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Aingeal’s Hunt: first stop, Dalhousie University’s MIM Program

by Aingeal Stone, Head Editor, INALJ Northwest Territories

Aingeal’s Hunt: first stop, Dalhousie University’s MIM Program

DSC00078This edition of my blog will be first in a series that will explore my search for a graduate program in which to enrol.

Dalhousie’s Master of Information Management (MIM) program (http://www.dal.ca/academics/programs/graduate/information-management.html) is the program I have been leaning towards for a couple of years now as I complete my undergraduate degree. I am mid-career and am looking for new challenges professionally which, apparently, will only come if I have a graduate degree. Plus I have realized that I am a much better student as an adult than I was as a young person, and I am enjoying it immensely!

Dalhousie University is in Halifax, Nova Scotia, a city I once lived in for a brief period a few years ago.  It is a fantastic city and I hope to live there again. But residency is not necessary for the MIM program.

6 reasons to pursue Dalhousie’s MIM (from http://www.dal.ca/academics/programs/graduate/information-management.html):

  1. Unique: Our degree – the first one of its kind in Canada – builds on your existing knowledge and experience to help you develop the critical information, risk and change management skills and best practices you need to help your organization excel.
  2. Career Opportunities: Develop the insight, vision and skills needed to lead at a global level in today’s knowledge-based society.
  3. Credentials: you’ll have the opportunity to earn two major Information Management-related credentials while you work toward your Master’s.
  4. Flexible: Enjoy a highly flexible timeframe that caters to your lifestyle and learning needs. Our program’s blend of distance and face-to-face learning provides you with a chance to learn from anywhere in the world.
  5. Quality teaching: World class academics deliver our program from within an award-winning faculty – all part of a university that leads in management education.
  6. Networking: Build a lifelong network of like-minded professionals, both in Canada and internationally.

Now you might be wondering why not just get a MLIS? That’s a good question. It is because I believe Information Management is the wave of the future, and the future is now. There are more opportunities, more varieties of opportunities I can pursue with a MIM instead of a MLIS. Also, because this program is delivered via distance education, I can begin as soon as I am ready, wherever I may be living, which is important since I have moved house 4 times in the last 10 years and will be moving again in the next year or two. The first 19 years of my 28 year career has been in public libraries, actually, in one public library system. The work was rewarding and enjoyable. But then I worked in academic libraries, government special libraries, a legislative library, and now I am working in a local history museum’s library and archives. Working in these other libraries opens a whole new world of library work and I love the challenges and new learning they bring. Particularly the work I am doing with the organization of archival materials I find fascinating. I think of myself more of an information manager than a library technician anymore.

But don’t take my word for it. Here’s a link to the profiles of 3 students who have graduated from the program : http://www.dal.ca/academics/programs/graduate/information-management/student-profiles/student-profiles/student-profile1.html

In my next blog post I will introduce the program from an Australian distance education institution that I am also interested in.

 

Naomi House

Naomi House, MLIS, is the founder and publisher of the popular webzine and jobs list INALJ.com (formerly I Need a Library Job) and former CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) of T160K.org, a crowdfunding platform focused on African patrimony, heritage and cultural projects. INALJ was founded in October 2010 with the assistance of her fellow Rutgers classmate, Elizabeth Leonard. Its social media presence has grown to include Facebook (retired in 2016), Twitter and a LinkedIn group, in addition to the interviews, articles and jobs found on INALJ. INALJ has had over 21 Million page hits and helped many, many thousands of librarians find employment! Through grassroots marketing, word of mouth and a real focus on exploring unconventional resources for job leads, INALJ grew from a subscription base of 20 friends to a website with over 500,000 visits in one month. Naomi believes that well-sourced quantity is quality in this narrow job market and INALJ reflects this with many new jobs published daily. She has also written for the 2011, 2012 and 2013 LexisNexis Government Info Pro and many other publications in the past decade. She presents whenever she can, including serving on three panels at the American Library Association's Annual Conference in Las Vegas; as breakout presenter at OCLC EMEA in Cape Town, South Africa; as a keynote speaker at the Virginia Library Association annual meeting; at the National Press Club in Washington DC; McGill University in Montreal, Canada; the University of the Emirates, Dubai, MLIS program and the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Naomi was a Reference, Marketing and Acquisitions Librarian for a contractor at a federal library outside Washington, DC, and has been living and working in Budapest, Hungary and Western New York State. She spent years running her husband’s moving labor website, fixed and sold old houses and assisted her husband cooking delicious Pakistani food. She is preparing to re-enter the workforce and is job hunting. Her husband is now the co-editor of INALJ, a true support!  She has heard of spare time but hasn’t encountered it lately. She pronounces INALJ as eye-na-elle-jay. 

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