Message From Information Studies Chair
Robert D. Montoya
Welcome to the Department of Information Studies
It is an exciting time to be engaged with information studies. Our roots are in the profession of librarianship, a field whose profile has expanded dramatically in the last hundred and fifty years. The American Library Association was founded in 1876, making it one of the oldest professional organizations in the United States. Plans for a School of the Library at UCLA were debated almost from the beginning of the founding of the Southern Branch of the UC system, now UCLA, in 1919. The School of Library Service was approved by the Board of Regents in 1958 and became the Department of Information Studies after a merger with the School of Education.
Since this period our department has become one of the most prominent in the field. A core strength of Information Studies at UCLA is that it is diverse in all the ways you can imagine: Among its practitioners are individuals interested in a spectrum of specialties, ranging from libraries, archives, data studies, information philosophy, the politics of memory work, information labor, and the colonial impacts of technologies, to name but a few. The intersections between these areas of study are exciting, for it is in these spaces that we find the nexus of our groundbreaking work that is continually changing the trajectory of scholarship. I would qualify this as urgent work in social spaces where access to such resources is becoming scarcer and scarcer.
Our faculty work on a global scale and strive to improve the intellectual and embodied conditions of individuals in every corner of the world. A talented pool of adjuncts drawn from the many institutions in the Los Angeles metropolitan region bring a wealth of knowledge from the field into the classroom. Numerous annual lectures, often featuring prominent scholars, enhance the content of our various courses.
Our students are dedicated to preserving cultural memory through work in museums, libraries, archives, and collections. Our program mission promotes social justice, diversity, and equity through informed and respectful appreciation of differences in cultural practices and recognition of the need for self-determination of communities about their own cultural and evidentiary legacies. Our programs are designed to prepare diverse professionals for leadership roles in the contemporary world of information.
The staff in our department are equally passionate about our mission and vital to our department’s culture and work. They can provide support for student services, program advice, research support, career advice, or assistance negotiating UCLA processes and policies—anything you might require as you navigate the university.
Among the iSchools, ours is distinguished by its range of programs and critical ethical commitments. We are the only MLIS program with a rare book school partner, the California Rare Book School, which runs intensive classes in all areas of special collections librarianship. Through the UCLA Community Archives Lab, our faculty and students are deeply engaged with local community archives preserving previously-overlooked histories of Los Angeles’s diverse communities. The Digital Cultures Lab (DCL) offers a unique, people-focused analysis of new technologies as they spread across the world. Throughout all these engagements, we are deeply committed to envisioning and enacting liberatory theories and practices toward building a more equitable society. The Center for Critical Internet Inquiry (c2i2) examines the changing landscape of the internet and its myriad impacts upon every space in society.
There are also several on-site facilities that support and enhance the educational experience. The IS Library supports core research activities and hosts a number of programs, often engaging the broader UCLA community. The library also hosts continuing education workshops that touch upon every topic in the IS curriculum. The IS Media Preservation Lab is outfitted with state-of-the-art audio and visual equipment that provides essential hands-on technical experience. The UCLA Bibliography Lab is a fully outfitted printing press situated to explore historical and contemporary bibliography and history of the book.
Our goal is to prepare students for leadership roles in their chosen professions while continuing the long tradition of public service to which we trace our beginnings.
For more information, please explore our Information Studies website. For other questions, please feel free to contact us directly.
Robert D. Montoya
Chair, Department of Information Studies