Vision & Core Values

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Grand Challenges

We live in the Information Age, offering unprecedented opportunities but also unmatched threats and challenges. Rigorous research is required to ensure that we understand the scope of the emerging challenges, and build our responses using the best data and evidence available.

Examples of some of the big questions being addressed at the School of Information include:

Ethical Technologies & Human-Centered User Experiences

• How can we design information technologies, large and small, that have human values and social justice embedded in their design?
• How can we advance our understanding of how we experience information with research that uses cutting edge behavioral, psychological, social, and neurological methods?
• What are the best practices that will improve user experiences and user interfaces?
• How can emerging technologies such as AI / artificial intelligence be designed to serve the public good?

Managing an Exponentially Growing Amount of Information

• The amount of data produced in the world doubles approximately every 15 months, and while computing technology has largely kept up with these staggering increases in the amount of information available, fundamental human perception and cognition have not changed in the tens of thousands of years.
• If human beings cannot gain access to information and process it, even the best practices of indexing, categorizing, organizing, curating, archiving, preserving, and conserving it are of no value. Our research is driven by concerns with how to create, store, and present information in a way such that human beings might gain access to it, process it, and experience it.

Innovating Memory Institutions

• What are the innovations in memory institutions such as libraries, museums, and archives that will ensure that we all have access to knowledge, information, and data that enhances our lives, our families, and our communities?
• What emerging skills and knowledge do information professionals such as librarians, archivists, and curators need to stay at the forefront of their professions, and how can we ensure our students and alumni are among the most advanced professionals and leaders in their fields?

Preserving Our Collective Memory

• What information will we leave to the future? Will we bequeath them a rich record of the human endeavor, carefully archived, conserved, and made available?
• We might also leave a vast trove of data, but one which is so full of misinformation, incomplete or misleading data, and so little interoperability that it becomes too difficult or impossible to use. Or will we leave almost no record, as the digital traces stored today are lost when systems are upgraded, formats change, and the ability to use legacy information artifacts degrades?

The future requires us to address these challenges head-on today, and we are doing so at The University of Texas at Austin School of Information.

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