Syracuse University School of Information Studies (iSchool) faculty and students will share
their expertise at the fourth annual iConference at the University of North Carolina (UNC)
at Chapel Hill on Feb. 8-11. This year's iConference theme is "iSociety: research, education,
engagement."
SU iSchool members will present on a range of topics in 15 sessions throughout the
conference. Their papers and presentations will explore gaming, privacy and trust,
intellectual property, international information issues, green IT and national security, among
other topics.
Thirteen Syracuse iSchool doctoral students will be among the 77 selected to present posters
this year. The posters showcase the students' groundbreaking research on a variety of issues,
including national culture and knowledge sharing, older adults and e-literacy, Web
advertising and impact on information seeking, online collaboration and group dynamics,
search engine technologies, information sharing among law enforcement agencies, and
information access and government.
The 2009 iConference opens with a doctoral colloquium that brings together Ph.D. students
from iSchool-related disciplines and iSchool faculty to gather feedback and generate
discussions about their current research projects or thesis work. At the same time, the
conference is sponsoring a junior faculty mentoring session for tenure-track faculty to meet
with senior iSchool faculty, including SU's Martha Garcia-Murillo and Ping Zhang, and
have informal dialogue about emerging intellectual communities within the information
field.
The following day, participants will hear from Jose-Marie Griffiths, dean of the School of
Information and Library Science at UNC, and UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp, who will
deliver the opening plenary presentation. The closing plenary presentation features Edward
Seidel, director of the National Science Foundation's Office of Cyberinfrastructure and
Floating Point Systems Professor in Louisiana State University's Department of Physics.
At the conclusion of the conference, SU iSchool professor Steve Sawyer and his co-
organizers will lead a four-hour workshop on "The Science of Socio-Technical Systems in
iSchools." The workshop hopes to explore and begin to frame a future research agenda
based on socio-technical research in the information field.
The 2009 iConference is sponsored by the National Science Foundation and organized by
the iCaucus, a group of information schools from the United States and Canada dedicated to
exploring the relationship of information, technology and people, and to advancing the
understanding of the role of information in human endeavors. For more information, visit
http://www.ischools.org/iconferences/2009index/.
