Final projects in Government Information course result in publications

Dominique Hallett
Dominique Hallett, Adjunct Lecturer

Two students who were enrolled in the Government Information (IS 594) course this past spring are now published authors. Their papers began as their final project for the course, which acquaints students with government publications. With the students' permission, course instructor and Adjunct Lecturer Dominique Hallett submitted the papers to DttP: Documents to the People, and they were published in the journal's most recent edition (Vol. 51, No. 3).

In "Lessons Learned in Born-Digital Preservation," Miguel Beltran (MSLIS '23) discusses the importance of preserving government documents that are created in digital mediums. He gives the example of documents related to the war in Afghanistan and demonstrates how essential it is to preserve them and others of a similar nature. He emphasizes that the only way to ensure that born-digital government documents are available to future generations is to create laws that mandate their preservation—and to determine which agencies should be responsible for overseeing the process.

In her article, "The Relationship Between Government Documents and Black People Through the Coverage of the Black Panther Party," Informatics PhD student Kyra Milan Abrams argues that the coverage of the Black Panther Party in official government documents reflects how government documents cover Black people in general. According to Abrams, the "clear biases" she found in her research are not unique but demonstrate the beliefs in the U.S. about defying the status quo and about Black people.

Hallett serves as the government information and STEM librarian at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro. She holds an MLIS from Louisiana State University and an MA in heritage studies and BA in political science from Arkansas State University.

Updated on
Backto the news archive

Related News

iSchool researchers work with diverse groups to improve user experience

iSchool faculty are studying ways to improve user experience, with a common goal of improving technology and applications for the needs of individual users. These researchers are working with diverse groups to gain feedback, and several current projects are focused on experiences for users with disabilities.

Das receives student membership award from ASIS&T

PhD student Puranjani Das has been selected as a recipient of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) SIG CMR Student Membership Award for the 2024-2025 academic year. She will receive a complimentary one-year membership in both ASIS&T and SIG CMR, a special interest group focused on classification and metadata research.

Puranjani Das

Kim defends dissertation

Doctoral candidate Jenna Kim successfully defended her dissertation, "Evaluating Pre-Trained Language Modeling Approaches for Author Name Disambiguation," on June 11, 2024.

Jenna Kim headshot

Desai defends dissertation

Doctoral candidate Smit Desai successfully defended his dissertation, "Designing Metaphor-fluid Voice User Interfaces," on June 10.

Smit Desai

Student says ‘thank you’ with a helicopter ride

Last month, Michael Ferrer showed appreciation for one of his MSIM instructors in a unique way—by inviting him for an insider’s look at his work as a reservist in the Illinois Army National Guard. For the ILARNG BOSS Lift, which took place on June 18 at Camp Atterbury, Indiana, Ferrer selected Michael Wonderlich, iSchool adjunct lecturer and senior associate director of business intelligence and enterprise architecture for Administrative Information Technology Services (AITS) at the University of Illinois.

Michael Wonderlich and Michael Ferrer hold a U of I flag in front of a military helicopter