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UW funds Hala Annabi's research to help young workers with autism

Tuesday, September 19, 2017

A project led by iSchool Associate Professor Hala Annabi is among five winners of the University of Washington Population Health Initiative’s inaugural research grants. Annabi, along with Jill Locke of the Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences and Gary Stobbe of the Department of Neurology, was awarded $50,000 to research “PREP for IT,” a program to help prepare young people with autism to land information technology jobs and succeed in the workplace. Based on their talent levels, young people with autism have lower-than-expected employment rates, Annabi said. Only 58 percent o

Internships give MSIM student hands-on experience with health data

Thursday, September 14, 2017

The health-care industry is always adapting to new technology. Examples include a HealthMap team using Twitter data to track cholera after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, and a University of Pennsylvania study finding a correlation between the risk of heart disease and the expression of negative emotions such as anger, stress and fatigue in a county population’s tweets. Ding Luo, a full-time Master of Science in Information Management student, learned that hard work is involved in setting up the data for these kinds of studies. She interned with two health-care organizations this summer as

Nike internship keeps MSIM student running all summer

Tuesday, September 12, 2017

Janani Kumar was already a Nike fan before she applied for its summer internship program. That, along with her undergraduate degree in computer science and courses in her Master of Science in Information Management (MSIM) program landed her the 10-week internship at Nike’s Beaverton headquarters. “I was always a fan of the brand and what they stood for,” says Kumar. “During the interview process they asked me about my favorite Nike campaign, Nike athlete and what I thought about the direction of the company.” Kumar, a full-time MSIM student, worked in the Global Consumer Know

MLIS alumna tames Seattle Opera's archives as its first librarian

Wednesday, September 6, 2017

The Seattle Opera library was once a disorganized mess of artifacts from the institution’s five decades of productions. Emily Bolton Cabaniss, a 2014 graduate of the iSchool’s Master of Library and Information Science program, is working to change that. As the opera’s first librarian, Cabaniss is organizing and cataloging a trove of books, DVDs, musical scores, videotapes and even instruments, bringing a sense of order to the opera’s collections to help safeguard its history. The Seattle Times spent some time on the job with Cabaniss in the opera’s library, among the thousands

Lecturer Richard Sturman gives his classes a real-world feeling

Monday, August 28, 2017

Richard Sturman didn’t expect to be teaching at a university. The Australia native excelled in the corporate IT world for more than 20 years, helping companies build IT strategies to increase productivity, take advantage of new technologies and better connect them with their customers. “That is quite tricky for a lot of organizations to do. In addition to the technology challenges, there are many organizational and cultural challenges. People ask, ‘How do I change the job I’ve done for 30 years?’ And for many people and many organizations, it is a real challenge,” says Sturman.

iSchool's Bill Howe urges responsible use of data in 'smart cities'

Friday, August 25, 2017

With technology making our cities “smarter,” how smart can we be about securing our data and making modernized cities inclusive? Information School Associate Professor Bill Howe joined U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene and other regional leaders from the public and private sectors for a roundtable discussion on such questions around innovation and the Internet of Things. The hour-long meeting Wednesday on the UW campus brought together regional leaders including City of Seattle CTO Michael Mattmiller; Seattle Public Utilities CEO Mami Hara; Socrata CEO Kevin Merritt; and Microsoft Government S

Greetings from Earth: Podcast revisits Voyager’s ‘Golden Record,’ 1977

Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Forty years ago this month, Planet Earth said hello to the cosmos with the launch of the two Voyager probes that used gravity to swing from world to world on a grand tour of the solar system. Each bore a two-sided, 12-inch, gold-plated copper “Golden Record” of sights and sounds from Earth and its people — and a stylus to help play the record. About 20 billion kilometers (about 12.5 billion miles) from home now, Voyager I has since become the most distant human-made object in space. Voyager 2, in clear second place, is now about 17.2 billion kilometers away. You could call

New iSchool faculty member Alexis Hiniker studies online habits, good and bad

Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Almost 80 percent of Americans have smartphones. On average, they check them more than 140 times a day. Many are not happy about it, expressing feelings of dissatisfaction with the waste of time, the meaninglessness of the experience, and their seeming inability to break their onscreen habits, reports new iSchool faculty member Alexis Hiniker. “People are often dissatisfied with the way they choose to use technology, yet struggle to change their behavior,” says the human-computer interaction researcher, who is studying emotions surrounding people’s engagement with technology and t

Data ethics expert Anna Lauren Hoffmann joins iSchool faculty

Tuesday, August 22, 2017

How do the data-driven systems that daily sort us, classify us, and categorize us shape our lives? When are the changes they engender good for us and when are they bad? These are questions central to the writing and research of new iSchool faculty member Anna Lauren Hoffmann, whose work digs into the social, political, and ethical implications of big data and algorithms. “I am looking forward to working with the exceptional faculty, graduate students, and staff at the iSchool in thinking seriously about how data, data-intensive processes, and statistical knowledge impact people’s lives,

iSchool launches redesigned website

Monday, August 21, 2017

The UW Information School rolled out its redesigned website on Monday, Aug. 21. The new-look website uses updated colors and typefaces that align with those used on the main UW site. It features a simplified navigation structure and a tool that gives users the option to customize certain aspects of the site based on their choice of audience – current students, future students, faculty and staff, or “everyone.” The iSchool site is among the first on the UW campus to use the new Drupal 8 publishing platform. The new platform necessitated a complete rebuild by Lead Web Developer Nick

MLIS student digs into the human side of mining

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Savannah Sessions grew up in Maine and gets excited about the human side of mining in her state. For her MLIS Directed Fieldwork, Sessions is working with the Maine Mineral and Gem Museum (MMGM) to shed light on the sacrifices and risks often experienced by miners, many of whom were immigrants. “Mining is a thing of the past, but people are still doing it,” says Sessions. “When I’m reading through correspondence and papers at MMGM, they often describe someone reaching into a pocket of rock and pulling out some incredible specimen of tourmaline or beryl or other mineral.”

Internship on baseball exhibit perfect for MLIS 'law library nerd'

Tuesday, August 15, 2017

It was a dream internship that combined two passions: law and baseball. Karen Sánchez, an MLIS online student, is spending the summer working for the Law Library of Congress to help it prepare for a June 2018 Baseball Americana exhibit – a look at how the great American pastime has spread worldwide. The exhibit will include a “moot court” on the use of the designated hitter; a small exhibit featuring items from the Law Library’s collection; and a joint program for Labor Day on baseball and free agency/players’ rights and how that relates to antitrust laws. “As a law libra

Joe Janes writes about documents for Publishers Weekly

Monday, August 7, 2017

As a follow-up to the successful publishing of his new book, "Documents That Changed the Way We Live," Associate Professor Joe Janes was asked to think about the future of documents for Publishers Weekly, a weekly news magazine focused on the international book publishing business.  In his opinion piece, Janes says, "What hasn’t changed, though, is the fundamental nature of documents. Our history, as individuals and as societies and cultures, is inextricably and necessarily intertwined with documenting things. Documents provide order and structure to the commonplace parts of our

Lecturer Laura Schildkraut teaches empowerment

Monday, August 7, 2017

Laura Schildkraut wants students in her Gender and Information Technology class to know two things about the workplace: You are empowered to take control of your career, and professional relationships and interactions are complicated.  “I want to show the women in the class that this is a great field and they shouldn’t shy away from it because in some cases women don’t seem to be welcome,” says Schildkraut. “And, for all students, it’s about empowering them to understand what many women go through and to help them be better managers, colleagues and subordinates. I want stud

iSchool alumna brings diverse books to Wahluke School District

Monday, July 31, 2017

Angelina Buck was in first grade when her teacher at Mattawa Elementary School was reading a book about Native Americans just before Thanksgiving. Angelina raised her hand. The story wasn’t right, she said. It wasn’t what she had learned while growing up with the Wanapum Tribe. “She said that what she was hearing in the story was conflicting with what she had learned about first-hand, being Native American and growing up in a Native American culture,” said Alyssa Buck, Angelina’s mother. Angelina’s teacher invited her to visit the library to find a better book. When Ange