The Humanities Without Walls Consortium, funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, fosters interdisciplinary, collaborative research, teaching, and scholarship in the humanities, sponsoring new areas of inquiry that cannot be created or maintained without cross-institutional cooperation. On December 14, the Consortium announced the results of its latest research challenge initiative, "The Work of the Humanities in a Changing Climate." It awarded one of these grants—a multi-year investment of $138,360—to a team of humanists from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Michigan State University, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The award will support their multi-year research project, titled "The Classroom and the Future of the Historical Record." 

The staff at The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books (BCCB) has announced the 2017 Blue Ribbons, their choices for the best of children's and young adult literature for the year. Blue Ribbons are chosen annually by BCCB reviewers and represent what they believe to be outstanding examples of fiction, nonfiction, and picture books for youth.

Evanston, Illinois, has a growing Latino population—over 10% according to 2015 figures. Building connections with the Latino community served by the Evanston Public Library is what Miguel Ruiz likes best about his job.

Assistant Professor Jodi Schneider (MS ’08) has received funding from the National Institutes of Health to develop a series of automated informatics tools for reviewing medical literature more quickly and easily. The project, “Text Mining Pipeline to Accelerate Systematic Reviews in Evidence-Based Medicine,” was funded through a subaward from the University of Illinois at Chicago that will cover $228,006 in direct costs.

Rana Hutchinson Salzmann (MS '05) has been appointed director of education for the Society of American Archivists (SAA), effective January 2, 2018. She will be responsible for the design, development, marketing, implementation, and evaluation of SAA’s continuing education offerings and resources for archivists and other related professionals.

iSchool Lecturer Elizabeth Wickes (MS '16) has been elected to the 2018 Executive Council for the Carpentries, the first joint steering committee for the merged organizations of Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry. The Carpentries is a volunteer community of instructors, more than one thousand worldwide, teaching scientists basic lab skills for research computing. 

Whether you're a cybersecurity student, researcher, or professional, you are likely to confront difficult ethical dilemmas that can have significant implications. Equipped with skills like malware knowledge and hacking techniques, those in the field of cybersecurity have inside knowledge that can be powerful and potentially dangerous. There is a growing need to tether this power to an awareness of the complex web of potential consequences, critical ethical reasoning skills, and perhaps most importantly, a sense of social responsibility to ensure this power is used for the greater good.

Assistant Professor Elizabeth Massa Hoiem is one of six Illinois faculty members who have been awarded National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships for 2018. It is the third year in the last four that the Urbana campus has garnered more fellowship awards than any other single institution.

Last month, first-year master's student Amanda Weber presented her research at the Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL). During FIL's International Librarian's Colloquium, she talked about the power of bilingual children's literature and how it plays a role in identity formation and affirmation. Weber had researched and written about the topic for her undergraduate thesis at DePauw University, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in Spanish. "When picture books are culturally and linguistically appropriate, accurate, and affirming, they represent children's realities and inspire them to discover, create, and celebrate their identities," she said. It was this interest in children's literacy that led her to the iSchool.

Four iSchool alumni have received the Up and Comer Award from ATG Media. Sarah E. Crissinger (MS '15), Hailley Fargo (MS '16), Maoria Kirker (MS '11), and Katrina Spencer (MS '16) are among the twenty individuals who were selected for the award, which is intended for early-career librarians and information professionals.