Promoting Inclusiveness in Course Planning

Recently, I led a discussion in my School's Diversity and Equity Committee on ways to encourage inclusiveness in course syllabi and content, including: using gender neutral language in lectures, materials and assignments; asking students to pronounce their name and provide…

Student Posts: Information Policy Seminar ‘Public Scholarship’ Assignments

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…

Fall 2010 Semester: New Classes, New Duties

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....

A Scientist Might Create Information, but an Information Professional Makes it Useful

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…

New Course: The Search Engine Society

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.

Student Poster on Ethical Issues Related to Backscatter Airport Surveillance Technology

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 Posterhttp://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=airportsurveillanceposter-091231140539-phpapp02&stripped_title=airport-surveillance-poster View more presentations from…

The Role of Information Ethics in Education

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,…