Digital library education on Master level in Borås, Copenhagen, and Oslo: Qualitative case study

Digital library education has become a popular topic in the recent years. A recent book of Anna-Maria Tammaro and Sue Myburgh focuses on this topic in general. An earlier thesis by Nafiz Shuva described an overview about digital library education in Europe based on a quantitative survey design. This thesis uses a narrower perspective. It offers a qualitative comparative case study on digital library education in master level focusing on three library schools in Borås, Copenhagen and Oslo. These schools represent the most comprehensive education and research capabilities in this region. The main research design is qualitative. The major thesis sources are programme, curricula and course descriptions and academic articles. Some interviews made with programme coordinators in Borås and Oslo is also referred at the thesis but these are not primary resources just add some more details to the content based on written documents and articles. The thesis style more like descriptive than interpretive by an elaboration of comparative analysis and research findings subjects without long interpretive discussions. The comparative case study initially focuses on curricula of digital library education programmes. The DILL is a programme that is coordinated from Oslo with two additional partners and two programmes from Borås are in this group. Furthermore comparison also focuses on digital library education elements of LIS master programmes curricula in all three cities. The comparative analysis is placed into a global and European context by a literature review. The literature review introduces some models that help to contextualize the comparison and seems to be relevant in context of the evolution of digital library master programmes by DILL and in Borås. These models represent the iSchool community, the European LIS curriculum Project, the thesis framework of Nafiz Shuva about digital library education from Europe and the Digital Library Curriculum Project from the USA. Followed by the literature review the thesis offers a short general introduction to Scandinavian LIS education for a further conceptualization of the main comparative topic. The comparative analysis initially describes and compares digital library programmes with each other. In the following the horizon widens to the digital library elements of the LIS master programmes. By the end all the programmes are placed and analysed in a common comparative framework. The major research questions are: How do the three Scandinavian library schools in Copenhagen, Oslo, and Borås adapt digital library education related subjects in their master programmes? In which curricular form do these digital education subjects appear in the current programmes? Is it possible to determine some common features in the represented topics or education aims of the different programmes and schools? Sub-questions refer mainly to the internationalization of digital library education and to the effects of on-campus and distance course delivery ways to curricula. Followed by the analysis the discussion refers some major issues regarded to the research questions and some issues refer to the analysis. Two main findings result from the comparison: - A major common point of Scandinavian digital library education is the focus on cultural mediation in a digital environment. The aim is not to train IT-technicians but digital library experts with broad comprehensive competences and skills in all major digital library dimensions. - Elena Maceviciute built up a model to compare digital library programmes in Borås with the DILL programme based on different main types of modules that represents all the major topic divisions of these programmes. That comparative framework could be extended to the digital library related modules of LIS master programmes in Oslo and in Copenhagen. The framework is focusing on the subject, content and contextualization ways of modules: the elements can be comparable with each other by their main topic dimensions regardless their belongings to different programme types