Professor Emeritus of Political Science, School of Information Management and Systems, UC Berkeley

Peter Lyman passed away at the age of 66 on July 2, 2007. One of the ways he is remembered is through the Peter Lyman Memorial/SAGE Scholarship in New Media. He received his BA from Stanford University in Philosophy, M.A. from Berkeley in Political Science, and Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford. His research and teaching interests included e-government and e-governance, the enthnographic study of online social relationships and communities, and an ethnography of technology transfer from research communities to business. Lyman served on the editorial boards of American Behavioral Scientist, the Journal of Electronic Publishing, and Information Technology, Education and Society. He was a member of the Board of Directors of Sage Publishing, Inc., and had previously served on the Board of Directors of EDUCOM, the Research Libraries Group (RLG), The Babbage Institute, the Technical Advisory Board of the Commission on Preservation and Access, the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), and the Internet Archive. One of his recent projects was How Much Information 2003?, a study of how much new information is being produced. In 2005, Lyman and a team he lead were awarded $3.3 million by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to study “digital kids.” The study documented how youth from age 10 to 20 are using new digital media to create and exchange knowledge, assessed how these phenomenon affect learning, and encouraged use of their conclusions for the improvement of schools (news release). Lyman served on the Advisory Committee of the Digital Cultures Project, a University of California Multi-Campus Research Group.

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