Mission

As Arizona's iSchool, we collaborate across disciplines, drive critical research and development, and educate the information intellectuals and professionals of tomorrow to further positive social change that is rooted in the places where we live and that impacts the world.

Vision

The University of Arizona School of Information is Arizona's iSchool; we are committed to advancing the field of Information in the 21st century through critical inquiry, inspiring education, and interdisciplinary service.

We work at the intersections of people, information, and technologies. Our school deepens these intersections through attention to lands, societies, and knowledge systems within and beyond the Southwest borderlands in which we work, with cognizance of our responsibilities as members of the global community and the inherent subjectivities tied to being human in today’s information age and digital culture. We engage with diverse partners around the globe, breaking social and technical barriers to contribute to the flourishing of individuals and their communities.

We are makers, theorists, information providers, computing experts, archivists, librarians, communicators, problem-solvers, scientists, and more. We are committed to equity based on sex, gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, ability, and other human dimensions. Our staff and faculty work together while inviting others—especially those previously excluded from these kinds of activities—to join us.

School Profile

The School of Information is a multidisciplinary department where faculty researchers focus on many aspects of information organization, management, or use and its impact on individuals and society. Our broadly trained and diverse faculty and student populations work towards establishing and advancing what we know about information amid massive digital shifts in contemporary society. These foci range from the philosophies of information, and studies of digital literacy or digital archives, to computational social science, data science, machine learning, and information retrieval or text mining. Beyond the wide methodological spectrum represented by the faculty, and alongside a broad commitment to issues of diversity and inclusion, much of the research happening in the School focuses on behavior, and related human factors across sectors of life, to include economic or business contexts, education, health, and art.

We have faculty focused on computational science and management information systems working side by side with those focused on issues of information behavior and societal change. We house faculty who specialize in virtual/augmented reality (e.g., Bozgeyikli and Bozgeyikli), biodiversity informatics and data curation (e.g., Heidorn), natural language processing (e.g., Jansen, Bethard, Cui, Heidorn), data science (e.g., Thompson, Morrison, Bethard), neural networks (Bethard), cognitive artificial intelligence (e.g., Jansen), machine learning/artificial intelligence (e.g., Morrison), and text mining/information retrieval (e.g., Cui). Alongside those faculty with strong credibility in technical sciences, we have those who bridge methodologies and academic disciplines (e.g., Brooks works across/blends qualitative small data and aggregate data/statistics). Alongside these faculty, we have a set of information philosophers (e.g., Lenhart, Fallis and Mathiesen) studying issues of policy and property, as well as those focused on digital culture and information communities (e.g., Daly, Lenhart, Brooks), issues of information organization and related technologies (e.g., Fricke, Fulton), multimedia work, archives (e.g., Lee, Daly), collections, leadership, and libraries (e.g., Stoffle, Macaluso), and issues of justice and access (e.g., Knott, Lee).

Our broad spectrum of methodological tools (e.g., computation, informatics/analytics, social network analysis, qualitative/interpretive research), field-specific perspectives (e.g., performance, librarianship, data curation in the sciences), and paradigmatic approaches (e.g., critical cultural scholars and queer theorists working alongside positivists or systems theorists) in our information-related research make us distinct.