Introduction:

Today we live in the age of information when advanced societies are known as the societies of information or knowledge. Such societies depend on information in their economy, through the processes of production, processing and dissemination. They tend to benefit from it in establishing a civilized and educated community that is well aware of and able to add to technologies.

Therefore, the importance of sciences related to information, its management, processing and provision, has been highlighted. So is the case for information science as its role has started to include library sciences. Traditional or digital libraries are among the information centers that provide access to various information sources.

The decision of the supreme education council has issued its decision no. 15\36\1426 dated 26\2\1426 AH to rename the department from (department of libraries and information) to (department of information science).

Moreover, the department believes that it is essential to develop its curricula to cope with the international developments in information science. It seeks also to achieve with the university's objectives of attaining a scientific level that best suits the reputation of Umm Al-Qura University and links between the education output and the demands of labor market. Therefore, the department has developed its course plan based on the following fundamentals:

- The department's amended plan should go in line with:

1- The country's development plans

2- The international criteria for the evaluation of curricula in the same specialization

3- The university's objectives

4- The demands of labor market

Program Objectives:

In addition to the general objectives of the university, the objectives of the program can be summed up in the following points:

1- Providing graduates with cognitive skills in the field of information services at both public and private sectors.

2- Qualifying and training national technocrats who are specialized in the field of informatics and able to work in the fields of information services at libraries and different information centers in both public and private sectors.

3- Preparing national cadres that are capable of dealing with information technologies and their different application; particularly in the fields of digital information services such as digital libraries.

4- Connecting between education outputs and the demands of labor market

The fields targeted by the program can be summed up in the following points:

• Libraries, information centers and other institutions of both public and private sectors.
• Centers of learning sources or school libraries.
• The production, management and organization of digital contents
• Searching, designing and managing databases.
• Digital libraries.
• Internet and its information applications.

Terms of Admission:

A student should:

1- Obtain a high school certificate (science section) or an equivalent certificate.

2- Meet the other prerequisites applied by the university.

3- Meet any other prerequisites proposed by the department's board and approved by the university's board.

The course plan is designed to obtain a bachelor degree in information science.

Total credit hours of the course: 135 credit hours

Number of admitted enrollees: 25 students