We are pleased to make available the prerelease of the LIS Forward position paper, Ensuring a Vibrant Future for LIS in iSchools, at the 86th Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science and Technology(ASIS&T) being held in London, UK October 27-31, 2023. Several members of LIS Forward led a session at ASIS&T, Advancing LIS in iSchools: Building a coalition to ensure a vibrant future, on the position paper and next steps for the initiative. The prerelease includes Part 1, LIS in iSchools: Perspectives and Positioning. The full report with Part 2 — Library Futures: Critica ..read more

By Kayla Pohl The decisions we make about our oceans need to be informed by sound data, and more importantly, the process for collecting and interpreting that data needs to be inclusive of the diverse realities, values, and knowledge systems of local marine communities. All too often, however, that isn’t the case. Researchers with the University of Washington’s Technology & Social Change Group (TASCHA) investigated the reasons why and have collaborated to create a training resource for communities to foster inclusive data-driven decision-making. Inclusive Ocean Data for Decision-Making is ..read more

By Doug Parry and Maria Garrido Meaningful access to information: “The rights and capacity to use, create and share information in ways that are meaningful to each individual, community or organization.” Information access is a fundamental driver of many of the goals in the United Nations’ 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, yet many countries are struggling to make progress. A new analysis has found that statistical indicators of freedom and gender equity — two pillars of meaningful access to information — show decline and stagnation midway through the Agenda put forth in 2015. The findings ..read more

By Kayla Pohl For decades, international agencies such as the U.N. have stressed the urgency and necessity of gender digital equality, yet in low- and middle-income countries like Ghana, progress has been frustratingly slow. Researchers at the UW Information School’s Technology and Social Change Group (TASCHA) want to know why. In partnership with Ghana-based researchers Kwasi Ansu-Kyeremeh, Marcia Abonie and Naa Ansaa Ansai-Koi from the MmaaTech Foundation, Maria Garrido and Araba Sey investigated the extent to which family norms, classroom dynamics and policymaking — which we can think of as ..read more

This project aims to develop a research agenda for a gamified approach to building resilience to health misinformation. Project activities include a literature review, interviews with health experts, and co-design sessions. With conventional information literacy approaches for helping people detect and resist misinformation proving inadequate, escape rooms offer an immersive learning experience to focus on the cognitive biases, emotional triggers and other affective attributes that make misinformation so pernicious. This short term Tier 1 grant will enable a group of faculty and postdoctoral s ..read more

Building on a successful pilot study, we received a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to move the project forward. The project has four parts:  #1: To finalize the initial escape room — The Euphorigen Investigation — and build the technical infrastructure for public libraries and other educational institutions to access and run the game.  #2: To conduct a large-scale evaluation of Euphorigen in 10 libraries across the U.S. #2: To create a co-design curriculum for developing new interest-driven escape rooms.  #3: To run two co-design camps with member ..read more

DEADLINE TO APPLY IS 9 PM Pacific Standard Time, Tuesday, November 8, 2022. The Information School is seeking a highly motivated graduate level student to serve as a Research Assistant supporting the iSchool LIS task force. The main focus of the LIS Task Force is the LIS Forward initiative, a multi-university conversation aimed at charting future directions for Library and Information Science (LIS) within the iSchool movement. The University of Washington iSchool is convening a series of conversations among leading information schools to culminate in a summit on November 3-6, 2022. The RA will ..read more

Even before the official launch of Loki’s Loop in June 2022, the research team at the University of Washington Information School received numerous requests for collaboration from across the world. The first two organizations they agreed to support are in New Zealand and Latvia. In addition to the benefits to the local communities, the partnerships have been useful for learning how the game translates to different cultures. The team is using these case studies to better support organizations in other countries that want to localize the escape room games. IREX Baltic Media Literacy Pr ..read more

Highlights With the end of the academic year, it’s time to review TASCHA’s work of the past year. The COVID-19 pandemic continued to play a role. On one hand we had to either postpone projects or replace field-based methods with remote methods (e.g. Zoom interviews), directly impacting the course and outcomes of these efforts. On the other hand, the pandemic has shined a spotlight on digital inequities, thereby giving increased importance to our work. Pandemic-induced job losses in early 2020 hit lower income households particularly hard, a segment of the population that is less likely to have ..read more

Join us at iConference 2022 to surface ambitions for tackling critical information challenges of our time and cultivate synergies and collaboration across iSchools. Schools of Library and Information Science (LIS) were foundational in launching the iSchool movement. Over the past 20 years, the movement and many individual schools have grown to become increasingly multidisciplinary, as concepts, problems, and opportunities related to information, people, and technology prevailed across disciplines. LIS is now one of many fields represented by iSchool faculty and programs, and LIS itself has bec ..read more