| University of California, Berkeley School of Information | |
|---|---|
| Established | 1994[1] |
| Type | Public Professional School |
| Dean | AnnaLee Saxenian |
| Location | Berkeley, California, USA |
| Website | http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/ |
The UC Berkeley School of Information or the iSchool is a graduate school offering both a professional master's degree and a research-oriented Ph.D. degree at the University of California, Berkeley. The school was created in 1994 and was known as the School of Information Management and Systems (SIMS) until 2006. Its roots trace back to UC Berkeley's School of Librarianship founded in the 1920s. The program is located in UC Berkeley's South Hall, near Sather Tower in the center of the UC Berkeley campus.
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The master's program is a 48 unit, two-year program designed to train students for careers as information professionals. Students who complete the program are awarded the Masters of Information Management and Systems (MIMS) degree. During the first year MIMS students take required courses in Information Organization and Retrieval, Distributed Computing Applications and Infrastructure, Social and Organizational Issues of Information, Information Law and Policy, and Analysis of Information Systems. During the second year students may choose from elective courses both at the iSchool and in other departments. The final prerequisite for the MIMIS degree is the completing of a group or individual thesis project.
The doctoral program is a research-oriented program in which the student chooses specific fields of specialization, prepares sufficiently in the literature and the research of those fields to pass written and oral examinations, and completes original research culminating in the written dissertation. The degree of Doctor of Philosophy is conferred in recognition of a candidate's grasp of a broad field of learning and distinguished accomplishment in that field through contribution of an original piece of research revealing high critical ability and powers of imagination and synthesis.
The School of Information is located in historic South Hall. Built in 1873, it is the oldest university building in California. South Hall is located in the heart of campus, near the Doe Library and the Campanile (also known as Sather Tower). It is known to have the smallest bear statue on the Berkeley campus. The small bear was added by Michael H. Casey, who did the ornamental castings for the restored facade in 1997.[2]