Adam Beaty decided to pursue an MSLIS degree to combine his love of history, the arts, and community-centered spaces. This combination of interests culminated in a 244-item digital collection that showcases digitized materials depicting nearly thirty years of queer nightlife in Champaign County.
After graduation, Deekshita Karingula would like to build data pipelines, automate workflows for greater efficiency, and use data to transform healthcare. She views the MSIM program as the "ideal way" to connect her computer science and technical skills with data management skills, helping her reach her goals.
Associate Professor Elizabeth Hoiem has won the 2025 Justin G. Schiller Prize from The Bibliographical Society of America for her book, The Education of Things: Mechanical Literacy in British Children's Literature, 1762-1860 (University of Massachusetts Press). The prize, which recognizes the best bibliographical work on pre-1951 children's literature, includes a cash award of $3,000 and a year's membership in the Society.
Associate Professor Anita Say Chan has authored a new book that identifies how the eugenics movement foreshadows the predatory data tactics used in today's tech industry. Her book, Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future, was released this month by the University of California Press and featured in the news outlets San Francisco Chronicle and Mother Jones.
The Center for Children's Books (CCB) collaborated with the National Park Service (NPS) to launch a new Books to Parks website on Lyddie, a 1991 novel by Katherine Paterson that highlights the experiences of young women working in textile mills in nineteenth-century Lowell, Massachusetts.
Kellie Clinton (MSLIS '20) is the librarian at Westview Elementary School in Champaign. She is also the recipient of a 2024 Shining Star Award, given by the Champaign Urbana Schools Foundation to Unit 4 teachers who are nominated by their peers and show "exemplary service, extra effort, enthusiastic attitude, and innovative ideas that noticeably benefit their students."
Two iSchool alumni and two current MSLIS students have been selected by the American Library Association (ALA) to participate in its 2025 class of Emerging Leaders.
According to Hailley Fargo (MSLIS '16), the mentorship and educational opportunities she received at the iSchool provided a strong foundation for her current role as interim associate dean and head of education and outreach services at Northern Kentucky University. She enjoys building a strong and collaborative team and helping colleagues across campus understand the ways a library can impact the academic experience.
Glen Layne-Worthey, associate director for research support services for the HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC), and Isabel Galina, researcher at the Institute for Bibliographic Studies at the National University of Mexico, have edited a new book, The Routledge Companion to Libraries, Archives, and the Digital Humanities, which was recently released by Routledge.
Members of Associate Professor Dong Wang's research group, the Social Sensing and Intelligence Lab, will present their research at the 2024 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (BigData 2024), which will be held from December 15-18 in Washington, D.C. BigData 2024 is the premier venue to present and discuss progress in research, development, standards, and applications of topics in artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data analytics.
