What is PIL?
What’s going on at PIL now?
Will I still be able to access publications from PIL’s “College Study”?
How was PIL’s “College Study” different from other efforts?
What is the history of PIL?
How can I contact PIL?
What is PIL?
Project Information Literacy (PIL) is a nonprofit research institute that conducts national, ongoing research studies on how people find and use information in the digital age. We work in small, virtual teams on large-scale studies using a mixed methods and a collaborative approach.
PIL began in 2008 by studying college students’ research experiences in the United States. Over 14 years of the “College Study,” we surveyed and interviewed nearly 21,000 U.S. college students and released 12 groundbreaking reports that examined how they interact with information resources for school, for life, for work, and most recently, for engaging with the news.
In 2022, the “College Study” concluded. On October 12, 2022, we published “The Project Information Literacy Retrospective: Insights from more than a decade of information literacy research, 2008-2022,” a 22-page report summarizing the entirety of PIL’s research from the “College Study.” |
Currently, we are conducting a large-scale of U.S. citizens between 16- and 85-years-old to delve into the technological, social, and epistemological factors that shape Americans’ information worlds and understanding of the climate change crisis.
Through the years, PIL has published a variety of open access research reports, interviews, and essays; all available on our site.
What’s going on at PIL now?
We are conducting a national study in 2023/2024 to survey a sample of Americans of all ages to ask: How do people’s information worlds shape their response to climate change in a divided nation? Many studies have used surveys to ascertain what people say they know about climate change and their concerns. To date, however, no in-depth exploration has probed the technological and social infrastructures through which people shape their understanding of the climate crisis.
In light of this gap, we will apply an information literacy lens to conduct a study on not what people in the U.S. know about climate change but rather how they form their understanding through beliefs, online and offline behaviors, and attitudes about the future of the planet.
Data from a survey of members of the general public and another survey of college students will be used to (1) map the shape and ideological terrain of information worlds in a country divided in its awareness of, attitudes to, and acceptance of climate change as a scientific fact; and (2) compare the information flows, personal belief systems, and community alliances that influence how people understand climate change and choose to take action, or not.
The deliverable from this work will be an open-access findings report with actionable recommendations for climate change advocates in media, government, and education.
Will I still be able to access publications from PIL’s “College Study”?
Yes! The PIL site will remain live and fully functional through 2023 while we work on building a PIL digital archive in partnership with a major public university. The PIL archive will store, curate, maintain, and make PIL’s research from the “College Study” and our datasets as well as our interviews and Provocation Series essays widely available to all.
Additionally, PIL’s “College Study” research reports are available from ERIC at https://eric.ed.gov/. All of our peer-reviewed journal articles are OA and many were published in First Monday.
How was PIL’s “College Study” different from other efforts?
Unlike the majority of other information usage studies, “College Study” was an ongoing, national research study across different types of campuses from throughout the United States. Over 14 years, PIL researchers collected data from nearly 21,000 young adults enrolled in 93 U.S. public and private colleges and universities, community colleges, and 34 high schools.
We investigated information-seeking behavior through the lens of the student experience, using student interviews, surveys, and a computational analysis of social media activity to learn about their methods, challenges, barriers, and practices.
Our goal was relatively straightforward from the start: We wanted to fill in some of the “missing pieces” of the information literacy puzzle and provide data that helps answer some of the following questions:
- How do early adults (in their own words) put their information literacy competencies into practice in learning environments in a digital age, regardless of how they may measure up to standards for being information literate?
- With the proliferation of online resources and new technologies, how do early adults recognize the information needs they may have and, in turn, how do they locate, evaluate, select, and use the information that is needed?
- How can teaching the critical and information literacy skills that are needed to enable lifelong learning be more effectively transferred to college students?
What is the history of PIL?
In 2006, a small team of faculty and librarians began to conduct a unique, exploratory research project about college students at Saint Mary’s College of California (SMC). The study was led by PIL’s Alison Head, then the Roy and Patricia Disney Visiting Professor in New Media at St. Mary’s College, a small liberal arts college in the San Francisco Bay Area. Results from this research were published by First Monday in “Beyond Google: How college students conduct academic research” (2007).
Drawing on this early work, PIL worked in partnership with the University of Washington’s iSchool in October 2008. From 2008 through July 2012, PIL was co-directed by Alison Head and Mike Eisenberg. In July 2012, PIL became a public benefit nonprofit (501(c)(3), shortly after PIL’s Director, Dr. Alison J. Head, became a Research Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. In 2015, Head joined the metaLAB (at) Harvard as a Senior Researcher, an affiliation with Harvard she has in addition to running PIL.
The “College Study,” PIL’s ongoing study for more than a decade, sunsetted in December 2022. A 22-page retrospective of the 14-year “College Study” is here.
Today, PIL is alive and well! We are a research institute focused on understanding information practices in the digital age among Americans of all ages.
How can I contact PIL?
Drop us an email at projectinfolit@pilresearch.org.in. We’re happy to hear from you and will make every attempt to answer your questions.