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data curation. The Master’s program at Illinois requires only two
specific courses—one on information organization and access, and one
on libraries, information, and society. Beyond those, students develop
the rest of their curriculum in consultation with an advisor, but they are

generally encouraged to take courses in reference and information
services, in the administration of libraries and information centers, and
in cataloging and classification. Students needing introductory courses

in the area of information technology are encouraged to consider our
introduction to network systems and the course in Foundations of
Information Processing. Beyond that, students are presented with
advising options that group courses according to professional goals or

topics of interest. Professional groupings include general librarianship,
public librarianship, children’s and school librarianship, academic and
special librarianship, or information science and library technology.

Topical areas include the organization of information, management and
consulting for information systems and services, access (to collections,
by users), informatics and information science, digital libraries, and

literacies. All of these tracks and the courses that constitute them are
offered both on campus and online: at present, we have about 300
students enrolled in each delivery option, and we encourage students in

one option to explore the other as opportunity permits or necessity
requires. An important part of the program for students on campus is
often a graduate assistantship in the university library: we have what I
would say is an unusually cooperative relationship with the library, and

we work together to keep as many of these assistantships as possible
available to our students. Given that, it is probably not a coincidence
that roughly 40% of our students go on to work in academic research

libraries.
The specialization in data curation was recently developed, with
the support of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and it
allows for an emphasis either on scientific data or on cultural data. Our

web site tells prospective students and employers that in this
specialization, we focus on data collection and management, knowledge
representation, digital preservation and archiving, data standards, and

policy. Data curation is the active and on-going management of data
through its lifecycle of interest and usefulness to scholarship, science,
and education. Data curation activities enable data discovery and

retrieval, maintain data quality, add value, and provide for re-use over
time, and this new field includes authentication, archiving, management,