ARCHIVED SITE (last updated Fall 2005)
For current information, please visit http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu
 

History

Proposal for SIMS: original proposal for the creation of the school issued in 1993

In May 1995 the Regents of the University of California approved the creation of the School of Information Management and Systems. The Information Planning Group's Proposal for a School of Information Management and Systems described the program as follows:

What is unique about this program is the focus on the use and management of information through the merger of the technical and social sciences approaches. We believe that the University of California, Berkeley, has an opportunity to pioneer in the development of an emerging professional field of critical importance. Information is now one of the world's most important and rapidly changing resources. Rapidly growing capabilities in computing and telecommunications, the increasing importance of information in the professions, in scholarship and research, and in daily life, the expanding and multidimensional information industry, and the developing information infrastructure have created major new challenges and opportunities.

The issue now is often less the availability of information than its overabundance, and access to quality information for diverse users and uses. The challenge is to filter what is most useful out of the vast quantity of information available: to select, evaluate, describe, store, retrieve, manipulate, and present information in all its forms, including text, still and moving images, sound, and numeric data. The goal is to provide, not simply data, but information that enhances understanding.

We propose a program that will advance, through teaching and research, the organization, management and use of information and information technology, and enhance our understanding of the impact of information on individuals, institutions, and society. This mission has both a technical component, concerned with the design and use of information systems and services, and a social sciences component, concerned with understanding how people seek, obtain, evaluate, use, and categorize information. The proposed program will use the approaches of several social sciences and professional and technical disciplines to address a core set of information-related issues.

The primary educational mission of the program will be to prepare professionals for corporations, government agencies, and the academic world who can develop improved approaches to handling information, to design and manage information functions, and to merge them with other aspects of the organization. Evidence strongly suggests the existence of a very large demand for such professionals in business, government, and the academic world.

The research mission of the program will be to explore the design and operation of information systems and services, the nature and properties of information, and information-related behavior at the individual, group, and societal levels.

Berkeley is an ideal place to address this challenge, given our strength in such allied disciplines as computer science, business administration, cognitive science, and public policy; the existence of a substantial foundation from the School of Library and Information Studies; the proximity of leading firms in the information industry; and Berkeley's ability to attract an eclectic group of outstanding scholars.