After 17 Years Project Information Literacy (PIL) is Coming to An End, Archive of All PIL Output Now Available

Ed. Note: The email letter below was shared with infoDOCKET yesterday and is posted with the permission of its author, Project Information Literacy (PIL) Founder and Executive Director, Dr. Alison Head. We would like to thank Alison and the PIL team for their many contributions during the past 17 years and for leaving us with a well organized and accessible archive of their output.

I hope this email finds you well as you prepare for another busy year on campus. During a time of planning and looking ahead for all of us, I’m writing with news from Project Information Literacy (PIL): This year, 2025, will be our last.

There are many reasons why I’ve decided to wind down PIL after running it for 17 years. But the primary reason is that funding has become more and more difficult to secure. Increasingly, as you well know, federal funds from organizations have become few and far between or nonexistent. In the larger scheme of things, higher education and the internet itself are entirely different places than in 2008 when we started and first asked, “What’s it like to be a student in the digital age?”

Despite our decision to end PIL’s long running research institute, there is some good news: As a final contribution, the PIL team has built an archival site we launched this week. It will provide ongoing access to our open-access research reports, survey instruments, datasets, essays, and interviews with leading thinkers. To make this transition seamless for users everywhere, the PIL archival site has assumed the same URL: projectinfolit.org.

I am proud of our work and the talented team members that have found a home at PIL through the years. Working closely together, we’ve collected data from almost 23,000 US college students at 100+ colleges and universities. We’ve published 14 open access reports and received support from such notable foundations and organizations as MacArthur, Knight, ACRL, Berkman Center at Harvard, and IMLS among many others.

At the same time, I’m honored to have met and collaborated with countless librarians, educators, and fellow researchers devoted to advancing the field of information literacy and students’ learning success.

As this chapter ends for me, there will be new directions and certainly a garden that always needs tending! Please keep in touch and take care in these uncertain times. At PIL, we send you the warmest of thanks as a valued colleague for nearly two decades.

All the best,
Alison

Alison J. Head, Ph.D.
Founder and Executive Director
Project Information Literacy

Filed under: Associations and Organizations, Data Files, Funding, Interviews, News, Open Access, Patrons and Users, Reports