O’Rourke Kasali supports the creation of libraries in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Shannon O'Rourke Kasali

Shannon O'Rourke Kasali's involvement with libraries started before she arrived at Illinois for her MS/LIS degree. While working in the Democratic Republic of Congo, she witnessed the lack of accessibility to books. In response, O'Rourke Kasali crowd-funded $27,000 to purchase 27,000 books, leading to the creation of Books for Congo. Since 2016, the organization has established 16 libraries in two provinces in the country, distributing over 56,000 books and training 30 librarians.

"Based on prior experience I had in Senegal, I knew a way to get books, so I decided to do my part to support some local organizations in their dream to set up libraries," said O'Rourke Kasali. "In addition, Books for Congo has hosted writing workshops in collaboration with a publishing house to promote the publication of local stories."

O'Rourke Kasali holds a BA in political science and international studies from Illinois Wesleyan University, an MA in international development from The George Washington University, and a certificate in peace and conflict studies from Chulalongkorn University. She decided to pursue her MS/LIS with the goal of learning more in order to further develop Books for Congo.

Last year, O'Rourke Kasali worked as an apprentice at The Urbana Free Library and as a graduate hourly at the Mortenson Center for International Library Programs. She is currently the iSchool student leadership and engagement graduate assistant and serves on the Progressive Librarians Guild and the ALA Student Chapter's International Committee.

"I am most interested in the role that libraries play in community development. I am also conducting research on the role of libraries and library work in conflict and post-conflict settings, which is particularly interesting, stemming from my work in the Democratic Republic of Congo," she said.

O'Rourke Kasali recently served as a guest author for the IFLA Library Services to People with Special Needs newsletter. In her article, she discussed how Books for Congo supported their partner libraries in adapting to continue to provide services during COVID-19. 

"I would like to continue to give as much time as possible to Books for Congo because the organization is doing incredibly interesting, needed, and really fun work, and the opportunities are limitless," she said. "It's really an honor to be able to contribute to communities and a country that I have made my home."

Updated on
Backto the news archive

Related News

Scholarship alleviates financial burden for returning student

During her time as an active-duty Naval Officer, Anna Hartman realized that she had a passion for helping others and building community. That passion, combined with a lifelong love of reading, led her to pursue an MSLIS degree at the University of Illinois. Hartman is receiving support for her studies through the Balz Endowment Fund, which was established by Nancy (BA LAS '70, MSLIS '72) and Dan (BS Media '68, MS Media '72) Balz to help make education more affordable for returning students.

Anna Hartman

Winning exhibits highlight evolution of music media and Uni High magazine

MSLIS students Monica Gil, Holly Bleeden, and Harrison Price were selected as winners of this year's Graduate Student Exhibit Contest, sponsored by the University of Illinois Library. Gil and Bleeden won first place for their exhibit, "Echoes of Time: The Evolution of Music Media," and Price won second place for his exhibit, "Unique-ly Illinois: Creative Writing from High School to Higher Education." The exhibits will be on display in the Marshall Gallery in the library through the end of March.

MSLIS students Monica Gil and Holly Bleeden standing next to their exhibit, "Echoes of Time: The Evolution of Music Media," at the Main Library.

Wei receives Amazon Post Internship Fellowship

PhD student Tianxin Wei has been awarded an Amazon Post Internship Fellowship, which will provide $20,000 in unrestricted funds and $20,000 in Amazon Web Services (AWS) credits to support Wei's research with his advisor, Professor Jingrui He. For the past two summers, Wei has served as an applied scientist intern at Amazon in Palo Alto, California. He has been part of a team that is working on search query understanding within Amazon apps and services, as well as developing shopping foundation models.

Tianxin Wei

iSchool participation in iConference 2025

The following iSchool faculty and students will participate in iConference 2025, which will be held virtually from March 11-14 and physically from March 18-22 in Bloomington, Indiana. The theme of this year's conference is "Living in an AI-gorithmic world."

Youth-AI-Safety named a winning team in international hackathon

A team of researchers from the SALT (Social Computing Systems) Lab has been selected as a winner in an international hackathon hosted by the Berkeley Center for Responsible, Decentralized Intelligence. The LLM Agents MOOC Hackathon brought together over 3,000 students, researchers, and practitioners from 127 countries to build and showcase innovative work in large language model (LLM) agents, grow the AI agent community, and advance LLM agent technology.