The iSchool Alumni Association (ISAA) is seeking nominations for three distinguished awards. The awards are given annually at the iSchool alumni reception held at the American Library Association conference. The deadline for nomination is April 1, 2018.

Martin Wolske, interim director of the iSchool's Center for Digital Inclusion (CDI), is organizing a workshop on digital equity for Net Inclusion 2018, which will be held on April 17-19 in Cleveland, Ohio. He is working in collaboration with Angela Siefer, executive director of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) and former CDI senior research associate.

iSchool master's student Lisa Morrison won the award for best paper at BOBCATSSS 2018, which was held in Riga, Latvia, from January 24-26. The BOBCATSSS Symposium is organized each year by library and information science students from European universities who plan and implement both the content and the management of the conference as a part of their studies.

Kameron Wells is combining his love of athletics with his interest in data analytics as a student in the iSchool's MS in information management (MS/IM) program. A Champaign native, Wells graduated in 2017 with his bachelor's degree in computer science from Knox College, where he was a four-time letterwinner and starting catcher on the school’s baseball team.

A commitment to library innovations led a small group of librarians, including iSchool alumnus Joshua Finnell (MS '07), to create the Awesome Libraries Chapter. The chapter originated from a working group of the Library Pipeline, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting structural changes by providing opportunities, funding, and services that improve the library as an institution and librarianship as a profession. Finnell, head of research and instruction and associate professor in the University Libraries at Colgate University, started the chapter with group members Bonnie Tijerina, researcher at the Data & Society Research Institute in New York, and Robin Champieux, scholarly communication librarian at Oregon Health & Science University.

Like many others, master's student Lizzy Boden was very focused on fake news during the 2016 election. For her research proposal in IS 501, Information Organization and Access, she examined how libraries are combating fake news. She followed up with the topic in IS 590IIA, International Information Associations and Policy, and her findings are available in the ALA-ACRL online publication, "Keeping Up With… Debiasing and Fake News." According to Boden, "The more I researched, the more clear it became that fake news is actually a symptom of cognitive bias rather than a stand-alone problem. As such, tips to consider the authority of sources and even specific misinformation corrections are minimally effective as a solution. That makes the problem much harder to solve—but I think librarians are well placed to be involved in debiasing work." 

Connect with iSchool faculty and staff next month at the 2018 ALISE Annual Conference and the ALA 2018 Midwinter Meeting in Denver. ALISE 2018 will be held February 6-9, and ALA Midwinter will be held February 9-13. A reception to honor the Kansas City Public Library, recipient of the 2017 Downs Intellectual Freedom Award, will take place on Saturday, February 10, from 5:30-7:00 p.m. in Ellingwood Rooms A and B at the Crowne Plaza Downtown Denver. The award is sponsored by the iSchool and Libraries Unlimited.

The Hidden Life of a Toad, written and illustrated with photographs by Doug Wechsler, and published by Charlesbridge, is the winner of the 2018 Gryphon Award for Children's Literature.

MS student Mark McCarthy has received the Stan Yellott Scholarship from the Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group. The award provides financial support to students interested in pursuing studies related to information technology. McCarthy, an information management student, is certified in information accessibility, design, and policy and has earned several certificates in cybersecurity.

As a child, MS/LIS student and author Brittany Jacobs was banned from her local library for not returning anything on time. Now, Jacobs works in the children's department at the Naperville Public Library, writes and illustrates children's books, and helps librarians create educational programs for youth.