MichaelZimmer.org

This week I attended the annual conference of the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE), where the keynote address was given by Jorge Reina Schement, Dean of the School of Communication & Information, at Rutgers University. The address was excellent, but what stuck with me most was one of Schement’s closing statements, that [...]

The Fall 2010 semester has started at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and I’m excited to teach two new classes (of my own design) in the School of Information Studies: “Special Topics in Information Science: Search Engine Society” and “Doctoral Seminar: Information Policy”. I’ve also been appointed director of SOIS’s undergraduate program, the (newly-renamed) B.S. in Information Science and Technology. It will be a busy semester….

As part of the strategic process of changing the name of the UW-M School of Information Studies undergraduate program from a B.S. in Information Resources to a B.S. in Information Science & Technology, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about marketing messages to best communicate what our major is, what value our graduate add, and [...]

Special Topics in Information Science – The Search Engine Society:

Search engines have become the center of gravity of our contemporary information society, providing a powerful interface for accessing the vast amount of information available on the World Wide Web and beyond. The audacious mission of Google, for example, is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Attaining such a goal necessarily results in significant changes to the ways in which information is created, stored, retrieved, and used. This course will critically examine the nature of search engines and their role in our information society, and reveal the unique challenges they bring to bear on information institutions, information policy, and information ethics.

Given the renewed focus on full-body “backscatter” surveillance technology, I thought I’d highlight this poster a group of students created in my Spring 2009 “Information Technology Ethics” class (brief news story is here). Airport Surveillance Poster View more presentations from michaelzimmer. The students note that while the technology provides a way to thoroughly search more [...]

This week marks the start of the Fall 2009 semester for students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I will again be teaching two classes within the undergraduate Bachelor of Science in Information Resources program in the School of Information Studies: L&I SCI 110: Introduction to Information Science (syllabus) This course introduces basic issues in information [...]

The Information Ethics special interest group of the Association for Library and Information Science Education has released a statement on information ethics designed to guide library educators and educational institutions in integrating information ethics in all aspects of education, research, scholarship, service, and practice in library and information studies and in other related professions. The [...]