At a Glance

Providing the world with innovative information solutions and leadership, the UC Berkeley School of Information conducts research, provides policy counsel, and trains information professionals in five areas of concentration:

• Information design and architecture
• Information assurance
• Social studies of information
• Human-computer interaction
• Information economics and policy

Our work takes us wherever people seek, apply, create, and interpret information, and often brings us into partnership with four related disciplines: computer science, information science, social science, and management science.

Areas of Concentration

The UC Berkeley School of Information offers future information leaders a foundation in the technical, social, managerial, and policy dimensions of information — plus the opportunity to focus on unique fields within the information studies continuum. iSchool students at both master’s and doctoral levels typically work within one or more of the following areas of concentration.

Information Design and Architecture

Working with information in a variety of forms — from text and digital to images, video, and music — information designers and architects organize and classify information so that it can be navigated, searched, retrieved, and analyzed. They also support the automated creation, assignment, and analysis of metadata and metadata standards. Students who choose this area of specialization learn to apply the disciplines of database design, document engineering, and network system design to such contexts as Web sites, corporate intranets, digital libraries, online communities, and business processes.

Information Assurance

Information assurance addresses how we gather, protect, and evaluate information. Students who choose this field of specialization explore how we can assure the quality and credibility of information and the authority of its sources (individuals or organizations) as well as the methods used to make such assessments. They also study techniques for protecting information from alteration, loss, or unauthorized use (including uses that violate privacy), and structures for ensuring that information is accurate, complete, and available when needed and authorized.

Information Economics and Policy

This area of specialization is concerned with ensuring that the design of information systems is economically sound and conforms to all relevant legal rules and policies (for example, intellectual property, privacy, and telecommunications law and policy). Students who explore this field explore the economics of information, information systems, and information infrastructures as well as the regulatory framework in which information is managed.

Human-Computer Interaction

Specialists in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI) are devoted to designing and developing interactive computing systems that are useable, useful, and enjoyable. This interdisciplinary field draws on the behavioral and social sciences in order to study how people use information technology systems. HCI is also a design-oriented discipline and includes the study of interaction design, graphic design, and information visualization and presentation. Students who specialize in this field learn to evaluate the uses and impacts of information and technology using both qualitative and quantitative methods of investigation and testing.

Social Studies of Information

Depending on how it is deployed in various social and institutional settings, technology has the potential to broaden access to information or restrict it. It can enable us to collaborate and communicate in new ways, or it can limit our ability to connect. Students who specialize in the social studies of information explore the factors that make for a successful information system: one that explicitly integrates technical design (of hardware and software) with organizational design (the human infrastructure). They study how technology, social structure, and organization jointly shape the dynamics of information exchange and learning at various scales: within an organization, among individuals and organizations within the same region, and among those separated by great distances.

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