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Ali Shiri

Digital Self-Determination: Data Sovereignty in Inuvialuit Communities of Canada’s Western Arctic

Since 2013, researchers from the University of Alberta School of Library and Information Studies and the Inuvialuit elders, leaders, and community members in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region (ISR), Northwest Territories have collaborated to develop digital library and digital storytelling platforms to support Inuvialuit cultural heritage digitization, revitalization, preservation and access.

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FeaturedProfessional Development
Atticus Hawk

Naloxone Now! Canadian Librarians Save Lives

Nearly 50% of library workers in Canada have responded to an opioid overdose at work, while only half of library workers who had responded to a suspected overdose on the job felt that they had been properly trained or were confident in how they handled the situation. This situation should give us pause: most library workers are unequipped to handle this very real part of the job. As iSchool educators, we ought to ask ourselves: what are we going to do about this? Can saving lives be considered a core LIS principle?

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library shelves with sunny window
EducationFeatured
Lisa Shamchuk

Tracing “CanCon” in Library and Information Science Research

LIS professionals and practitioners may find it challenging to access current research that supports library decision-making, program development, or service evaluation through a distinctly Canadian lens. Public, school, and special libraries did not seem to have the same kind of representation in the research, and it made me wonder: what is the state of Canadian LIS research content?

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FeaturedTranslation
Cansu Ekmekcioglu

Toward Sustainable Data Governance in Refugee and Immigrant Serving Sector in Canada

For governments across the world, evaluating the impact of social service programs is a growing challenge – and they are increasingly turning to data and technology to help manage it. This is especially true for programs serving refugees and immigrants to settle in a new country. From tracking who needs settlement support to deciding who gets benefits first, digital systems and artificial intelligence (AI) are becoming key tools in how social services support refugees and immigrants. But what happens when data systems try to capture something as human and complex as “support”?  

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FeaturedOriginal
Elisa Tattersall Wallin

All talk and few facts: Reflecting on the role of podcasts in climate obstruction

What role do podcasts play in spreading information about climate change? For a research project on environmental communication, I explored how these issues are discussed in podcasts. I found that serious channels with the ambition to inform about climate change issues share the space with channels with a dubious agenda and a loose relationship to facts.

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FeaturedTranslation
Jaihyun Park

Rethinking Reuse in Data Lifecycle in the Age of Large Language Models

In the world we are living in, a digital world, some data slips past our awareness, but very little data ever truly disappears. As we, information scientists, are concerned with reproducibility and responsibility of research, data lifecycle models have been developed to manage the complexity. To foster open, transparent, and collaborative science, data is often archived in a repository at the end of the project according to such data lifecycle models. This is often followed by the last step of the lifecycle models, data reuse. Traditionally, this model is cyclical, with reused data leading to new questions and fueling subsequent rounds of research.

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FeaturedInfoFire
Shalini Urs

LLMs, AI, and the Future of Research Evaluation: A Conversation with Mike Thelwall on Informetrics and Research Impact

In this episode of InfoFire, I sit down with Professor Mike Thelwall, a well accomplished scholar of Informetrics, to explore the intersections of Large Language Models (LLMs) and research evaluation. We delve into how LLMs are reshaping the landscape of research assessment, examining the promises they hold and the challenges they present in ensuring fair, meaningful, and context-aware evaluations.

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FeaturedTranslation
Fatima Espinoza Vasquez

Transforming Ourselves, Transforming Inequity: Reimagining Partnerships for Information Justice

Thinking of communities as “information poor” misrepresents the reality of systemic exclusion. Instead, marginalized communities have been intentionally and unintentionally excluded from mainstream information infrastructures. This exclusion is not due to a lack of knowledge on the part of marginalized communities but rather a reflection of structural barriers that limit access to institutionalized information flows. We need to recognize the existence and prevalence of information precarity, and then we need to radically alter how we plan and carry out projects, research, and outreach with—not for—marginalized communities.

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EducationFeaturedTranslation
Meghan Dowell

The Cost of Clicks: Cultivating Data-Awareness and Ethical LMS Practices in Higher Education 

Many educational institutions use learning management systems (LMSs), which may track and analyze a student’s every click, assignment submission, and even location; this also makes them useful for learning analytics, the collection and analysis of student data in the name of supporting learning and teaching. While students may know that LMSs collect their data, they often don’t understand the extent of just how much data these systems collect! Yet, it’s not hard to imagine what the scope of LMS data collection means for student privacy. This imbalance highlights the urgent need for greater transparency and critical data education in the use of educational technologies. 

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