iSchool researchers to present at ILA Annual Conference

Kyungwon Koh
Kyungwon Koh, Associate Professor and Director of the Champaign-Urbana (CU) Community Fab Lab

iSchool faculty, staff, and students will present their research at the 2024 Illinois Library Association (ILA) Annual Conference, which will be held on October 8-10 in Peoria. The theme of this year's conference is "Libraries are Lit: Sparking Innovation and Imagination."

On October 9, Kyungwon Koh, associate professor and director of the Champaign-Urbana (CU) Community Fab Lab, will present "Hands-On Coding and Electronics Library Programs: Empowering Blind and Visually Impaired Learners and Beyond" with Marni Balint, experiential learning supervisor at Skokie Public Library, and CU Fab Lab staff members Sara Ballenger and Wayne Hardy. The presenters will demonstrate hands-on coding and electronics programs for use in libraries and discuss their experiences with them. By employing physical and tangible tools such as Snap Circuits, Code Jumper, and Snapino, these programs can be used to address the needs of blind and visually impaired (BVI) youth. 

MSLIS students Yanling Liu and Nikki Gross will present their poster, "From Compliance to Conformance: LibGuide Accessibility Evaluation of Funk ACES Library," on October 10. They will discuss their evaluation of the 75 LibGuides of Funk ACES Library following the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

Updated on
Backto the news archive

Related News

Get to Know Deekshita Karingula, MSIM Student

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.

Deekshita Karingula

Hoiem receives Schiller Prize for “Education of Things”

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. 

Elizabeth Hoiem

Chan authors new book connecting eugenics and Big Tech

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.

Anita Say Chan

CCB contributes to new Books to Parks site on Lyddie

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. 

Lyddie book