Project Information Literacy (PIL) is a research institute that conducts national, ongoing scholarly studies on how early adults find and use information as they progress through, and beyond, their higher education years.
Based in California's San Francisco Bay Area, Project Information Literacy, Inc. (PIL) is a public benefit 501(c)(3) organization. [1] Alison J. Head, the executive director and lead researcher, is an expert in the field of information literacy research. [2] [3]
PIL began in 2008 as a partnership with the University of Washington Information School with Alison J. Head and Michael Eisenberg, dean emeritus and professor at the school, as co-directors. [4] Both Head and Eisenberg have extensive experience conducting and publishing research on information literacy and the information-seeking behavior of Internet users. [5] [6] [7] In 2012, PIL became a nonprofit with Head as sole director. In 2016 PIL ended its formal relationship with the Information School. [4]
PIL's studies have been conducted using small teams of researchers drawn from libraries and schools of library and information science across the United States. [8] To date, 20,987 early adults have participated in PIL studies. The institutional sample for PIL studies consists of 93 public and private colleges, universities, and community colleges, as well as 34 high schools located in the U.S. A 2016 study included data from Canadian institutions. [9]
PIL has worked with members of a sample of 260 institutions. [8] [10] Partners include four-year private and public universities and colleges in the U.S. including Harvard College, The Ohio State University, University of Texas at Austin, University of Michigan, The University of Washington, DePaul University, Oklahoma State University, University of Alaska, Wellesley College and numerous community colleges. Each PIL study undergoes ethical review at the participating institutions and at the host institution where the study is based. [11] Studies use a mixed-methods approach. PIL has conducted student surveys, focus groups, content analysis of research handouts, extensive interviews, and computational analysis of social media interactions. Final reports include summaries of key findings, in-depth data, and recommendations. All reports are Open Access, available from the PIL website at no charge.
PIL has produced 14 major research reports, investigating the experiences of college students and recent graduates as they interact with information for school, for life, for work, and most recently, for engaging with the news. [10] In 2024, PIL expanded its scope and studied the intersection of information worlds and climate change and how understanding of the climate crisis is formed and mediated, based on responses to a survey of the U.S. general population and college students. [12] On October 12, 2022, PIL published a retrospective report that summarized all 12 reports from the College Study, documented their impact, and included lessons learned from 14 years of research. [13] In 2020, a PIL team released a two-part series on COVID-19 and the first 100 days of U.S. news coverage, which included interactive information visualizations and extensive set of learning resources for promoting news literacy. [14] Researchers used MediaCloud to pull out and analyze the "shape of news" (I love that concept) and how it was visually represented through images." [15] In 2019, PIL examined the awareness and concerns of college students in the age of algorithms, and released the report in January, 2020. [16] The study was supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Electronic Research and Libraries (ER&L), a leading library conference, [17] and the School of Library and Information Science at the University of South Carolina. [16] This publication won the 2020 Ilene F. Rockman Instruction Publication of the Year, bestowed by The Association of College and Research Libraries. [18] In October 2018, PIL released the findings of a study of students' news engagement practices in the "post-truth" era, [19] sponsored by the Knight Foundation and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), a division of the American Library Association. [20] [21] Another project, The Reading List for Life, leverages PIL's research findings to develop a web application for adult learners in public libraries, and is a collaboration between PIL, [22] The Open Syllabus Project at Columbia University, and the metaLAB@Harvard.In 2016, PIL published a study, funded by the Information School at The University of Washington, that examined library spaces and included data from interviews with architects and library leaders. [9]
PIL's research results have been disseminated through the reports posted on its open access website, numerous articles, conference presentations, webcasts, podcasts, and videos on its YouTube channel. PIL has been recognized as an important source of longitudinal information on the information behaviors of students. [23] [24] [25] [26] As Barbara Fister notes, "[t]his is hands-down the most important long-term, multi-institutional research project ever launched on how students use information for school and beyond." [27] PIL reports are frequently cited in scholarly articles and linked from academic library webpages about information literacy, [28] [29] used in workshops for faculty, [30] and in student learning. [31] The studies provide information about students' and graduates' information seeking strategies through the lens of the student experience across multiple institutional sites [29] in the U.S. and are frequently reported on in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Education, Education Week, and Library Journal. [32]
In 2021 PIL launched the Provocation Series of occasional papers [33] on pressing issues around literacy, building on a solid decade of original research from PIL into students’ information practices in the digital age, other scholarship, and the flow of current events. [34] Each essay is accompanied by an author's reflection and discussion questions. The first in the series, "Lizard People in the Library," by Barbara Fister demonstrates how current media literacy and information literacy instruction falls short of equipping students for life in a world of weaponized information. [35] This essay was republished in a slightly different form by The Atlantic, as "The Librarian War Against QAnon". [36] In the second essay, “Reading in the Age of Distrust,” Dr. Alison Head explores why many academicians fail to consider how students read, and how they learn to read deeply for academic and personal purposes. [37] Dr. Kirsten Hostetler wrote the third essay, "The iSchool Equation," which focuses on a gap in the iSchool curriculum. As the effects of mis- and disinformation take a toll on social cohesion, librarians are often positioned as experts who can guide their communities toward a better understanding of our confusing information landscape, but few graduate programs prepare them for teaching. [38] The fourth essay, "Tell Me Sweet Little Lies: Racism as a Form of Persistent Malinformation" by Dr. Nicole A. Cooke proposes critical cultural literacy as a defence against persistent racist malinformation. [39] In the fifth essay, "Information Literacy for Mortals," Mike Caulfield combines decision-making theory & research on his SIFT evaluation method to advocate a strengths-based approach. [40] In 2022, Barbara Fister explores the links between search tools that narrow our focus, results that widen divides and how the weaponization of uncertainty impacts information literacy in "Principled Uncertainty: Why Learning to Ask Good Questions Matters More than Finding Answers." [41]
PIL has created a series of Smart Talk interviews [42] with leading voices related to its core purpose of understanding how early adults use information and technology to learn. Interviewees include: Ken Bain, Char Booth, Nicholas Carr, Mike Caulfield, Jenae Cohn, David Conley, Cathy Davidson, Katie Davis, Dale Dougherty, Sari Feldman, Barbara Fister, Eric Gordon, Renee Hobbs, Rebecca Moore Howard, Sandra Jamieson, Kyle Jones, Joan Lippincott, Robert Lue, Andrea Lunsford, Shannon Mattern, P. Takis Metaxas, Ryan M. Milner, Peter Morville, John Palfrey, Whitney Philliips, Russell Poldrack, Lee Rainie, Justin Reich Howard Rheingold, Dan Rothstein, Jeffrey Schnapp, Howie Schneider, Zach Sims, Peter Suber, Shyam Sundar, Francesca Tripodi, S. Craig Watkins, David Weinberger, and Mary-Ann Winkelmes.
PIL hosts an annual fellowship for emerging researchers in information literacy, and runs a visiting scholar research program, with sites including the University of Nebraska—Lincoln, Purdue University, [3] and the University of Pittsburgh University Library System.
PIL has received funding from major granting organizations, companies and institutions [43] [44]
All reports produced by PIL are open access under the CC-BY-NC license; many include open access data sets.