The words and images of famous American writers like James Baldwin or Mark Twain circulate widely online, and are often invoked in social and political conversations. These texts and images — frequently paired together — sometimes draw...
Author Christina Soontornvat reflected on her path from her parents’ Texas restaurant to the pages of her own books during the 2026 Spencer G. Shaw Lecture: “The best way to understand my work is through embarrassing childhood photos...
Melody Sky Weaver recalled her reaction the first time someone told her she'd make a great librarian: "I'm not a quiet person. I am a really loud, extroverted person."At the time, Weaver was a sculptor, building large-scale art...
Many Information School and University of Washington students have the opportunity to study away from campus for several weeks at a time. This past winter, students had a special chance to study in New Zealand for an entire academic...
Claims of “smart” toys go back decades. See Chatty Cathy and Furby. But generative artificial intelligence is increasing the capabilities of interactive toys. The company Curio, for instance, markets itself as a “magical workshop...
As AI models continue to grow more capable, some are beginning to behave unpredictably outside their testing environments. It is a pattern that raises concerns among those responsible for overseeing the rapid pace of AI...
Research is most meaningful when it extends beyond labs and publications. Doing work that improves people’s lives often requires us to collaborate with community partners and trust their knowledge and expertise. For example, as part of his research into Indigenous communication and knowledge systems,...
Libraries, archives and museums often face many of the same challenges, but they don’t always approach them in the same way. A new project by the Center for Advances in Libraries, Museums, and Archives (CALMA) aims to change that and bring the three fields together by developing a research roadmap....
University of Washington Master of Library and Information Science students Holly Samayoa and Sherry Vazhayil are among those awarded 2026-27 ALA Spectrum Scholarships, announced recently by the American Library Association.Samayoa and Vazhayil spoke about what drew them to library and information...
At the end of every presidential term, the End of Term Web Archive preserves that administration’s web presence as a vast trove of documents and webpages. The archive began in 2008, with George W. Bush’s second term, and runs up to 2024, collecting images, text, graphs, redacted pages and other media. So...
Information School Professor Chirag Shah recently published “Agent Nation,” a book concerning how autonomous AI is affecting society — and what we, as individuals, can do about it. As artificial intelligence has been integrated into commercial practices, Shah has noticed that people tend to...
