Alison Head

Contact

Email: ajhead1@uw.edu
Tel: 707-939-6941
Fax:
Office: Off-Campus

Dr. Alison Head is a research scientist in the Information School and a Fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. She co-directs (with Dr. Michael Eisenberg) Project Information Literacy (PIL), a large-scale, national research study about college students in the digital age. PIL's ongoing research has been supported More...

Education

VS, Symbolic Systems (Visiting Scholar), Stanford University, 1997
Ph.D., Library and Information Science, U.C. Berkeley, 1990
MLS, Library and Information Studies, U.C. Berkeley, 1987
M.S., Journalism, Boston University, 1981
B.A., Rhetoric, U.C. Berkeley, 1979

Research Interest

Tag Cloud

Teaching

LIS 519 Special Topics in Information Behavior (Autumn 2009)

Current Projects

Project Information Literacy

Project Information Literacy (PIL) is a national, ongoing research study. We study how today's college students conduct research and find information for coursework and in their everyday lives. Since 2008, we have collected data from over 11,000 students enrolled in 40 U.S. colleges and universities and community colleges. Our goal is to understand how early adults conceptualize and operationalize research activities for course work and use in their personal lives, especially how they resolve issues of credibility, authority, relevance, and currency in the digital age. PIL is co-directed by Dr. Alison Head and Professor Michael Eisenberg. This year's research is sponsored with contributing funds from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Key Works

"Balancing Act: How College Students Manage Technology while in the Library during Crunch Time," Alison J. Head and Michael B. Eisenberg, Project Information Literacy Research Report, October 12, 2011, (72 pages, 6.1 MB).
"How College Students Use the Web to Conduct Everyday Life Research," Alison J. Head and Michael B. Eisenberg, First Monday, Volume 16, Number 4.
“Assigning Inquiry: How Handouts for Research Assignments Guide Today's College Students,” Alison J. Head and Michael B. Eisenberg, Project Information Literacy Research Report, July 13, 2010 (41 pages, PDF, 2.14MB).
“How Today's College Students Use Wikipedia for Course-Related Research,” Alison J. Head and Michael B. Eisenberg, First Monday, March 2010, Volume 15, Number 3.
“Lessons Learned: How College Students Seek Information in the Digital Age,” Alison J. Head and Michael B. Eisenberg, Project Information Literacy Research Report, December 1, 2009 (42 pages, PDF, 3 MB).
"Finding Context: What Today's College Student Say about Conducting Research in the Digital Age", Alison J. Head and Michael B. Eisenberg, Project Information Literacy Research Report, University of Washington's Information School, February 4, 2009 (18 pages, PDF, 864 KB).
"Beyond Google: How Do Students Conduct Academic Research?" by Alison J. Head, First Monday, July 2007, vol. 12, no. 7, (11 pages).
"Google Scholars?" Interview with Alison J. Head, First Monday Podcast, February 2008 (5.3 MB, 15:22 mins.).
"Information Literacy from the Trenches: How Do Humanities and Social Science Majors Conduct Academic Research?" Preprint publication by Alison J. Head, College and Research Libraries, September 2008, vol. 69, no. 4, (39 pages).
Design Wise: A Guide for Evaluating the Interface Design of Information Resources, by Alison J. Head (CyberAge, 1999).

Recognition

Syrgley Award (2001)
Syrgley Honorary Lecture, Florida State University’s School of Library and Information Science, November 10, 2001.
Article of the Year, Online Magazine (1999)
“Web Redemption and the Promise of Usability,” by Alison J. Head, ONLINE Magazine, vol. 23, no. 6, November/December 1999, pp. 21-30. Winner of “Online’s Best Article of the Year 1999,” cover piece.
Article of the Year, SLA (1998)
“Managing Computers and Work: Are Organizations Informated Yet?” by Alison J. Head, Information Outlook, September 1997, pp. 24 - 30. Awarded “Article of the Year,” by Special Libraries Assn. and H.W. Wilson Company, 1998.