Projects

iSchool faculty and researchers are conducting exciting, innovative projects in many areas of Information and Museum Studies. A number of projects have had a direct impact on information school education, service provision to local communities, and cultural institutions across Canada. Our researchers are partnering with academics from other major research institutions, as well as major partners from the information and communication technology community.

Nadia Caidi, Associate Professor

Professor Caidi's project on digital libraries for and with aboriginal communities has led to the development and implementation of an on-demand book service for rural and isolated First Nations communities across Canada.

Joan Cherry, Professor Emeritus

Professor Cherry is investigating the satisfaction rates of students in Master’s degree programs in six information schools across Canada. Past projects include the evaluation of web design guidelines, usability studies of the Text Analysis Portal for Research, and the development of instruments for user evaluation of virtual archives.  She is a co-investigator for the project "From Coexistence to Convergence: Studying Partnerships and Collaboration Among Libraries, Archives and Museums".

Chun Wei Choo, Professor

Professor Choo is principal investigator of the project "Information seeking and use in early warning systems," which is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).  He is also involved in the Knowledge Management Research Centre.   Information about Professor Choo’s projects can be found on his website.

Andrew Clement, Professor

Professor Clement is a principal investigator for the Canadian Research Alliance for Community Innovation and Networking (CRACIN), funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). He participated in the project "G20 Surveillance," which photographed close circuit TV (CCTV) cameras installed across downtown Toronto, leading up to the G20 Summit in 2010. 

Juris Dilevko, Associate Professor

Professor Dilevko is involved in long-term research projects that focus on the Canadian literary culture and the history of school libraries in the United States.

Wendy Duff, Professor

Professor Duff is co-researcher for the project "From Coexistence to Convergence: Studying Partnerships and Collaboration Among Libraries, Archives and Museums". She participated in "Measuring the economic impact of government archives" (funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission in the United States), and "Museum Knowledge Workers for the 21st century" (funded by the Canadian Heritage Information Network, CHIN).

Alan Galey, Assistant Professor

Professor Galey is working on projects entitled "The Shakespearean Archive: Preservation and Loss in the Cultural Imagination" and "Archive and Interface in Digital Textual Studies: From Cultural History to Critical Design" (funded by SSHRC). More information can be found on Professor Galey’s website.

Sara Grimes, Assistant Professor

Professor Grimes is associate director of the Semaphore Lab, where she leads research on "Children, Adaptive Gaming,and Inclusive Play” – part of the Inclusive Design Institute. She is working on a SSHRC-funded project investigating cross-sector collaboration in the area of games and learning, and is a collaborating network investigator (CNI) on the project “Children's Digital Culture: Connecting, Communicating, and Collaborating in a Digital World” – part of GRAND NCE. She is on the advisory board of the Young Canadians in a Wired World study, and recently completed a research project with Dr. Deborah A. Fields and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop on kids and online social networking.

Lynne C. Howarth, Professor

Professor Howarth is working on the project "Enhancing Pathways to Memory" with the Alzheimer Society of Toronto. She studies the use of multi-modal expressions of information to trigger memory cues for finding, organizing, and using information, for patients with mild cognitive impairment. The project is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). She is a co-investigator for the project "From Coexistence to Convergence: Studying Partnerships and Collaboration Among Libraries, Archives and Museums".

Patrick Keilty, Assistant Professor

Professor Keilty is co-editor of Feminist and Queer Information Studies Reader (forthcoming). With Katie Shilton, he is currently co-editing a special issue of Library Quarterly on critical information studies. In addition, he is editing Gender and Sexual Boundaries, and preparing a monograph, entitled Seeking Sex: Embodiment and Electronic Culture, which examines how the Internet has reconstituted our ways of being sexual.

Heather MacNeil, Associate Professor

Professor MacNeil is working on a SSHRC-funded research project examining archival description as a rhetorical genre in traditional and web-based environments. She is also co-investigator for the project "From Coexistence to Convergence: Studying Partnerships and Collaboration Among Libraries, Archives and Museums."

Rhonda McEwen, Assistant Professor

Professor McEwen is involved in a number of ongoing projects. One explores the role of touch technologies in the classroom for students with communicative disorders. She is also collaborating with Kathleen Scheaffer, Outreach and Instructional Services Coordinator, to explore the use of mobile phones for research and collaboration in academic libraries.

David Phillips, Associate Professor

Professor Phillips is working on a SSHRC-funded research project that investigates the political, economic, and technical configuration of ubiquitous computing, and the other attempts to ground the 'cloud' by revealing exactly where Internet traffic travels on its way from source to destination.

Matt Ratto, Assistant Professor

Professor Ratto is working on a SSHRC-funded project that examines changing notions of labour and expertise in relation to 3D printing and rapid prototyping technologies.

Kathleen Scheaffer, Academic Librarian, Outreach & Instructional Services Coordinator

Kathleen Scheaffer is working with Professor Rhonda McEwen on a project that explores students’ use of mobile phones for research and collaboration in academic libraries.

Aviv Shachak, Assistant Professor

Professor Shachak is continuing his research project, "End-user support in the implementation of Electronic Health records in primary care: A case study of early adopters." The project previously received a Canadian Institutes of Health Research grant.  

Leslie Regan Shade, Associate Professor

Professor Shade is principal investigator for Young Canadians, Participatory Digital Culture, and Policy Literacy, which is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). See http://play-policy.ca/ and http://ourprivacymatters.ca/

Lynne Teather, Professor Emerita

Professor Teather is working on a joint collaborative project, examining the relationship between difficult history and museums. The exhibition "Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photographs in America" services as the case study.

Eric Yu, Professor

Professor Yu is working on a number research projects, including one that examines the strategy and policy management of business intelligence. Industry partners include: SAP Business Objects, IBM Cognos, Bell Canada, and Zerofootprint. The project is funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).