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Adversity motivates MSIM student to help others

Friday, December 17, 2021

Sometimes, Leticia Y Romo Bueno says, “The things I’ve done just don’t seem real.” She started working in a small fishing village in Mexico just as she started grade school. At age 8, she served as caretaker for her two younger siblings. As a teenager, she fled with her family when drug gangs moved into her town, then was smuggled into the U.S. by human traffickers known as “coyotes.” She survived an abusive relationship and a period of homelessness before she finished high school. Now she’s raising two children with special needs. Through it all, she persevered and became

'Interrogator of archives' Temi Odumosu to join faculty

Monday, November 29, 2021

Temi Odumosu spotted the cast-iron bank in an antique furniture store in Copenhagen. Made in China, the bank had an onyx-black face, kinky hair and an exaggerated grin, wide, with cherry-red lips and impossibly white teeth. It was a modern replica of the popular “Jolly (N-word) Bank,” a kids’ plaything at the turn of the century. Place a coin in the hand, the figure throws it in the mouth and the eyes roll backward. The bank was “haunting” the store, says the art historian and curator. “I was deeply disturbed by it.” Disturbed, then enraged, then the scholar in her kicked

Information is for everyone: The philosophy of Tracie Hall

Monday, November 22, 2021

It was March 2020, early in the pandemic, and the rideshare driver was taking a risk with every fare. He picked up a woman whose face was covered in a mask.“Where did you get that?” asked the driver, an older fellow who wasn’t exactly a digital native.“I ordered it online,” she answered.“Online? How would I get that?” he asked.He was in luck. His passenger was Tracie D. Hall, ’00, executive director of the American Library Association (ALA), and she wasn’t going to get out of the car without helping him find the information he needed. She gave him a quick course in informatio

In space and on the ground, Informatics alum has high aspirations

Monday, November 15, 2021

Shannon Gatta’s work is out of this world. Gatta, who graduated from the iSchool in 2020 with a degree in Informatics, works as a data engineer for the private aerospace company Blue Origin, has completed the first level of private astronaut training, and has interned at NASA’s Johnson Space Center and Langley Research Center. She’s not content with fulfilling her own dreams; she’s using her talents to help other people — particularly those from marginalized groups — shoot for the stars as well. Gatta first found a passion for space while at Seattle Central Community Colle

Fellowship backs Ph.D. student's work to make everyone count

Wednesday, November 10, 2021

With no questions about transgender identities in the U.S. Census and no other reliable demographic data on trans people, researchers are often in the dark about their lives. “Data powers all of the things we know about the public,” said Leo Stewart (pictured above), a doctoral candidate at the University of Washington Information School. “If nobody’s measuring what’s happening for specific groups, it’s really hard to say a group has a lower life expectancy or something like that because you don’t have that data.” Through his research, Stewart seeks to shed light on data

New iSchool lab focuses on the aftermath of crises

Monday, November 8, 2021

As people scramble to respond to an unfolding disaster, public-health emergency or other crisis, there tends to be a lot of confusion and seemingly little room for analysis. But when the dust settles, how do we document and what do we become? AfterLab, a new research group at the iSchool, is dedicated to thinking about what happens after — the aftermath of disasters, afterlives of personal data, after careful attempts at ethical governance of technologies fail, and even what happens to our digital artifacts after we’re gone. Rather than cranking out prototypes and papers, the lab takes

How iSchool research helped protect tenants from eviction

Tuesday, November 2, 2021

Amber Pepka learned she was being evicted the first time five years ago when a friend visited her Bremerton apartment. Pepka was a student at Olympic College living with her boyfriend. When the friend came over, she asked if they had seen the notice on their door. “We’re like, ‘No, what notice?’” Pepka said. “She was like, ‘You guys are getting kicked out.’” A new landlord had purchased the property and gave all of the tenants, including Pepka and her boyfriend, 20 days to leave. The landlord wanted to do a major renovation and charge higher rent, Pepka said. They we

iSchool's Weber wins funding to help community navigate technology challenges

Tuesday, November 2, 2021

When people need legal advice but can’t afford a lawyer, they often turn to legal clinics where law students can offer representation and advocacy. When community organizations need advice on technology, they soon will be able to turn to a similar type of clinic at the University of Washington. A pilot project led by the Information School’s Nicholas Weber will establish a public-interest technology clinic to serve community organizations and local governments in the Puget Sound region. The clinic will conduct policy analysis, do prototyping, and even build alternative technologies

Naomi Bishop brings her convictions to work

Monday, October 25, 2021

As Naomi Bishop walks through Phoenix’s Heard Museum, she’s in awe of the intricate Native American artwork on display: tiny animal-shaped brooches; large, handspun Navajo fabrics; dolls depicting Native warriors on horseback, embellished with thousands of tiny beads. Down the hallway is a large exhibit documenting the tragic history of American Indian boarding schools, where the federal government sent generations of children — by force or coercion — and immersed them in European-American culture in the 19th through mid-20th centuries. Native American culture was erased in the proc

Yuyi Morales shares storytelling secrets in Spencer Shaw Lecture

Friday, October 15, 2021

We all have stories to tell, author and illustrator Yuyi Morales told the audience for this year’s Spencer G. Shaw Endowed Lecture. And, she said, there are many ways to tell them. Speaking over Zoom on Oct. 14 from a small community in Veracruz, Mexico, Morales shared the inspiration for several of her books and how she works in different media, including ink, paint and even puppets. She described how she found her voice as a writer and illustrator. “Sometimes we tell (stories) with words,” she said. “Sometimes we tell them with images, sometimes we also tell them with silence,

Offering MSIM online is all about access

Tuesday, October 12, 2021

Before most of us had heard the word “coronavirus,” the Information School was embracing the new, hybrid world of working and learning. As we have with our Library and Information Science program for more than 20 years, we were preparing to offer entirely online options for our Information Management master’s program when the pandemic struck. Why? It comes down to one word: Access. Access means meeting people where they are. When we began offering the MSIM online in the spring, it opened doors to people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to attend, whether the barrier is distance, wo

Through iMentorship program, everybody wins

Tuesday, October 5, 2021

At some point, every aspiring entrepreneur either takes the risk and plunges ahead or sets aside the dream, possibly forever. Justin Banusing came to that crossroads last spring. Banusing, then a junior at the University of Washington’s Information School, had an idea for a startup to build esports programs for colleges and high schools in Southeast Asia, where competitive multiplayer video gaming is popular but formal esports programs are scarce. While attending the UW last spring, Banusing also had a full-time job at a streaming content company. Should he stick with the job or pu

Police disobey sanctuary law; iSchool researchers help prove it

Wednesday, September 29, 2021

The evidence was there, buried in tens of thousands of pages of documents: Local law enforcement agencies were failing to comply with Washington state law protecting immigrant rights. To prove it, the University of Washington Center for Human Rights (UWCHR) needed to find the signal in the noise. That was right in the wheelhouse of Information School faculty and students. Several of them were part of a campus-wide research collaboration that produced a recent report showing that, contrary to the law’s stated purpose, local police and jails remain a pipeline to immigration enforcement

Lindah Kotut: Where online and offline worlds collide

Wednesday, September 22, 2021

For Lindah Kotut, it sounded like a fine excuse for tea. Traveling to a conference in Namibia in southern Africa in 2019, Kotut wondered what people who aren’t online think about the online world. So, she decided to ask them. Kotut, who was pursuing a Ph.D. in computer science at Virginia Tech, arranged to interview village elders in Namibia and her home country of Kenya who had never used a computer. Turns out, they do have strong opinions about their privacy and security online, about how they’re represented and how their stories are told in the digital world. This became a life

iSchool researchers to inform four projects awarded more than $1.6 million by IMLS

Monday, September 20, 2021

The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has awarded a total of more than $1.6 million in funding for four projects supported by the University of Washington Information School. The projects address critical needs in the information fields, including the development of a diverse workforce of librarians and archivists. Three of the awards are part of the National Leadership Grants for Libraries Program: Misinformation Escape Room: Supporting Libraries as Hubs for Misinformation Education, awarded $249,691, will improve libraries’ capacities to address misinformation throu