Proposal for a School of Information Management and Systems

Information Planning Group
University of California at Berkeley
December 6, 1993

Introduction

The University of California, Berkeley has an opportunity to pioneer in the development of an emerging professional field of critical importance. Information is now one of the world's most important and rapidly changing resources. Rapidly growing capabilities in computing and telecommunications, the increasing importance of information in the professions, in scholarship and research, and in daily life, the expanding and multidimensional information industry, and the developing information infrastructure have created major new challenges and opportunities.

The issue now is often less the availability of information than its overabundance, and access to quality information for diverse users and uses. The challenge is to filter what is most useful out of the vast quantity of information available: to select, evaluate, describe, store, retrieve, manipulate, and present information in all its forms, including text, still and moving images, sound, and numeric data. The goal is to provide, not simply data, but information that enhances understanding.

We propose a program that will advance, through teaching and research, the organization, management and use of information and information technology, and enhance our understanding of the impact of information on individuals, institutions, and society. This mission has both a technical component, concerned with the design and use of information systems and services, and a social sciences component, concerned with understanding how people seek, obtain, evaluate, use, and categorize information. The proposed program will use the approaches of several social sciences and professional and technical disciplines to address a core set of information-related issues.

The primary educational mission of the program will be to prepare professionals for corporations, government agencies, and the academic world who can develop improved approaches to handle information, to design and manage information functions, and to merge them with other aspects of the organization. Evidence strongly suggests the existence of a very large demand for such professionals in business, government, and the academic world.

The research mission of the program will be to explore the design and operation of information systems and services, the nature and properties of information, and information-related behavior at the individual, group, and societal levels.

There currently exists no academic structure — at Berkeley or elsewhere — of the specific sort that we are proposing. What is unique about this program is the focus on the use and management of information through the merger of the technical and social sciences approaches; and the broad scope, addressing applications that cut across disciplinary and organizational contexts. We believe that Berkeley can lead in this area and that other universities will follow.

It is estimated that private industry is now spending $11 billion a year on investment in new information technologies, that half of U.S. Capital Investment is in information technology (Business Week), and that 40% of U.S. exports are intellectual property (Wall Street Journal), but as yet there is no professional school in the U.S. that concentrates on the management and design of these resources.

One of the strengths of this proposal is that it is conservative, in recognizing that at this moment this new field must be multidisciplinary, drawing in elective courses from other programs. Yet it also concentrates enough faculty resources on a core research program to drive the definition of this new field. This kind of economic power will inevitably generate a new field, and only a research university of Berkeley's stature has the resources to provide the context for its definition, that context being the strengths of its various professional schools and disciplinary departments.

Berkeley is an ideal place to address this challenge, given our strength in such allied disciplines as computer science, business administration, cognitive science, and public policy; the existence of a substantial foundation from the current School of Library and Information Studies; the proximity of leading firms in the information industry; and Berkeley's ability to attract an eclectic group of outstanding scholars.

Substantial opportunities exist for both private and public support of groundbreaking research, as evidenced by the developing National Research and Educational Network (NREN), and the National Information Infrastructure initiative, and innovative corporate amalgamations directed toward new information products and delivery methods. The challenge for Berkeley is to define a new field appropriate to an internationally prominent research university and of critical importance to the state of California. We believe that this is a challenge that Berkeley can and should accept.

Structure and Name

The organizational structure is that of a professional school. Other organizational structures were considered but are felt to be less appropriate; they are discussed in a subsequent section. Possible names are School of Information, School of Informatics, or School of Information Management and Systems.

Mission

The proposed school has as its focus the organization, management and use of information and information systems, operating at the interfaces between information technology, producers of information, and users of information.

The School will graduate professionals who are highly sought by corporations and government operations covering a wide variety of areas. Libraries are among the employers, but are not dominant. A list of potential classes of employers is attached (see Appendix I).

The School's faculty and Ph.D. candidates will carry out forefront research that defines and leads the field intellectually. A list of possible areas for research is attached (see Appendix II). The faculty will be drawn from diverse disciplinary backgrounds.

The School will attract the involvement of, and joint research with, numerous other academic units on campus. Other units will feel that collaboration with School faculty is important to their research, and will also value the professional contributions of the School in improving their own information management and systems.

Degrees

The School will offer a new professional masters program. The degree to be awarded by this program will be substantially different from the current MLIS degree, reflecting the broader mission of the new School. In particular, it is not designed to meet American Library Association requirements; rather, it will serve as a model for the development of accreditation criteria for the emerging discipline upon which the School is focused.

The School will sponsor a strong Ph.D. program focused on the following objectives:

  • Defining and leading the intellectual development of this emerging field.
  • Providing support for the faculty in their creative endeavors.
  • Meeting the strong market demand for such a degree, both in academic settings and in the private and government sectors.

The program will encourage and facilitate dual and concurrent graduate degrees, and possibly also joint (Graduate Group) degrees, in addition to graduate degrees entirely within the new program.

Curriculum

Both the Masters and Ph.D. programs will center on a core curriculum that combines the perspectives of both information technology disciplines and the social sciences. Computer science and communication technology will be prominent among the information technologies upon which the core is constructed; applications-oriented social sciences, such as those dealing with human factors will play a leading role, but not to the exclusion of the study of cultural, economic, and societal systems and contexts in which information is created, distributed, organized, and used. While the core draws from these related disciplines, it will be intellectually distinct from them.

This curriculum will be taught primarily by faculty in the School and required of all students in the programs. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the School, and the need for specialization in a particular area, electives will constitute a significant portion of the overall programs. Courses in other departments are not generally part of this core. However, students in the programs will be strongly encouraged to take such courses, either as electives or, perhaps, to fulfill the requirements of various program specializations. Moreover, students in the programs will be encouraged to take courses in other departments primarily targeted at students in those departments, with the goal of providing students in the new program with a deep, multidisciplinary background.

Courses will be structured and designed so that many will be attractive to students in other fields (for example, Business, Journalism, Computer Science, and a wide range of disciplines in which information management is a significant concern). Consideration will be given to using faculty teams from the School and these other units to teach some of these courses collaboratively.

Graduates of the new Masters program will in general have broader and deeper technological competence than those from the old MLIS program; in addition they should have a broader exposure to both the policy issues and social science based analytic tools necessary for evaluating the effects of technological decisions. Finally, the new program also places emphasis on the opportunity to develop complementary depth of expertise in another scientific or scholarly discipline as well as in more general information management methods.

Faculty

The faculty of the School will conduct a substantial program of research that will be expected to set the tone and direction of the field internationally.

Collaboration and interaction with other academic units on campus will be encouraged through a variety of means, including but not limited to joint appointments of faculty members with other units, joint teaching of courses with other departments, and participation of School faculty members in research projects with members of other units. However, both the primary teaching responsibilities and the intellectual agenda for the School will be carried out principally by faculty members of the School. Due to the significantly different intellectual focus of the School from the current SLIS, existing faculty do not provide the full range of expertise necessary for the success of this enterprise. Recruitment of a dean and then other core faculty is required. Some current SLIS faculty may transfer to other units. Faculty in other units on campus may seek affiliation of various types with the new School, including transfers or joint appointments.

A viable program will require a total of at least 10 ladder FTEs in the steady state, counting faculty coming in from the previous SLIS.

The following are brief characteristics of some of the intellectual activities that might be pursued by researchers in the areas described above. These particular descriptions are for areas that are likely to be central to the School. However, they by no means subsume all of the work that will be conducted under its auspices, nor can our descriptions provide very precise portrayals of whole disciplines, each of whose internal structure is itself complex and demanding of variegated specializations.

  1. Networked Information Systems: Researchers in this area will work on developing and applying the technology for large scale networked information systems. Such work includes the design and analysis of protocols for networked information location and retrieval, performance analysis of such architectures, protocols and algorithms, and the analysis of how different networking structures will impact the flow of information in organizations. Other research topics pertaining to networked systems are the development of methods of resource discovery and distributed search strategies that will enable people to find, synthesize, deliver and present information from multimedia knowledge stores across global networks, the development and application of cryptographic technology and protocols for authentication and privacy, and the study of content standards and content encoding methods as they pertain to the delivery of information to clients in a heterogeneous distributed computing environment.

  2. User interfaces/human factors: The primary concern of researchers in this area is designing information systems that are efficient and effective, easy to learn and to use, and powerful in their ability to allow users to express their information needs. Visual display is an important area. Researchers in user interfaces are also concerned with designing interfaces to accommodate differences in individual learning styles and expertise; as well as differences in information content and structure across fields or applications. This work requires a merger of social/behavioral sciences and technology, drawing on expertise from cognitive psychology and other behavioral sciences, computer systems design, artificial intelligence, and knowledge of users' needs.

  3. Information access/retrieval: Researchers in information access are concerned with the problem of locating information pertinent to a user's information need. The field has recently acquired entirely new dimensions as new types of information, in particular, images, video and spoken language, are becoming commonplace digital objects , and users and researchers must contend with filtering large volumes of incoming information or searching for desired items in large, distributed, on-line collections. Research in this area variously requires expertise in database management, information retrieval, artificial intelligence, computational linguistics, computer vision, and image and speech processing.

  4. Information policy: Researchers in the School will address the large set of interacting economic, social, and legal issues that should inform information policy for emerging information infrastructures. Two basic policy issues are intellectual property and the dissemination of knowledge. Such scholars must have knowledge of the means and conditions of access to various forms of information systems, as well as an understanding of how current and future technology will affect the conditions of access, and of the consequences of restricting access and of intellectual property. Such scholars have expertise in skills that cross current departmental research frontiers, and now are mainly residents in the research units of corporations.

Students

In the steady state, about 40 Ph.D. and 80 Masters students will be in residence at any one time. The program will be initiated at a more modest level, and ramp up to these goals is subject to the constraints imposed by faculty recruitment and the quality of program enrollees and applicants.

Students will come from a wide variety of academic backgrounds. Some may enter the School's programs immediately after obtaining an undergraduate degree. In addition, due to the interdisciplinary nature of the degrees to be offered by the School, and the need for subject area expertise, it will not be unusual for students to enter these programs after already obtaining a Masters or Ph.D. in another field.

The School will offer undergraduate courses that will be of interest to a significant number of students, and thereby enrich the Berkeley undergraduate experience.

Funding Sources

Possible funding sources and their nature are described in Appendix III. This list is included to underscore the many avenues for support of research and curriculum development.

Alternatives

Alternative structures to the School that have been considered and found wanting include the following:

  1. Closure and No Sustained Activity. Berkeley would have no program in the information field. In the view of the Information Planning Group, this is unacceptable given the real and growing importance of this discipline both in its own right and its close interactions and complementary nature to a wide variety of existing activities and disciplines representing major strengths of the Berkeley academic programs today.

  2. Status Quo. The status quo has been found wanting by the recent Graduate Council review, Senate committee reviews, and the Academic Planning Board.

  3. A Graduate Group. For the degree programs we outline to succeed, a number of factors are critical. First, it is necessary to have a critical mass of researchers who see this mission as central to their intellectual life. Second, these researchers need to be located together, so that program activities can crystallize around them, an esprit de corps can be created, and a coherent interdisciplinary subject matter can be forged. Third, expertise is required in the major subdisciplines. Fourth, training of professionals requires faculty interaction with working professionals and a locus for courses taught by professionals as part-time instructors. For these reasons and because success requires an infusion of talent not currently available on campus, a graduate group does not appear to be an effective avenue. The campus as a whole lacks sufficient expertise in information retrieval and access, networked information systems, information policy, and human factors/user interfaces. In addition, while some of the related expertise, for example, that in Computer Science, can contribute to these efforts, such units would not be likely to do so given their present enrollment and budgetary situations. Given the lack of a clearly identifiable core currently on campus, it is difficult to envision how a successful whole could be constructed.

  4. Department. The staffing and support requirements for a department of Information XXX would be essentially the same as for a School. Given the clearly professional nature of this endeavor, School status seems preferable.

  5. Merger with, e. g., Journalism, Public Policy or Business. These fields all have interests in the use of information technology; however, each of them places these needs in the context of a specific application. We see the need as being for a more generic and insightful approach that can serve many applications, and we therefore see a strong synergism, but no duplication, between these fields and the proposed School.

Interactions with Other Campuses and Universities

We were asked to consider possible interactions with UCLA and San Jose State, which also have programs in this area. All three of the existing American Library Association-accredited programs offered by universities in California are undergoing significant review and changes. The San Jose State program has proposed to expand its library education through a statewide technology-mediated distance education program for their ALA-accredited MLS degree. (It already has a branch program in Fullerton.) The San Jose program engages in neither research nor doctoral education. In response to an inquiry, the director at San Jose State, Stuart Sutton (recipient of a Berkeley PhD and a recent Visiting Assistant Professor at Berkeley), expressed no interest in a PhD degree, joint or otherwise, preferring to concentrate their efforts at the professional Masters level through this expanded program.

At UCLA, the former School of Library and Information Sciences is being integrated into the School of Education as a separate department. The L&IS professional Masters degree will continue to be offered, and there is a proposal to continue their Ph. D. The UCLA department has interests in moving more to the information area, but we can expect their progress to be evolutionary and gradual, in contrast to what we are proposing for Berkeley. The UCLA and SJSU programs should help alleviate concerns that the implementation of our proposal means that the University of California is "forsaking" the library field.

Conclusion

The Information Planning Group concludes that this function is appropriate and useful for Berkeley, even under the current budgetary situation. The opportunities in this area are so significant, and the timing so critical, that we recommend that the campus move toward adopting these recommendations in a timely fashion.

Information Planning Group Members

C. Judson King, Chair Provost, Professional Schools and Colleges

Michael Buckland, Professor, School of Library and Information Studies

Charles Faulhaber, Chair, Spanish and Portuguese

Dorothy Gregor, University Librarian

Peter Lyman, Dean of University Libraries and University Librarian, University of Southern California

Clifford Lynch, Director, Library Automation, Systemwide Office of the President

Jack McCredie, Vice Provost of Information Systems and Technology

Annette Melville, Student Representative, School of Library and Information Studies

Charlotte Nolan, Associate Dean, School of Library and Information Studies

Eugene Smolensky, Dean, School of Public Policy

Nancy Van House, Acting Dean, School of Library and Information Studies

Robert Wilensky, Chair, Computer Science

APPENDIX I — POTENTIAL EMPLOYERS AND FUNCTIONS

A. EMPLOYERS

Note that the divisions among types of organizations are illustrative only; some organizations function in more than one area. This encompasses both private and public sector organizations; the relevant characteristic is the function, not the sector.

I. THE INFORMATION INDUSTRY — Organizations involved in the creation, publication, distribution of information.

A. Organizations concerned primarily with information content.

  1. Publishers
  2. Database creators and providers
  3. The press/mass media
  4. New media companies (e.g., multimedia developers)
  5. Information collectors (e.g., Reuters)
  6. Data service companies (e.g., Mead)
  7. Value-added providers (e.g., Standard and Poors)
  8. Disciplinary societies (e.g., American Chemical Society)

B. Organizations concerned primarily with information delivery.

  1. Telecommunications and cable companies
  2. Database vendors e.g. DIALOG
  3. Networks, service providers (e.g., BARNET, ANS)

C. Organizations concerned primarily with information technology.

  1. The software industry
  2. Computer hardware companies and systems integrators,especially to develop criteria for hardware and software and optimize systems for customers
  3. Instructional technology development

D. Organizations concerned primarily with information organization, access and preservation.

  1. Libraries (e.g., college/university libraries, public libraries, corporate libraries, school libraries, research libraries, other special purpose libraries such as hospital libraries)
  2. Museums
  3. Archives
  4. Data centers
  5. Hospitals and other medical organizations

II. INFORMATION FUNCTIONS IN ORGANIZATIONS THAT ARE NOT PRIMARILY INFORMATION ORGANIZATIONS

A. Design and management of information systems, paper and computer-based, for organizations of all kinds and sizes including banks, manufacturing, insurance.

  1. Internal information
  2. External information

B. Application of information technology — evaluation, selection, applications design.

C. Research and information-gathering, synthesis, and evaluation — libraries, competitive intelligence units.

D. Records Management.

III. GOVERNMENT

A. Governmental agencies engaged in information production and distribution (e.g., Bureau of Labor Statistics, Department of Commerce, National Center for Education Statistics, NTIS, ERIC, US Geological Survey, NIH, Bureau of the Census, Patent and Trademark Office, United Nations, World Bank, foreign governments.

B. Governmental agencies involved in information regulation (e.g., PUCs regarding telecommunications regulation).

C. Governmental agencies involved in information technology assessment, development and policy.

D. Information resources management to help agencies accomplish their missions (e.g., recent GAO report criticized Dept of Energy for inadequate information resources management which impeded its operations).

E. Intelligence community (e.g. CIA).

F. Agencies involved in policy formulation/decision-making: as consumers of information, e.g. food and drug administration.

IV. OTHER ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH ORGANIZATIONS

A. Large scientific enterprises (e.g., Human Genome project, Mission to Planet Earth).

B. Design and management of discipline-specific information systems.

V. SPECIFICALLY PH.D.S

A. Academic departments.

B. Information industry firms for R&D.

C. Government agencies.

B. FUNCTIONS

Designing information systems

  • designing, evaluating, or choosing information content, database structures, indexing and knowledge representation, interfaces, networking, technology

Managing information systems

  • maintaining the integrity, quality, currency of the data
  • updating, modifying, improving the system
  • operating the system

Information resources management

  • managing organizational information resources to support organizational missions and for competitive advantage

Training

Managing information technology

  • evaluating, purchasing, maintaining software and hardware - networking

Information agencies

  • acting as information consultants or guides for clients: advising, training, guiding on information, information sources, information use
  • acting as an agent on behalf of the client: gathering, evaluating, analyzing, synthesizing, summarizing information for a clients

Competitive intelligence

Customer relations for information systems/technology

  • acting as intermediaries between clients and information system designers
  • translating client needs into functional specifications
  • sales

Designing and producing information services and products

  • publications, databases, information systems
  • multimedia products
  • entertainment

Organizational information policy analysts

  • designing corporate, organizational information policies, access, quality control
  • maintaining proprietary information

Government information policy analysts

  • formulating government policies at all levels regarding such issues as the information infrastructure, access to and use of government information, intellectual property, privacy; public/private roles in information creation, dissemination and use, government acquisition of information and information technology

Information technology for education

  • design and implementation

Archives and records management

APPENDIX II — RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES

The following list is intended to give some sense of the enormously broad range of important research opportunities rather than to serve as a prescription of those on which the program should focus. It is drawn from our interviews with people active in the field.

I. Organization, Storage, and Retrieval of Information

A. Organization and Retrieval of Information.

  1. Extraction of information from graphics, audio, visual, video materials.
  2. Retrieval algorithms, e.g., weighted indexing, relevance-feedback systems, etc.
  3. Knowledge representation.
  4. Indexing and Classification systems.

B. Storage and Preservation of Information.

  1. Choice of information to be preserved.
  2. Digitization of information currently stored in other formats, e.g., print, photographs, film, analog, video - standards, methods, interoperability.

C. Presentation of Information.

  1. User interface design and data display.
  2. Making information comprehensible, useful, usable.

D. Networking.

  1. Describing, classifying, identifying, valuing, and evaluating networked information resources.
  2. Technical issues regarding networking of information, e.g., standards for information description, location, transmission, display.
  3. Infrastructure requirements, e.g., design, policy ("information superhighway").
  4. Design and management issues related to information flowing across organization, national, disciplinary boundaries.

II. Information Behavior and the Social Sciences of Information

A. Individual's Information Needs and Uses.

  1. How users identify needs for information.
  2. How information is used in decision-making.
  3. How users interact with large collections of data (especially electronic)
  4. How users filter information and determine relevance.

B. Group-level Information Behavior.

  1. How groups such as businesses, organizations, and disciplines share information.
  2. Information flow and use.
  3. Information networks and their impact on work/collaboration patterns.
  4. Patterns of information evaluation, dissemination, and use within scientific/professional communities, e.g., journals, preprints, peer review, etc.
  5. Current functions and changes brought about by the changing information infrastructure.
  6. Social impacts of information/information technology, including class, sex, and ethnicity.
  7. Delivery of information to the public, public use of information, and methods of information delivery to the public.

C. The Economics of Information.

  1. Costs, pricing, markets, property rights.
  2. Information as a commodity.
  3. The information industry.
  4. Developing services, products, and organizations (e.g., publishing, newer products and newer services).

D. Information and Public Policy.

  1. Private/public sector roles in design, management, financing control, and policy for information infrastructure.
  2. Privacy, data security, encryption, government access/control.
  3. Access to government information.
  4. Intellectual property.
  5. International policy for transborder data flows (e.g., security, intellectual property, etc.).

III. Studies of Information

A. Nature and properties of information resources.

B. Information and meaning, content, translation. Identity of information in different forms, media, guises, e.g., synonomy, antonymy.

C. Information and communication: informing, educating.

D. Conditions of reception: information and comprehension, understanding, belief, acceptability.

E. Information and conceptual frameworks.

F. Quality of information: information, misinformation, disinformation, accuracy, authority, truth, credibility, timeliness, datedness. How to evaluate credibility of information.

G. Relevance and usability of information.

IV. Context-dependent Information Needs, Services, Products (Examples).

A. Information management: the information function in organizations.

  1. Roles of information/knowledge managers in the networked environment.
  2. How to assess impact of new information technology and decide when and how to implement it, e.g., everything from storage technology to new methods of organization.
  3. Complex business needs: integration of different kinds of information for both strategic and day-to-day decisions.

B. Medical Information, Biomedicine.

  1. Diagnostic systems.
  2. Public and personal health information systems.
  3. Medical records.
  4. Medical image processing/telemedicine.
  5. Health care claim processing.

C. Museum Informatics.

  • Organization, description, retrieval, dissemination, networking, user interface, etc., for descriptions of museum objects.

D. Large Scientific Enterprises.

E. Environmental and geographic information systems.

  • Systems development for local governments.

F. Legal Informatics.

APPENDIX III — POSSIBLE FUNDING SOURCES

I. FEDERAL

The federal government has shown interest in funding research and development in information technology and information as a means of:

  1. improving US competitiveness and productivity through a strong information infrastructure
  2. improving the efficiency of government operations, and
  3. supporting US industry by funding dual-use, non-mission-based technology (as opposed to traditional defense funding, for example).

These are long-term goals that are likely to result in continual new and renewed funding initiatives.

Current federal R&D funding initiatives have been identified in the following areas:

A. Development of networked access to electronic information.

  1. High Performance Computing and Communications Program (HPCC) and National Research and Education Network (NREN).
    The goal is to design a research agenda to extend US leadership in high performance computing and networking technologies. One program component is the National Research and Education Network, which includes access to electronic information: Federal agencies and departments shall work with private network service providers, state and local agencies, libraries, educational institutions, and others, as appropriate, in order to ensure that researchers, educators, and students, have access, as appropriate, to the Network. The Network is to provide users with appropriate access to high performance computing systems, electronic information resources, other research facilities, and libraries. The Network shall provide access, to the extent practicable, to electronic information resources maintained by libraries, research facilities, publishers, and affiliated organizations. High Performance Computing Act of 1991 (PL 102-194), section 102(b).

  2. NSF/ARPA/NASA Electronic Libraries Initiative.
    The goal is to support research and development on economically feasible capability to digitize massive corpora of information from heterogeneous and distributed sources; then store, search, and retrieve information from them in a user friendly way. Up to 6 awards of up to $1,200,000 per year for up to 4 years.

B. Improved access to information collected by federal agencies and/or with federal funding.

Example: new NASA initiative, "Public Use of Earth and Space Science Data over the Internet." The purpose is to focus research on the development of end-user applications while applying new digital library technologies to demonstrate the application and accessibility of earth and space science databases. The basic problem is translating NASA's raw data to form readily usable by a wide-range of users — including identifying possible users and uses and providing interfaces via the Internet. Funding: $6 million for FY 1994.

C. Development of the National Information Infrastructure (NII)

The government role is defined in the NII Agenda for Action as including committing important government research programs and grants to help the private sector develop and demonstrate the technologies needed; to promote seamless, interactive, user-driven operation; to ensure information security and network reliability; to protect intellectual property rights; and to provide access to government information. An Applications Committee has been created, which coordinates Administration efforts to develop, demonstrate, and promote applications of information technology in manufacturing, education, health care, government services, libraries, and other areas. It is likely that research opportunities will emerge in such areas as technology, standards, government policy regarding information and the NII, and the organization of and access to information of various kinds, including government information.

II. PRIVATE SECTOR

A. Industry.

  1. The major development of the NII will be the responsibility of the private sector, according to the NII Agenda for Action. This will require extensive R&D in such areas as networking, digitization of information, user needs and preferences, interface design, standards for interconnectivity and interoperability.

  2. Independent of the Administration's NII, the information industry has been moving toward electronic delivery of information. Such recent events as the Bell Atlantic/TCI merger indicate trends in the telecommunications industry. Again, extensive R&D will be needed, some of which should translate to contracts and grants for research suitable to the Berkeley campus resources and mission.

B. Foundations

A number of foundations have expressed interest in such areas as social impacts of new information technology and the uses of information technology to improve education and citizen participation in democratic processes. The following are some examples:

ASPEN INSTITUTE: Interests are focused around non-profit organizations, the role of non-profits in fostering democratic values, philanthropy, and non-profit governance. Has a new program on Information and Society.

FREEDOM FORUM: Interests include freedom of information, support for journalists, research on telecommunications.

GEORGE LUCAS EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION: Goal is to develop ways of integrating multimedia technology with teaching and learning, to challenge and engage students who bring diverse abilities, amounts of information, and backgrounds to learning. Through the development of multimedia prototypes, the foundation will provide students and teachers access to the most dynamic individuals and the most appropriate pedagogies, engaging each student in learning and allowing each teacher to be a facilitator of learning.

WALTER AND ELISE HAAS FUND: Supports projects that enhance public education and access to information, serve as a central organizing role, address public policy, demonstrate creative approaches toward meeting human needs.

HEARST FOUNDATIONS: Focus in strengthening education, human services, and public access to cultural activity. Projects include support of Gateway Project to make information more accessible to library users (Ohio State University).

KELLOGG FOUNDATION: Has recently shown interest in supporting revision of library education to better suit changing information environment. Several of the more innovative library education programs are currently in negotiations with Kellogg.

JOHN & MARY R. MARKLE FOUNDATION: This foundation is active in the field of mass communication, directing its efforts toward the improvement of all media, including transmission and services facilitated by new technology.

ANDREW W. MELLON FOUNDATION: Supports projects in higher education, cultural affairs, literacy, and public affairs. Recent project: study of increased costs of serials within American research libraries, which looked at possibilities for electronic delivery of journal information (Stanford University).

NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY FOUNDATION: Provides support for higher education, urban affairs, journalism, cultural programs. Is funding for the Center for Information Policy Research (Harvard University).

PACIFIC TELESIS FOUNDATION: Selected projects include support to establish a complete state-of-the-art communications center for the Haas School.

ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION: Provides funding for a wide variety of research projects on the social sciences of information technology.

THE SPENCER FOUNDATION: Supports research in the social and behavioral sciences offering promise of contributing to the improvement of education in one or another of its forms in the U. S. or abroad. This scope includes cultural knowledge, production and distribution of knowledge, and a wide variety of interdisciplinary approaches.

DEWITT WALLACE-READER'S DIGEST FUND: The fund invests nationwide to improve schools, strengthen organizations and programs that serve youth, encourage ties between schools and communities, and promote educational and career-related reform at the national level. Current projects include providing $40 million for Library Power, which will revitalize school libraries in 25 cities.

LILA-WALLACE-READER'S DIGEST FUND: Promotes outreach and educational activities for the visual and literary arts. Has shown considerable interest in library and information technology related projects recently.

About

Last updated:

January 12, 2010