Media Releases

iSchool Institute launched at U of T’s Faculty of Information

April 28, 2010

TORONTO, ON — Dig­i­tal infor­ma­tion, the Inter­net, and infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy have rad­i­cal­ly altered the way we cre­ate, use, and com­mu­ni­cate infor­ma­tion. These changes have impact­ed every aspect of our soci­ety.

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to’s Fac­ul­ty of Infor­ma­tion, a leader in research and edu­ca­tion in infor­ma­tion, is pleased to announce the launch of the iSchool Insti­tute. This ini­tia­tive will enable us to engage with a wider com­mu­ni­ty of pro­fes­sion­als and the broad­er pub­lic out­side of acad­e­mia.

“We launched this new Insti­tute to offer infor­ma­tion pro­fes­sion­als and the pub­lic oppor­tu­ni­ties to expand their knowl­edge, enhance their employ­ment prospects, and learn to adapt to the ever-chang­ing infor­ma­tion field,” Pro­fes­sor Sea­mus Ross, Dean of the Fac­ul­ty of Infor­ma­tion. “Through our cours­es and lec­tures, cit­i­zens can devel­op the skills nec­es­sary to han­dle and use infor­ma­tion to their advan­tage at home and in the work­place.”

The Insti­tute will build on the decade of suc­cess that the Pro­fes­sion­al Learn­ing Cen­tre has had at the iSchool, pro­vid­ing con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion for infor­ma­tion pro­fes­sion­als. The Insti­tute will also add more work­shops aimed at senior man­agers, entre­pre­neurs and oth­er lead­ers in the com­mu­ni­ty who are in a posi­tion to influ­ence excel­lence in infor­ma­tion work.

The Insti­tute will reach out to the pub­lic at large by offer­ing a new month­ly guest lec­ture series fea­tur­ing mem­bers of the fac­ul­ty and dis­tin­guished prac­ti­tion­ers in the infor­ma­tion pro­fes­sion from around the world, with a man­date to bring their insights to the com­mu­ni­ty at no charge.

The inau­gur­al lec­ture, “Orga­nized Chaos: Social Net­works and Enter­prise Change,” will be held on April 28, and fea­ture open infor­ma­tion shar­ing expert, Euan Sem­ple, who spent more than 20 years at the British Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion. Mr. Sem­ple is respon­si­ble for the intro­duc­tion and growth of the BBC’s inter­nal use of social media and Web 2.0 tools to great effect in man­ag­ing a world­wide team of reporters and pro­duc­tion resources.

Cur­rent Direc­tor of the Insti­tute, Bruce Stew­art, will be chair­ing the advi­so­ry board, replac­ing for­mer Chair, Rebec­ca Jones. In addi­tion, the board wel­comes a num­ber of new mem­bers, includ­ing Dr. Ken Hay­cock (pro­fes­sor and direc­tor of the School of Library and Infor­ma­tion Sci­ence at San Jose State Uni­ver­si­ty), Steven Forth (CEO of Lever­age Point Inno­va­tions Inc.), Chris­tine Cas­tle (con­sul­tant to muse­ums and recent adjunct mem­ber of the Fac­ul­ty), Janet de Guz­man (Open­Text) and Deirdre Grimes (Ontario Leg­isla­tive Assem­bly).

Under Mr. Stew­art’s lead­er­ship, the iSchool Insti­tute will build con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion cours­es for var­i­ous infor­ma­tion-relat­ed roles. “Our course offer­ings will con­tin­ue to expand, reflect­ing the growth of the infor­ma­tion dis­ci­plines. We are plan­ning to move beyond offer­ings at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to’s St. George St. Cam­pus and in Ottawa to oth­er cities, and to oth­er parts of the Greater Toron­to Area. We are also already enjoy­ing a good recep­tion to cus­tom offer­ings taught on site, and for oth­er forms of con­sult­ing using the exper­tise here at Canada’s only iSchool.”

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For more infor­ma­tion, please con­tact:

Kath­leen O’Brien
Fac­ul­ty of Infor­ma­tion Stud­ies
Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Devel­op­ment Offi­cer
416–978-7184
kathleen.obrien@utoronto.ca