Research labs
The Multimodal Interaction Lab is housed in the Education Bldg. in rooms B120 and B121. It is used to study how humans organize information to construct knowledge representations. Researchers investigate these processes in real-life and virtual environments from the converging perspectives of information science, cognitive psychology, linguistics and applied physics (acoustics and signal processing).
The facilities consist of two contiguous rooms: an usability laboratory and a control room. The usability laboratory hosts a stereoscopic virtual reality system with a tracking system, a multichannel audio system (Wave Field Synthesis) and a haptic interface with force feedback to recreate the sense of touch, along with several test computers. The usability laboratory is also equipped with video cameras and an eye-tracker to monitor users' behavior.
The Accessible Computing Technology (ACT) Research Group's research lab at SIS is located at 3661 Peel in room B13A. ACT seeks to develop technologies that are accessible to a broad range of users, including older adults and people with disabilities. Particular attention is placed on understanding the role of social relationships on the use and adoption of new technologies.
Student areas
The School’s home at 3661 Peel has a number of areas for student use:
Basement: Office for student associations (Rm. B8), a small kitchen for student use, and a meeting/work room for use by students (Rm. B14).
Main floor: Student mailboxes are located next to the the Seminar Room (Rm. 106).
2nd floor: Small open lounge area.
3rd floor: Small study lounge (Rm. 302) and a larger meeting/study room (Rm. 310), available when not scheduled for meetings.
The building is also part of the McGill wireless network. Students with laptops may surf from the comfort of their favorite armchair.
McGill Library
McGill Library System
Students have access to one of the continent's major research resources in the McGill Library System, which consists of fifteen libraries including the Humanities and Social Sciences Library, home to the majority of the Library and Information Studies collection. Altogether, these libraries house over 5.1 million volumes (McLeans Magazine 2006), and was ranked 1st in the medical/doctoral university catagory.
The School is located adjacent to the Education Curriculum Resources Centre, the Nahum Gelber Law Library, and the Life Sciences Library.
The Library and Information Studies Collection
The Library and Information Studies collection is located at McGill under the "Z" section of the Library of Congress classification system. The bulk of this collection is in the Humanities and Social Sciences Library. In addition, relevant holdings may be found in many of the other McGill libraries.
McGill University Archives
The McGill University Archives preserves and makes available to researchers of all disciplines more than 4500 metres of primary documentation of permanent value generated over the past 180 years.
The Archives offers laboratory conditions for students doing independent studies or practical projects for GLIS 645 and GLIS 660 and also serves as a SIS practicum site. The Archives also possesses a working library of materials relating to archival science, micrographics and records management.