Recruiter Cynthia del Rosario to receive diversity award

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Cynthia del Rosario ('94, '96), director for Graduate Minority Recruitment and Retention at the UW Information School, has been named the recipient of the 2011 University of Washington Vice President for Minority Affairs and Vice Provost for Diversity Community Building Award. See the UW Today article here. Del Rosario's powerful leadership and networking skills have strengthened campus and community dialogues surrounding the topic of diversity. She sponsors the iSchool's Diversity Committee and supported the formation of a student organization, iEracism. Del Rosario is also active in the G

Too much screen time could lead to popcorn brain

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

UW iSchool researcher David Levy says too much time in front of digital devices could lead to "popcorn brain," which he describes as the mind being so hooked on electronic multitasking that the slower-paced life offline holds no interest. Other studies note the onset of Computer Vision Syndrome (CVS) with symptoms including eye strain, headaches, blurred vision, and neck and shoulder pain. To learn more, read this article in the Manassas Patch.

Alumni celebrate iSchool's centennial at ALA conference in New Orleans

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Nearly 100 alumni and friends turned out for the iSchool Centennial Alumni and Friends reception at the ALA Conference held at Mother's Restaurant in New Orleans, LA on June 26. Recent graduates, as well as senior alumni dating back to 1949, were in attendance and sharing old stories and recent experiences at the event. Dean Harry Bruce thanked the group for their participation at the conference. He also recognized Nancy Magnuson, MLIS '78, with a certificate of recognition as Notable Alumna for her "extraordinary service in librarianship and special collections." In her nomination letter f

Sustainability dashboard measures environmental responsibility at the UW

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Marilyn Ostergren, an iSchool doctoral student, was part of a team at UW that developed a visual display that provides one-stop shopping for information on measures from various offices and entities across campus. The site is expected to be a resource for the growing number of organizations and publications that are ranking and reviewing the sustainability efforts of universities and other major institutions. For more on the sustainability dashboard, see this article in UW Today.

UW iSchool's Alison Head will be a Berkman fellow at Harvard

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Alison J. Head, a research scientist in the Information School, has been awarded a joint fellowship for next year at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard and the Harvard Libraries Innovation Laboratory. She is one of 23 awardees from an international pool of several hundred applicants. Berkman fellows have included Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia; John Perry Barlow, founder of the Electronic Freedom Foundation; and Eszter Hargittai, who heads the Web Use Project at Northwestern University. Head will research what happens to the information strategies of today's coll

Capstone winners cast fresh eyes on information challenges

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Ground-breaking projects wowed record-breaking crowds at this year's ninth annual iSchool Capstone event. The standing-room-only student showcase drew an audience of more than 500, including high-tech and i-commerce industry professionals scouting the next best ideas in the information field. "There were all sorts of new and creative ways to solve problems that I had never even thought about," says Henry Berg, an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the UW's Center for Commercialization and one of the lead judges at the 2011 Capstones. Berg's five-member panel awarded the $1,000 Commercial Potentia

Undergrads also struggle with info overload

Monday, June 6, 2011

Drs. Michael Eisenberg and Alison Head co-authored an op-ed column in the June 3 edition of the Seattle Times. The column shares insights gained through research with more than more than 10,000 students at 31 U.S. colleges and universities about how they are dealing with information overload. Eisenberg and Head argue colleges must retool to help young people learn the skills to negotiate the vast amount of information at their disposal. To read the column in its entirety, visit the Seattle Times website. Project Information Literacy (PIL) is a national research study, led by the iSchool'

Lin (PhD) wins UW dissertation award

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Each year, the UW graduate school awards the UW Presidential Dissertation Fellowship to Ph.D. students who have significant and original dissertation projects and who show a high level of scholarly promise. This year, Peyina Lin, a Research Associate in the Information School, was one of the recipients. "I think I nearly jumped out of my chair when I received the news," said Lin. "I am extremely grateful to my advisors, Drs. Michael B. Eisenberg and David W. McDonald, both from the iSchool, and Katherine Stovel of Sociology, for their high quality and constructive feedback and continuous suppo

Capstone a showcase for iSchool excellence

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Where are the Next Best Ideas in the information field coming from? If the past is any indication, this year's Capstone event may provide some answers. Capstone projects from the iSchool's Bachelor of Science in Informatics, Master of Science in Information Management and Master of Library & Information Science programs are concrete examples of what it means to design and build novel applications of technology and innovative information tools and services. Projects range from mobile device applications to web-based library collection tools to browser security plug-ins. Date: Thursday, J

Woelfer (PhD) named Fulbright Fellow

Friday, May 13, 2011

The University of Washington Information School and the University of British Columbia's School of Library, Archival & Information Studies are pleased to jointly announce Jill Palzkill Woelfer has been selected for a Fulbright Award to Canada, which she will use to fund an eight-month stay at SLAIS. The award is in support of Woelfer's research into the ways that homeless young people use information systems, such as Facebook, and personal digital technologies, such as mobile phones. While at SLAIS, she will conduct and complete a portion of her dissertation research, a comparative stud

Duarte (PhD) awarded dissertation fellowship

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

UW iSchool PhD candidate Marisa E. Duarte has been awarded a fellowship through the Social Science Research Council Dissertation Proposal Development Program. Duarte's research will investigate the relationship between specific global technologies and specific locations of Indigenous struggle. She will be visiting various tribal leaders in the United States, speaking with them to learn about how particular technologies have shaped Native America, and how technological innovation relates to the struggle for tribal autonomy and sovereignty. In her proposal, she asserts: A global Indigenous

Dr. Levy finds undergrads want to unplug

Monday, May 9, 2011

College students and technology go hand in hand, don't they? UW iSchool professor David Levy and collaborators at Georgetown University surveyed more than 300 students at six colleges to answer this question. The results, reported in a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, might surprise you. In "No Cellphone? No Internet? So Much Less Stress," (available on the Chronicle of Higher Education website) Levy and colleagues report that college students might prefer to spend less time using technology and surfing the web and more time connecting with people face-to-face. Some s

UW, iSchool dominate CHI awards

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

The UW Information School and its collaborators dominated the awards given to the best submissions at this year's CHI, the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. The iSchool and its collaborators garnered two Best Paper awards and three Honorable Mention awards. CHI is the largest international conference for researchers and practitioners in the area of Human-Computer Interaction and Design (HCI). The overall submission acceptance rate at CHI this year was 26 percent. Remarkably, the UW iSchool had 16 of 29, or 55 percent of its papers accepted. Assistant professor Jacob O. W

UW, iSchool mourn Dr. Efthimis Efthimiadis

Monday, May 2, 2011

On Thursday, April 28, the iSchool community lost Efthimis Efthimiadis, a beloved friend, colleague and community member. Efthi was an Associate Professor at the iSchool. He was 54 years old. "When I came to Seattle twelve years ago, the first invitation that my family received was to a dinner at Efthi's house," said Information School Dean and Professor Harry Bruce. "He was a warm, loving, cheerful soul. Throughout his battle with a cruel illness he displayed inspirational courage; he also never lost the qualities that made him so dear to our community -- his sense of optimism and fun. We

Walker (PhD) named Wikimedia Foundation Fellow

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

The iSchool proudly announces PhD student Shawn Walker's selection for a Wikimedia Foundation Summer Fellowship. He will be participating in an interdisciplinary team seeking to gain a deeper understanding of why the active editor base on Wikipedia is not replenishing itself at the same rate it used to -- and what to do about it. "The fellowship, as part the Wikimedia Foundation's 'Summer of Research', is an opportunity to work with a large dataset and a stellar group of researchers to understand the gradual decline in the active Wikipedia editor base," said Walker. "The tools that we bu