University of Illinois (University of Illinois, School of Information Sciences)

Dr. Jodi Schneider of the University of Illinois will research how knowledge brokers assess the quality of scientific and technical information and the implications for public access, information literacy, and understanding of science on policy-relevant topics such as COVID-19, artificial intelligence, and climate. Librarians are uniquely positioned as knowledge brokers, both to other knowledge brokers—such as journalists, Wikipedia editors, and activists—and to members of the general public. The Early Career Development project will research, create, and test a toolkit of services for public libraries around technical and scientific information literacy, in collaboration with partner libraries and the Public Library Association. By utilizing the toolkit developed in this project, public libraries can help consumers of information become more discerning about the sources they deem reliable, as well as more skilled at processing information for themselves. This work will ultimately help libraries support citizens in finding trustworthy sources for societally-relevant technical and scientific knowledge.