Reporting new research results involves detailed descriptions of methods and materials used in an experiment. But when a study uses computers to analyze data, create models or simulate things that can’t be tested in a lab, how can other researchers see what steps were taken or potentially reproduce results?

In a small town in western Montana, Wendy Campbell turned a difficult situation into an opportunity to show her fellow citizens how libraries are vital to communities as safe places for education and communication. For her efforts, Campbell, director of the Darby Community Public Library, has been named the 2016 recipient of the Robert B. Downs Intellectual Freedom Award.

S.K. (Kayleigh) Van Poolen is a Certificate of Advanced Study (CAS) student who has advanced degrees in political science, urban planning, information sciences, and law. On November 15, Van Poolen's talk, "Started with a Hurricane Named Katrina," won third place at the 2016 Research Live! competition sponsored by the Graduate College.

Unique in its sheer size and breadth, a new open dataset released by the HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC) will provide researchers with access to otherwise restricted information. The HTRC Extracted Features (EF) Dataset reports quantitative counts of words, lines, parts of speech, and other details extracted from each page of the more than thirteen million volumes found in the HathiTrust Digital Library. 

An interest in medical informatics led Henry A. Gabb to pursue a doctoral degree in LIS. Gabb's research goal is to mine the vast scientific literature and genetic databases for biomarkers that predict drug efficacy.

The iSchool and the Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong are cohosting the workshop "Digital Scholarship Centers: Building Library Services for Data-Driven Scholarship" from November 28-30 at the University of Hong Kong.

Professor Emeritus Abdul Alkalimat will give the keynote presentation at the 30th Symposium on African American Culture and Philosophy, which will be held from December 1-3 at Purdue University. This year's symposium will explore the "humanity" in the digital humanities as well as Africana/Black studies' perspectives.

Doctoral candidate Ana Lucic successfully defended her dissertation, "Automatically Identifying Facet Roles from Comparative Structures to Support Biomedical Text Summarization," on November 17.

Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego? Children playing this educational video game on their school's computer in the 1990s got an entertaining geography lesson while in hot pursuit of Carmen and her villains. Preserving a video game such as this for future generations to study and appreciate involves challenges beyond the obvious fact that computers no longer support the software needed to play the game.

In her winning video for the Wiley Scholarship for Early Career Librarians, Ximin Mi (MS '13) talks about the importance of lifelong learning—how learning doesn’t stop when you graduate. She put this concept into practice in making the video, which earned her a $1,500 travel grant that she will use to attend the Association of College & Research Libraries Conference in Baltimore this March.