Information Studies (BA)

Information managers manage and control information

Data is often referred to as the "oil of the 21st century". Just like oil, data must be processed before it can be put to good use. One of the challenges for business enterprises is to make the information relevant for economic action accessible from the growing flood of data - called Big Data.

"Go Digital" has therefore long become a core component of many corporate strategies. Topics such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, business intelligence and automation of information management processes are on the agenda in small and medium-sized enterprises just as much as in corporations or administrations.

For example, life science

In research-intensive companies, such as the life science industry, a lot of information from internal and external data sources accumulates for the development of new, innovative medicines. This information must be correlated, evaluated and made available to the relevant health authorities for market approval. In addition to sector-specific expertise, the competence of information managers is in demand here. In interdisciplinary cooperation with the researchers and developers, they ensure that all the necessary information arrives where it is needed.

For example, Bayer AG

BAYER AG is a life science company that offers interns from our study programme a first insight into the working world and offers our graduates attractive opportunities to enter a professional working environment. The possible areas of employment are diverse. Examples include research data management, information services, data science – for example in clinical development – and regulatory affairs – for example in document and data management.

Digital Marketing on the World Wide Web Marketplace

Digital marketing deals with the planning, elaboration, realisation, management and control of marketing tasks with the help of digital media and technologies.

Important areas of responsibility in this field include, for example:

• Search engine marketing with the two sub-areas of search engine optimisation (SEO) and search engine advertising (SEA).
• Social media marketing/advertising
• Sentiment analysis/opinion mining
• Content Marketing

Learning to understand search engines

Search engine optimisation plays a major role for companies in order to hold their own against competitors. The better the position of important keywords in the search engine results lists, the greater the number of visitors to your own website. The basics for understanding how search engines work and the measures for optimising websites to achieve better ranking positions are taught in modules on information retrieval and project modules on search engine optimisation in the degree programme.

Start-up and established company at the same time

An interesting employer in the field of digital marketing is the Viessmann Group - one of the leading international manufacturers of heating, industrial and cooling systems. In Viessmann's digital department – called VC/O – a young and dynamic team works under the leadership of a graduate of ours in a "start-up flair" in the middle of Berlin. The digital department sets up strategies to persuade potential buyers to make a purchase through a wide variety of campaigns. For this purpose, customised campaigns are developed for the end consumer. The advertising can be played out via social media, for example, according to the hobbies and interests indicated.

Knowing how to use knowledge - knowledge management

Knowledge management aims at the efficient use of knowledge and experience in companies or organisations in order to help them achieve their own goals. In this context, the tasks and activities that knowledge managers perform are very diverse.

They range from the procurement, preparation and presentation of information for internal organisational websites – such as intranets, wikis or blogs – to the moderation of internal working meetings in which employees are supposed to exchange their experiences on a product development project, a marketing project or an IT introduction or similar. In addition to these operational tasks, both conceptual tasks and strategic tasks can be part of the job profile of knowledge managers.

Deployment without limits

The field of application of knowledge managers knows no boundaries. They are needed in business enterprises, public administration, associations or other non-profit organisations and are sometimes already employed here. However, the term knowledge manager has not yet become firmly established in practice. For this reason, other terms often appear in job advertisements, such as content manager, community manager or web editor.

Dealing with people. Dealing with information technology.

Since knowledge and experience can be found in the heads of an organisation's employees as well as in documents and databases, knowledge managers must be familiar with and able to deal with both people and information technologies. Only in this way can they ensure effective and efficient use of the resource knowledge. With the competences of the Information and Data Management degree programme, students are very well prepared to successfully fulfil the tasks in this developing professional field.

Information and Data Management: Cultural Heritage Documentation

Preserving and making available cultural heritage is one of the most interesting fields of activity in information and data management. The range of cultural heritage institutions that need knowledge and energy here extends from museums to libraries, archives, art and castle foundations, memorial sites and institutions for the preservation of monuments, culture and tradition.

These institutions face the challenge of setting up information infrastructures and information systems to record and manage the existing collections. Another task is the creation of digital user copies for digital portals such as museum.digital or the German Digital Library.

Digitisation projects on site

To this end, extensive digitisation projects are carried out with information specialists in all cultural heritage institutions. Further tasks consist of managing collection holdings with the help of databases and preserving digital collection holdings in the long term through digital preservation measures.

Brandenburg-digital

The information sciences department maintains the Coordination Office Brandenburg-digital which coordinates all activities in the field of digital cultural heritage in the state of Brandenburg. And: it networks all cultural institutions in the state. As an information studies degree programme, we have a digitisation laboratory in which – with student participation! – digitisation projects are carried out with practical partners from various cultural institutions. This also results in contacts with cultural heritage institutions, which can be helpful either for carrying out compulsory internships during studies or for a later professional perspective in this field.

Good prospects: Data management in research and business

Graduates of the Information and Data Management programme have very good career prospects in all knowledge- and data-intensive fields of activity.

In publicly funded research institutions, the focus is often on complex tasks of data provision and data integration for the purpose of broad subsequent use by the scientific community. In the digitised economy, on the other hand, data is treated as a strategic resource. In addition to data organisation, data integration and data quality management, the focus in business enterprises is also on data analysis (data analytics) of large, often heterogeneous data volumes ("big data") as part of strategic knowledge management or for optimising complex business processes.

The information and data life cycle – from A to Z

With its wide range of modules, the information studies degree programme lays a solid foundation for the entire breadth of the information and data life cycle. After completing the information studies programme and a subsequent Master's programme, for example in data science, data engineering or data analytics, our graduates are also qualified for senior management positions. This applies, for example, to positions as chief data officer (CDO) in companies or as head of data and information services in public research institutions.

Focus on technology

In addition to an interest in conceptual challenges, applicants who wish to pursue such a career should also have a specific affinity for technological issues and a love of experimentation.

Expanding horizons non-stop: media documentation and archiving

Media documentarians have their finger on the pulse of the times. They are constantly confronted with new topics and are constantly broadening their horizons. And: the jobs are diverse ...

Whether it is a broadcasting archive, a picture agency or a press archive, a varied field of tasks awaits our specialists everywhere. Working with multimedia resources not only brings fascination for modern media. It also requires a confident handling of information science working methods such as metadata structuring and metadata generation, standardisation, mastery of retrieval methods as well as sound technological knowledge such as web languages and database structures.

Service for editorial offices and AI trainings

Metadata and technologies create "smart" products from the raw material of archives. The numerous areas of work in media documentation include:

• Content development and archiving
• Provision of online information services for editorial offices
• Carrying out complex cross-media research for editorial users
• Collaboration on projects for the digitisation of analogue media.

It is also foreseeable that with the increasing importance of AI technologies in data processing, information specialists in media companies will also work as artificial intelligence curators and AI trainers in addition to their traditional fields of activity.