Two faculty at the iSchool received federal grants for their research this summer, reflecting the increased recognition of information as a field that can provide insights on important social issues - congratulations Lynn and Diane.

Dr. Westbrook’s IMLS Grant Aids Domestic Violence Survivors

Information for People in Crisis: An Assessment

Award amount: $215,832

Natural disaster survivors face their crises as part of a group for which resources have been gathered on a large scale. Domestic abuse survivors often face their crises in silence, cut off from social support. Individuals who face personal crises virtually alone must locate, manage, and utilize information from a wide range of governmental and private services. The task can be overwhelming. Public libraries are positioned within their communities to provide a central hub for useful information. Public librarians are professionally prepared to work with individuals through each phase of information interactions. The thought, tact, confidentiality, Internet safety knowledge, and resource expertise that a strong librarian can bring to bear on a crisis-based information need are formidable. Bringing domestic violence survivors and public librarians together could support for survivors thereby reducing their economic impact on overburdened community resources. Dr. Westbrook’s IMLS grant, Information for People in Crisis: An Assessment, will document the information needs of domestic violence survivors then build evaluation models with which public libraries can document the community contributions they make when providing information services for this vulnerable population.

The IMLS grant provides funding and an in-depth research opportunity for a doctoral student. Working in seven Texas communities, Dr. Westbrook and her Research Assistant will study the information interactions among domestic violence survivors, shelter staff, police officers, emergency room staff, and librarians. Building from those data, they will then develop, test, refine, and distribute a set of in- house documentation resources that libraries can use to quantify their contributions in this area. Fortified with these data, library administrators can more readily make their case for library funding.

For more information, contact Dr. Lynn Westbrook

Diane Bailey Awarded NSF Grant on Innovation

Collaborative Research: Global Innovation and the Changing Nature of Domestic Engineering Work

Collaborative Proposal with Paul M. Leonardi, Northwestern University (PI)

Award amount: $61,398 (UT- Austin), $138,257 (Northwestern)

With the proliferation of high-speed digital communications technologies and high-bandwidth infrastructures, science investments typically impact innovation practices on a global scale. More and more financial capital used to spur innovation in U.S. firms is spent abroad as domestic companies employ scientists and engineers in other countries to take advantage of highly skilled workers while simultaneously cutting costs (Lewin et al., 2009; Manning et al., 2008; Vivek et al., 2009). In this project, we will examine how innovation investment that leads to offshoring changes the nature of occupational work in domestic U.S. firms. We will conduct our research at General Motors (GM). GM is the perfect company at which to more fully explore the links among innovation technologies, offshoring, and changes in occupational work because it has (since 2003) been offshoring work at the task-level to a wholly-owned captive center in India. As part of its response to the current economic crisis, the U.S. government has extended GM 13.4 billion in federal loans. With these loans, GM is restructuring its global operations, including engineering. Because we completed a detailed NSF-funded study of GM’s offshoring arrangements prior to any receipt of stimulus funding, we have an ideal natural laboratory in which to assess the impact of focused science investments on the nature of engineering and product design work. Our study will investigate whether investments that promote offshoring may change the content and structure of domestic jobs for the better. While U.S. firms like GM continue to send knowledge-work abroad, detailed descriptions of how work at home is changing will be essential for understanding how professions that are core to our national economic livelihood and innovativeness are changing. Understanding what the changing nature of work in a globalized economy might look like can help us to set policies for innovation investments that may help to increase our global competitiveness.