Carolyn Kinsella (MSLIS '03), Beverly Frett (MSLIS '04), and Adjunct Lecturer Karen Egan have been selected to receive awards from the Association of Illinois School Library Educators (AISLE). They will be honored at an awards banquet during the AISLE Annual Conference, which will be held from October 5–7 in Champaign, Illinois.

BSIS student Lauren Ravury has a new item to add to her resume: member of the 2025 Homecoming Court at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Ravury's resume is already impressive. She serves as president of the Student Alumni Ambassadors (SAA), an organization dedicated to fostering school spirit at the U. of I. Last year, she served as president of the Asian Pre-Law Association, a stint that led to her receiving the Outstanding Asian & Asian American Undergraduate Student Leader Award from the Asian American Cultural Center and the association being named the 2025 Outstanding Asian & Asian American Student Organization.

Professor Yang Wang has been appointed by Governor JB Pritzker to serve on the newly created Autism Data Privacy Advisory Group, established under Executive Order 2025-02 to strengthen protections for the civil and human rights of people with autism in Illinois. 

As a member of the Illini 4000, BSIS student Riddhima Patllollu biked from New York City to San Francisco to raise awareness of cancer and raise funds for cancer research. Patllollu, a junior from New Jersey, decided to join the nonprofit organization in her freshman year to expand her worldview and mark a new chapter in her life. 

Professor Dong Wang is the lead author of a book that offers a new perspective on human-centered AI design and human–AI collective intelligence. Social Intelligence: The New Frontier of Integrating Human Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence in Social Space, which was recently published by Springer Nature, is co-authored by Lanyu Shang (PhD '24) of Loyola Marymount University and Yang Zhang of Miami University.

The iSchool at Illinois is pleased to announce the publication of The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books 79 (1). This issue features 80 original book reviews of new children’s books that will appear in publishers' fall catalogs.

iSchool faculty, staff, and students will participate in the Research Conference on Communications, Information and Internet Policy (TPRC 2025), which will be held from September 18–20 in Washington, DC.

Simit Shah worked as a consultant for Deloitte in India before enrolling in the MSIM program to strengthen his analytical and business skills. Over the summer, he applied the knowledge gained from his iSchool coursework during an internship as a technology risk consultant at EY.

A new book co-edited by Professor Emeritus Alistair Black and Associate Professor Bonnie Mak, along with Toni Weller (De Montfort University) and Laura Skouvig (University of Copenhagen), provides a field-defining, comprehensive study of information history. The Routledge Handbook of Information History, released last month by Routledge, examines how society, politics, culture, and technology have shaped information practices over millennia. The 638-page volume features more than forty contributors from around the world.

MSLIS student Nathaniel Allen (Nat) Pila has been selected as the 2025 recipient of the Ruth Fine Memorial Student Loan, awarded annually by the District of Columbia Library Association (DCLA). The award will support Pila as he begins his studies in the iSchool at the University of Illinois.