TEMPUS - CD_JEP-16086-2001 is a 36 months long project funded by European Commission, (Directorate General for Education) under 2001 Joint European Networking Projects Scheme. Project TEMPUS covers curriculum development of the courses delivered in the field of economic science and information science.

A group of courses within information science curricula that are related to information organization and knowledge organization are responsibility of the Department of Information Sciences, Faculty of Philosophy (University of Zagreb). This particular work field of the entire TEMPUS project, under the title i2, is identified to have specific goals, objectives and problems.

Within TEMPUS project academic and research staff in the Department of Information Sciences plans to develop more sustainable and flexible curriculum that will change the profile of the future information professionals and ensure steady and permanent development of skills and expertise in knowledge organization and collection management. Open access to information and distributed and heterogeneous information resources on the Internet and intranets have created a greater need in information and knowledge organization expertise that will solve the problem of resource presentation and discovery in the content management system, or in particular learning management system, information gateways, portals and hubs. Semantic web development emphasises again the need for knowledge organization tools and controlled vocabularies. Knowledge management is another area in which expertise in information organization can be successfuly deployed. Mangement and presentation of museum collections is yet another big area that asks for more expertise in both, information rganization tools and information technology.

These are the issues that i2 shares and recognizes to have common ground between Depatment of Information Science at the University of Zagreb and our European partner City University London, South Bank University and Amsterdasmse Hogenschools voor de Kinsten. In cooperation with these three universities i2 will attempt to develop a curriculum in the field of information and knowledge organziation that will enable the following:

1) The possibility to design and structure the courses in a way that they will become more attractive and more compatible with other programmes of study in the Department. This will mean: better structured courses separting profession specific from fundamental issues of information and knowledge organization. These courses would be then sutiable for the courses of Librarianship, Archival Studies, Museum Studies, but also to the students of informatics

2) Different organization of courses with explicit modularity to enable faster adaptation to different programmes of study: part time, distant learning courses, special purpose courses (e.g. knowledge organization in commerce industry, thesaurus in museum collection management etc.)

3) Logical and standardized organization of the course delivery and course materials that will enable automation of course administration and easy implementation of learning management systems and digitisation of learning material

4) Establishing procedures and criteria in course design, management and delivery that will enable easy induction of new staff and better quality control and teaching quality assessment

The course development and restructuring in i2 will be guided by the 8 group activities defined for the entire TEMPUS project plan and according to the planned exchange of expertise with European Universities. The actual work in the department is organized and wil be managed in the period of 36 months through the following workplan:

i2 Work Packages

i2 Deliverables

i2 Milestones