Peer review is like democracy: better than the alternatives.
Dana McKay
Information Experience Researcher Practitioner
Specialty Areas
Equity and Equality in STEMM, Science, Technology and Innovation, Social Justice and Human Rights, Women in STEMM
About Me
Dana’s key research and practice focus is in supporting all people to independently find, manage and understand information. She has particular concerns about the dominance of search in online information seeking, and in the ethics of large scale information collection without user consent.
Dana is in the final stages of a PhD in information interaction at the University of Melbourne, looking specifically at how readers browse books. Her aim is to make online book browsing better. She is also currently teaching information systems to first year masters students.
Dana’s PhD work has been very successful and internationally recognised, attracting a Best International paper award, and an honourable mention for best paper. She was also awarded a highly prestigious Google PhD Fellowship. She has worked with State Library of Victoria, and provided consulting services to the British Library during her study.
Prior to her PhD Dana worked for ten years as a user experience specialist in an academic library, making elements of the library and the university website easier to use. Her interest in the practical applications of her research, and the ethical imperative to make information systems more user friendly is a driving force in her research.
Prior to embarking on her research career, Dana did a bachelors degree in computer science, an experience which has gone some way to informing her feminist perspective.
You can view Dana’s publications on her Google Scholar profile https://scholar-google-com-au/citations?user=3TlPPZIAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao.
Perhaps the oddest fact about Dana is that she speaks fluent Finnish, as a result of a year in Finland on exchange.
Qualifications
BSc Computer ScienceMSc(Hons) in Digital Library Usability
10 years professional practice as a UX researcher in a library
