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Published: 6/25/2009
The June 25 edition of UWeek features an article about this year's iSchool Capstone event. The Capstone is an integrative experience in which students bring together the knowledge and skills they have acquired while in the Informatics and Master of Science in Information Management programs. Each year, approximately 135 students participate in the Capstone event, presenting research and design projects deeply rooted in the types of real-world challenges they will face as working professionals.
There were 55 projects presented at this year's Capstone event. The UWeek story looks closely at two of them; the application Footnotes, a tool developed by Informatics students that allows hikers and other trail users to document trail conditions and share their hiking experiences using social media techniques; and City Fruit, a tool that allows users to map the location of fruit trees in Seattle's neighborhoods. The City Fruit application is being used to help a local non-profit harvest fruit trees for those who need it.
UWeek is the staff and faculty newspaper of the University of Washington. You can find the Capstone story, written by Catherine O'Donnell of the UW's office of News & Information, on the UWeek Web site.
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Published: 6/24/2009
A team comprising a student from the iSchool's Informatics program and three certificate students in the UW's Information Assurance program were tapped by their fellow students to present their course-long final project, "The Cost of Information Breaches in the United States," at Agora, a quarterly meeting of information assurance and cybersecurity professionals in the greater Seattle area. The students were asked to produce a well-supported estimate of aggregate dollar losses from reported information breaches in the United States for the years 2007, 2008 and 2009 through March.
"The students did an outstanding job," said Barbara Endicott-Popovsky, UW iSchool senior lecturer and director for the Center of Information Assurance and Cybersecurity at the University of Washington. "In tough economic times, the ability to express the costs of security are even more important as organizations look for places to cut. Often security costs are diffuse, not collected in one place, making it difficult to get your arms around the true costs of a security breach. The students in this class did an outstanding job of identifying the categories of direct and indirect costs that organizations must think through in order to fairly evaluate security investments. This is an extremely valuable service to the security community since little exists on the subject to help those responsible for security investments make their decisions."
In their report, the team review current and published reporting data, identify future areas for research and make recommendations for advancing practice in the area of security breaches. These recommendations include reform and review of existing reporting laws and the development of a well-constructed, well defined reporting taxonomy for the industry.
People interested in the report can obtain more information by contacting the UW Information School's Communications team at shepard1@washington.edu.
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Published: 6/24/2009
Today UW iSchool Professor and Dean Emeritus Michael Eisenberg is quoted in an article in the Seattle Times regarding Bellevue's decision to reassign their school librarians. Dr. Eisenberg went on record when he questioned the decision at a Bellevue School Board meeting. He also authored an editorial about the decision in the June 24 edition of the paper.
The story was featured on the front page of the Times' Web site, and describes how the decision to reassign librarians has drawn national attention in the field. Both the American Library Association and the School Library Journal Web sites have posted stories on the issue.
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Published: 6/15/2009
Tune in and find out what college students say about their frustrations with conducting research in the digital age (2:35).
The new video, produced by Project Information Literacy (PIL), is the latest in a public service video series, created for use in classes, training sessions, and meetings to spark further discussion about information literacy. The series also includes video shorts about what students say about Wikipedia (2:11) and what they say about procrastination (2:11). No permission for use is needed.
PIL is a national research study, led by Alison Head and Mike Eisenberg of the University of Washington's iSchool and supported with a gift from ProQuest and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
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Published: 6/15/2009
Appearing in the July 2009 issue of Library Quarterly is "Making Sense of an Information World: The Everyday Life Information Behavior of Preteens" (abstract), a new article from Information School doctoral candidate Eric Meyers, Professor Karen Fisher, and Senior Lecturer Elizabeth Marcoux. The authors are part of Information Behavior in Everyday Contexts (IBEC) (ibec.ischool.washington.edu), a research project at the UW iSchool.
The article examines the little-researched information interactions of preteens or "tweens," especially outside the classroom. The team sought to determine which sources tweens use, and why, and what social settings foster information-sharing, and how. Such research would help mediating professions and institutions better understand how to serve this group. The article argues tweens, a population sandwiched between children and young adults, has its own distinct set of behaviors, circumstances, and needs. "Naturally and insatiably curious" they develop and hone their information literacy in informal social settings, and achieve many of their information needs socially. The article goes on to suggest that for tweens, providing access to print and media will not be enough but "access to other people, that often makes or breaks an information search."
First published in 1931, Library Quarterly is one of the most prestigious publications in the field. Its goal is to promote and publish cutting edge research that focuses on libraries and librarianship.
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