the coffee table.
