Many digital archival collections are limited due to factors such as privacy concerns and copyright. AEOLIAN combines innovative AI methods and the knowledge of scholars from multiple cultural institutions to address the accessibility of these collections, ultimately making them more accessible. Additionally, the project aims to foster collaboration amongst scholars and practitioners from…
Science is fast outgrowing the capabilities of today's Internet infrastructure. To fully capitalize on big data, artificial intelligence, advanced computation and the Internet of Things requires robust, interconnected computers, storage, networks and software. Uneven progress in science cyberinfrastructure has led to bottlenecks that stymie collaboration and slow the process of discovery.…
Mapping Information Access is a collaborative academic research project to study and understand the landscape of information access and availability in public schools and libraries in the United States.
There are more than 18,000 public school districts and more than 9,000 public library systems in the US. Each of these institutions is as a central node of information access for the…
Library makerspaces offer community members the opportunity to tinker, design, experiment, and create with a range of technology in an informal learning space. However, because current makerspaces and maker tools are highly vision oriented, blind and visually impaired (BVI) people have limited access to these learning opportunities. This project (…
Across the country, colleges and universities are struggling to meet demand for accessible forms of course materials for students with an array of disabilities. At present, each institution is addressing this problem individually, at great expense, and often without full campus coordination, much less consortial collaboration. Locating digital files is difficult and entails numerous sources.…
This project is a repository of community-designed open resources for teaching about scholarly communication and for doing scholarly communication work in libraries. The SCN is intended to be the locus of an active, inclusive, empowered community of practice for teaching scholarly communications to emerging librarians, where practitioners, LIS educators, and library students work together to…
Scientific and technical information is often translated for the public, by knowledge brokers such as journalists, Wikipedia editors, activists, and public librarians. This project will research how knowledge brokers assess the quality of scientific and technical information and the implications for public access, information literacy, and understanding of science. The project will use case…
Scholarly publications today are still mostly disconnected from the underlying data and code used to produce the published results and findings, despite an increasing recognition of the need to share all aspects of the research process. As data become more open and transportable, a second layer of research output has emerged, linking research publications to the associated data, possibly along…
The Institute of Museum and Library Services has awarded GSLIS a $248,205 National Leadership Grant for the project, “App Authors: Closing the App Gap II.” Principal investigator Deborah Stevenson, assistant professor and director of the Center for Children’s Books, and co-PI Kate McDowell, associate professor and assistant dean for student affairs, began work on the IMLS-funded planning phase of…
Assistant Professor Emily Knox is the 2015 recipient of the Illinois Library Association (ILA) Intellectual Freedom Award.The award, presented by the ILA Intellectual Freedom Committee, recognizes an individual or group for outstanding contributions in defending intellectual freedom or the advancement of these principles.
GSLIS is pleased to announce that Rachel Magee will join the faculty this fall.
Magee’s research focuses on how young people engage with technology, and considers their social relationships and values as important factors in their technology use. She is also interested in developing technologies, strategies, and techniques to better support teens’ information access and use.
“Rachel is a…
Within the realm of social justice, professional resources can be scattered widely among the many disparate areas that intersect with this field, impeding research and fieldwork. A group of LIS doctoral students from across the country—all current American Library Association Spectrum Doctoral Fellows—are working together to create a solution to this challenge called the Social Justice Collaboratorium (@SJCollaborate).c
Associate Professor Carol Tilley will join thousands of her fellow comic book fans in San Diego July 9-12 for Comic-Con International, one of the largest comics and entertainment events in the world. Tilley will share her expertise in comics and comics history through her participation in the following panel discussions:
"Lost (and Found) Comics Studies of the Past," with authors Brad Ricca…
Illinois alumnus Nama Budhathoki recognized the need for better documentation of Nepal’s roads and resources before disaster struck there last month. The former GSLIS student and a small team of volunteers began mapping Nepal in 2013, after Budhathoki saw the importance of accurate maps following the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti in January 2010.
"Navigation in Kathmandu [was…
GSLIS master’s student Lindsay Shapray has been selected to participate in the highly competitive 2015 Library of Congress (LoC) Junior Fellows Summer Intern Program. She will spend ten weeks working full time on-site in Washington, DC, at the LoC’s John W. Kluge Center, which works to bring together scholars and political leaders.
The Kluge Center is a great fit for Shapray, who has…
Assistant Professor Emily Knox will speak at the upcoming conference, Outlawed: The Naked Truth About Censored Literature for Young People, to be held April 10-12 at California State University, Fresno (Fresno State). The conference, hosted by the Arne Nixon Center for the Study of Children’s Literature, a department of the Henry Madden Library at Fresno State, explores the role censorship plays…
The Freedom to Read Foundation (FTRF) and GSLIS are pleased to announce a partnership to offer an online graduate-level course on intellectual freedom for library and information science (LIS) students around the country. The course, in its second year, will be taught by GSLIS faculty member Emily Knox and is a project of FTRF’s Judith F. Krug Memorial Fund.
“Intellectual Freedom and…
Jack Bernard, associate general counsel with the University of Michigan’s Office of the Vice President and General Counsel, will deliver the Spring 2015 Windsor Lecture at 4:00 p.m. on April 28 in GSLIS Room 126. His lecture is titled, “Yes, Virginia, You Can Digitize Millions of Books: Copyright, HathiTrust, and the Legacy of Libraries.” A reception will be held in the GSLIS east foyer…
The Federal Communications Commission voted on Feb. 26 to regulate broadband Internet service as a public utility. The “net neutrality” rules aim to ensure open Internet access. Dan Schiller, an emeritus professor of library and information science and communication at the University of Illinois, talked with News Bureau arts and humanities editor Jodi Heckel about the decision and its…
While it may be tempting to dismiss as a censor anyone who wants to restrict access to a book, such individuals understand that books are powerful and have the potential to change lives, said Emily Knox, who recently wrote about the people who raise challenges to reading material.
Her new book, Book Banning in 21st-Century America, was published in January by Rowman & Littlefield. Knox is…
Book Banning in 21st Century America, by Assistant Professor Emily Knox, has been selected by international LIS honor society Beta Phi Mu and publisher Rowman & Littlefield to be the first in the new Beta Phi Mu Scholars Series. Book Banning is the result of Knox’s research of the motivations of book challenges. It explores common themes in arguments for censorship and analyzes the role of…