School of Information Sciences

iSchool coordinates IMLS-funded forum on data mining research

IMLS Data Forum

A group of cross-disciplinary experts gathered in Chicago on April 5 and 6 for a national forum on text data mining research. The forum, Data Mining Research Using In-copyright and Limited-access Text Datasets, was coordinated by iSchool faculty and staff and funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (grant LG-73-17-0070-17). 

Principal Investigator Bertram Ludäscher, professor and director of the iSchool’s Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship (CIRSS), led the effort with co-principal investigators Megan Senseney, CIRSS research scientist; Beth Sandore Namachchivaya, university librarian at the University of Waterloo; and investigator Eleanor Dickson, visiting digital humanities specialist for the HathiTrust Research Center.

"Our goal in convening a forum around text data mining with use-limited data is to situate academic libraries within a much broader landscape, articulate points of convergence and divergence among key stakeholder groups, and set forth a strategy for libraries to expand their research data services to include support frameworks for text data mining," explained Senseney.
 
"Our recommendations, forthcoming as an ACRL white paper, will focus not only on gaining access to these data but also on strategies for documenting and disseminating workflows and hosting and preserving research outputs," she said.

The local advisory committee included the following iSchool faculty: Professor and Associate Dean for Research J. Stephen Downie, Assistant Professor Jana Diesner, Associate Professor Victoria Stodden, and Professor Ted Underwood. Other members included Daniel Tracy (MS '12), information science/digital humanities librarian and assistant professor at the University Library; Melissa Cragin (PhD '09), adjunct assistant professor and executive director of the NCSA Midwest Big Data Hub; Scott Althaus, affiliated faculty member and Merriam Professor in Political Science, professor of communication, and director of the Cline Center for Advanced Social Research; and master's student Sara Benson, copyright librarian and assistant professor at the University Library.

Updated on
Backto the news archive

Related News

Wang and Snap Research partner on "Profile Agent"

Imagine your favorite apps had a "digital twin" of your personality that actually grew up with you. Right now, most AI systems create a static snapshot of your interests. For example, a personal shopper who keeps recommending video games just because you bought one three years ago, even though you've long since moved on to hiking and cooking. To bridge this gap, Professor Dong Wang's team at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is partnering with Snap Research to build a "Profile Agent."

Dong Wang

Dahlen selected as juror for 2026 Kirkus Prize

Associate Professor Sarah Park Dahlen has been selected as one of six jurors for the 2026 Kirkus Prize, given annually in the categories of fiction, nonfiction, and young readers' literature. The prize is one of the richest in the literary world, with awards of $50,000 in each category.

Sarah Park Dahlen

Liu receives support for AI project through NVIDIA Academic Grant Program

Assistant Professor Yaoyao Liu has been awarded a grant through the NVIDIA Academic Grant Program. NVIDIA, a world leader in accelerated computing and AI, established the program to advance academic research by providing world-class computing access and resources to researchers. Liu has received 32,000 A100 GPU-hours on Brev, an AI and machine learning platform that empowers developers to run, build, train, deploy, and scale AI models with GPU in the cloud. 

Yaoyao Liu

New app designed to improve conference experience

A new app developed by Associate Professor Yun Huang aims to make navigating conferences less work and more fun, so that attendees can meet others, discover fresh ideas, and "experience academic life as an exciting adventure." The app, PapersClaw.fun, will debut at the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2026), which will be held from April 13-17 in Barcelona, Spain.

Yun Huang

School of Information Sciences

501 E. Daniel St.

MC-493

Champaign, IL

61820-6211

Voice: (217) 333-3280

Email: ischool@illinois.edu

Back to top