Byrne Seminars
Rutgers University – New Brunswick
115 College Ave
New Brunswick, NJ 08901
byrne.rutgers.edu
byrneseminars@rutgers.edu
p. 848-932-6971
Spring 2025
01:090:101:33: Byrne Seminar
Getting It Done: Managing Information for Better Performance
Mondays 3:50pm – 5:10pm in the Carr Library Conference Room (Basement level)
Syllabus
Contact Information
Triveni Kuchi - triveni.kuchi@rutgers.edu
Social Sciences/Instructional Services Librarian, Librarian I (Professor), Rutgers University Libraries - New
Brunswick, Carr Library, 75 Avenue E, Piscataway, NJ – 08854.
Office Hours: By appointment only on Mondays after class 5:15pm – 6:00pm.
Course Description
With emerging information and communication technologies, the plethora of information constantly
generated is overwhelming. Such an information environment directly affects the way you discover, keep, use,
or re-use information for your research. How do you manage your bazillion files? What organizing schemes or
strategies for managing information are out there? What works, what doesn’t, and why? This course will focus
on understanding what information management entails; and how it requires an active, deliberative selection
among alternatives, and a critical and habitual pursuit of analyzing and re-categorizing information. Through
readings, class discussions, hands-on labs, and guest speakers, students will reflect, analyze, compare, and use
information organizing schemes or tools for managing a variety of different types of information. Final
presentations will allow each student to creatively explore information management tools that are used at
either the organizational or the individual level in more detail.
Course Objectives
Upon completion of this course, you will be able to
1. Describe some of the concepts of managing and organizing information.
2. Think critically about systems for managing and organizing information at the personal and
organizational levels.
3. Interpret and apply some of the ideas you learned in analyzing information management and
organizing tools.
Course Policies
Course Structure
This 1 credit - Pass/No credit Byrne is a seminar course (10 weeks) and will be interactive in nature. It will
involve lots of active and engaged participation in class discussions. Both individual level and collaborative
participation in groups is expected and will be counted towards participation grade. Engaged presence to
maintain an interesting and meaningful discussion with your classmates necessitates
✓ Preparing for the class ahead: reading, making notes, reflective writing assignments due usually before
the start of class as mentioned in schedule
✓ Arriving on time or a little bit before the start time of class
✓ Being attentive to the conversation in the classroom
✓ Bringing assigned readings, your notes and reflective writing to class. It is preferred that you bring a
hard copy of the readings by printing, annotating, or highlighting them to assist you in class
discussions.
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Attendance/Absence policy
Byrne Seminars meet only for ten weeks. Students are expected to attend all classes; if you expect to miss one
class, please email me and use the University absence reporting website https://sims.rutgers.edu/ssra/ to
indicate the date and reason for your absence. If you miss more than two classes, your participation grade will
be affected. It is your responsibility to find out what you missed and make up for the related assignments. Each
class typically will include active class discussion of readings, presentation, and brainstorming. There is no final
exam, but you will have a final group project presentation.
Classroom Etiquette
To facilitate an environment of free exchange of ideas in a safe, supportive, and productive classroom
environment, we must act with mutual respect and common courtesy. Thus, behavior that distracts others in
the classroom is not acceptable. Such behavior includes cell phone use, surfing the internet, checking email,
text messaging, listening to music, reading newspapers, and discourteous remarks. Courteous expression of
disagreement with instructor or classmates during discussions is encouraged.
If a student engages in disruptive behavior, the instructor, following the University Code of Student Conduct,
may direct the student to leave class for the remainder of the class period. The University Code of Student
Conduct http://judicialaffairs.rutgers.edu/.
Laptops and Phones
Please mute your phones, tablets and other mobile devices and stow them away during class. If your phone
rings once during class, I will ask you to turn it off. If it happens a second time, I may ask that you leave the
classroom, which will count as an absence.
If assigned for class work, you may use a laptop. Please do not use this device to text, play or follow games,
‘like’ on Facebook, or check your friend’s Tumblr, etc. Such behavior not only distracts you from the
discussion taking place in the classroom, but also does disservice to your classmates around you. Repeat
activity of this type will affect your participation grade.
For any classes held on Webex or Zoom - Etiquette
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Meetings will be recorded by instructor only. Please do not record information to share outside of your
class. Contact me first.
Use your laptop to connect to Zoom, rather than your phone, because there will be polls and quizzes
that may or may not work via a mobile phone
Audio and Video both are recommended. However, occasionally there may be bandwidth issues that
may change how we communicate. Please let me know if you have Internet access issues. We need to
work together to make our class discussions as smooth as possible
Due to echo and static sounds, please mute your microphone until you get an okay to speak and share your
ideas. If you have a question. Type in your name and the question into the chat box.
Depending on the readings, a facilitator, note taker, and chat monitor will be selected each week to help with
class discussions.
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Back up your work! Problems with technology are common. So it is your responsibility to start your
assignments early, save your work, back up your saved work on more than one drive (cloud based e.g. Google
doc is an alternative space to save your files). Turning in assignments late or permission for extensions due to a
technology problem will not be granted.
Discussion and Communication Guidelines
The following are my expectations for how we should communicate as a class. Above all, please remember to
be respectful and thoughtful.
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Everyone should have a chance to be heard in our class. Please step up because your participation is
the most important element in this seminar but also know to step back and be conscious of taking up
too much space in the class discussion.
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Writing style: While writing the reflective paragraphs ideally you should remember to write using good
grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Informality (including an occasional emoticon) is fine for nonacademic topics. Please also refrain from using all CAPITAL LETTERS, as this is often interpreted as
shouting.
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Tone and civility: Let's maintain a supportive learning community where everyone feels safe and
where people can disagree amicably. Treat your instructor and fellow students with respect as we
discuss in class, and in all other communications. We focus on listening and hearing each other and
work together to learn and better understand the course materials and concepts.
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Citing your sources: When we have academic discussions, please cite/state your sources to back up
what you say. For the textbook or other course materials, list at least the title, section heading and
page numbers. For online sources, include a web page title or link.
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Other guidelines will be provided in class handouts
Email: You may email me with questions that have not already been answered in the syllabus or class. I
will attempt to respond to your email within 48 hours on school days only if I receive them with the
following subject line: Byrne 45 Your name and which follows proper email and letter writing protocol.
COVID protocols
https://coronavirus.rutgers.edu/
Learning Support
Rutgers has Learning Centers on each campus where any student can obtain tutoring and other help; for
information, check http://lrc.rutgers.edu/. Rutgers also has a Writing Program where students can obtain help
with writing skills and assignments: http://plangere.rutgers.edu/index.html. The Rutgers New Brunswick
Libraries also provides a variety of workshops taught by librarians and graduate specialists on development of
skills and software such as Python, R, Digital Humanities, Qualitative methods, NVivo, Evidence synthesis and
systematic reviews, and data science topics from Tableau to Machine Learning, and topics relating to diversity
issues in data such as algorithmic bias.
Support for Students with Disabilities
Rutgers University welcomes students with disabilities into all of the University's educational programs. In
order to receive consideration for reasonable accommodations, a student with a disability must contact the
appropriate disability services office at the campus where you are officially enrolled, participate in an intake
interview, and provide documentation: https://ods.rutgers.edu/students/documentation-guidelines. If the
documentation supports your request for reasonable accommodations, your campus’s disability services office
will provide you with a Letter of Accommodations. Please share this letter with your instructors and discuss the
accommodations with them as early in your courses as possible.
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To begin this process, please complete the Registration form on the ODS web site at:
https://ods.rutgers.edu/students/registration-form
Students with disabilities may request academic accommodations from the Office of Disability Services. More
information available from: Office for Disability Services Website: https://ods.rutgers.edu. Phone: (848) 445-6800
Academic Integrity
In addition to knowledge and skills, Rutgers University aims to teach students appropriate ethical and
professional standards of conduct. The Academic Integrity Policy exists to inform students and faculty of their
obligations in upholding the highest standards of professional and ethical integrity. All student work is subject
to this policy. Professional and academic practice provides guidance about how to properly cite, reference, and
attribute the intellectual property of others.
The principles of academic integrity require that a student:
✓ properly acknowledge and cite all use of the ideas, results, or words of others.
✓ properly acknowledge all contributors to a given piece of work
✓ make sure that all work submitted as his or her own in a course or other academic activity is produced
without the aid of impermissible materials or impermissible collaboration
✓ obtain all data or results by ethical means and report them accurately without suppressing any results
inconsistent with his or her interpretation or conclusions
✓ treat all other students in an ethical manner, respecting their integrity and right to pursue their
educational goals without interference. This requires that a student neither facilitate academic
dishonesty by others nor obstruct their academic progress
✓ uphold the canons of the ethical or professional code of the profession for which he or she is preparing
If you are in doubt about any issue related to plagiarism or scholastic dishonesty, please discuss it with me. The
full text of the Rutgers Academic Integrity Policy is available from
http://academicintegrity.rutgers.edu/academicintegrity-policy/.
Tutorials on plagiarism: http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/tutorials#plagiarism_tutorials. Check out RU Citing?
Grade Distribution
✓ Individual and Group Class Participation and Discussion ____________ 50%
✓ Summaries and/or Reflections on Discussions ___________________ 30%
✓ Final Group Project presentation
_______________________ 20%
Grades
This seminar class is about your participation and engagement with class subject matter, your experiences, and
your classmates, through guest lectures, as well as related aspects of what you read or watch. If you attend all
classes, actively discuss and participate in class individually and with your group, turn in your assignments, and
complete your group project, you will not have any difficulty passing this course. I will provide a grade check-in
half-way through the course.
Course Materials
No specific textbook is required for this seminar course. Readings will be provided. Students will be required
to read, summarize, reflect and respond to materials for brief reflective writing assignments, and most
importantly actively participate in class discussions. The course materials are copyright protected and cannot
be reposted or used for any other purpose than this class.
Please refer to the Modules section on our Canvas course site https://canvas.rutgers.edu/ for details about
course work, discussions, participation, and assignments each week.
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Schedule of Topics, Readings and Assignments
The class schedule is subject to change based on the progress of the class. Adequate notice shall be provided
to students for any changes made. Information and changes will be available through announcements and on
the Modules for Weekly Lessons menu item on the left-hand-side of your Canvas course site.
Week/Date
Content
Week 1: Jan 27
Topic: Introduction: Information, Choice and Organizing
Course Introduction and expectations: Canvas Course Site
Class Introductions
Review of the course, syllabus, discussion assignments for each week, and final projects
Brief introduction to paradox of choice, organizing and information overload – Q&A,
Discussion
Topic: Personal Information Management (PIM)
Managing Information at the Individual level –
Read and Post
Jones, William P. 2008. Keeping found things found: the study and practice of personal
information management. Chapters 5 & 6;
Class activity: Interviewing, gathering information, collating and organizing
Topic: Personal Information Management (PIM) – Use, Citing, Authority & Attribution
Read and Post: Hyland, Ken. (1999). Academic Attribution: Citation and the Construction of
Disciplinary Knowledge.
Guest Lecture – On Authority – Charles
Take Notes to write your reflections on Discussion
Topic: Organizing in Music and Performing Arts, and creating archives as a scholar (PIM)
Guest Speaker - McCandless
Read and post on Discussion: TBD
Take Notes to write your reflections on Discussion
Topic: Textual Data Visualization, Cleaning, and Organization (PIM)
Read and Post: TBD
Guest Lecture – Giannetti
Take Notes to write your reflections on Discussion
Topic: Organizing at Institutional levels – Special Collections & University Archives – Digital
Project creation and management
Guest speaker - Radick
Read: Using Archives.
Take Notes to write your reflections on Discussion
Topic: Organizing at Institutional levels – Digital content creation and organization
Trip to Alexander Library College Avenue, Guest speakers - Beard
Glushko, Robert J. The discipline of organizing. Chapter 1 pages 1-17.
Take Notes to write your reflections on Discussion
Required: Reflection on Field trips and guest lectures Due today - post on Discussion
Final Project planning, groups, and presentation expectations and rubric
In Class Activity with group members - preparation for final projects and presentations
Questions, collaboration, & review
Final project presentations
Presentation by 2 groups - Discussion and Q&A
Final project presentations
Presentation by 2 groups - Discussion and Q&A, Overview of course and survey
Week 2: Feb 3
Week 3: Feb 10
Week 4: Feb 17
Week 5: Feb 24
Week 6: Mar 3
Week 7: Mar 10
Week 8: Mar 24
Week 9: Mar 31
Week 10: Apr 7
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