Three iSchool faculty are named on four National Leadership Grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS): Professor Jiangping Chen; Sara Schwebel, professor and director of the Center for Children's Books (CCB); and Assistant Professor Kahyun Choi.
Chen is principal investigator on "Public Library Services for Older Adults in the AI Era: Status, Gaps, Solutions, and Recommendations." The collaboration with Ping Li at the City University of New York's Queens College aims to strengthen public library services for older adults. Working with four public library systems in Illinois, New York, and Washington, DC, the project focuses on developing new models for serving older adults in public libraries in the AI era, practical guidelines for developing older-adult-focused programs and services, training materials for librarians, literacy courses for older adults, and evidence-based recommendations to inform library policy and practice. The award amount is $620,095.
Chen also serves as co-PI on "ORAL-AI: High Efficacy Content Representation and User Engagement of Oral Digital Collections with Multimodal LLMs." Led by Haihua Chen of the University of North Texas, the project will evaluate the limitations of emerging multimodal AI systems in oral history contexts and develop a structured benchmark dataset and modular, open-source framework that supports cross-modal retrieval, evidence-grounded question answering, and narrative summarization while preserving archival integrity. The research team will collaborate with the Densho Digital Repository and other nationally significant oral collections. The project received $490,396.
Both projects will start in September 2026 and are expected to be completed by August 2029.
Schwebel is principal investigator for "Reading the Revolution: Telling the Story of the Nation's Founding to America's Youth." In partnership with the University of Illinois Library, Skeuomorph Press & BookLab, and the Champaign County Forest Preserve, the CCB will implement a project based on the exhibit and field trip model.
The project will develop an interpretive and digital exhibit drawing on University of Illinois library collections including Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Sousa Archives and Center for American Music, and the Social Sciences, Health, and Education Library's School Collection. To complement the exhibit, the project will also create a digital collection and readers' advisory guide prepared by the editorial board of The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, with supplemental materials developed by CCB staff and a "Reading the Revolution" Scholars Council from other colleges and universities. CCB Assistant Director Suzan Alteri, Associate Professor Ryan Cordell, doctoral student Owen Monroe, and additional graduate students will help coordinate programming.
Materials will include American history-themed storytimes, and school-aged library programming, as well as field trips for middle school students throughout the region and professional development workshops for area librarians and teachers. The one-year grant is valued at nearly $100,000.
Choi is a consultant on "Asset-Based AI Toolkit: Leveraging Librarian Cultural Wealth for AI Literacy," which seeks to build a web-based interactive AI literacy toolkit for librarians, enabling them to recognize and leverage their assets for developing and sustaining AI literacy programs. Led by Hee Rin Lee of Michigan State University, the project builds on the team's earlier IMLS-funded AI literacy project, which developed a program for public libraries with Choi as co-PI. As an expert in AI for music and poetry within the field of library science, she will provide subject-matter expertise, curate supplementary resources, and provide iterative feedback on the development of the toolkit. The project is funded for three years with a total award of $455,066.