The University of Illinois is home to two extraordinary collections of modern reproductions of medieval Irish art, including jewelry, reliquaries, and manuscripts dating back to before the twelfth century. Many of these copies were acquired by the University around 1916, the year of the Irish “Easter Rising” against British rule.

Music, politics, art, prison justice, comics . . . the topics of zines are as diverse as the individuals creating them. Unlike a traditional magazine, a zine is self-published, small in scale, and more personal. On September 16, iSchool Associate Professor Kathryn La Barre answered questions about zines and her role as caretaker of the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center (UCIMC) Zine Library on the Harukana Show, a broadcast of UCIMC's radio station WRFU, which is also webcast internationally.

Created in 1941, Wonder Woman has been a popular comics hero for decades. Associate Professor Carol Tilley will join fellow comics fans and scholars to celebrate the character’s seventy-fifth anniversary at the Wonder Woman Symposium on September 22-24 in Cleveland, Ohio.

Michele Plante joined the School on September 12 as the employer relations coordinator. In this new role, she will develop, maintain, and evolve partnerships with employers for student preprofessional and professional opportunities as well as increase corporate engagement.

Cass Mabbott, PhD student, will participate in Information Seeking in Context (ISIC): The Information Behaviour Conference to be held September 20-23 in Zadar, Croatia. This biannual conference is devoted to information-seeking behavior and information use, focusing this year on analytical investigations of the connection between information research and information behavior and practices.

Most academic librarians stepping into a position can model their work on that of their predecessors. But not Thomas Padilla (MS '14). On his appointment in April as the first humanities data curator at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) Library (and the first in the entire University of California system), Padilla has had to draw on a number of different disciplines to shape his role of working with data throughout its life cycle.

It is at this intersection of people and institutions that doctoral candidate Cheryl Thompson is conducting her research. Specifically, she explores how organizations develop data expertise and services to support science.

In the new book, Reference and Information Services, An Introduction (5th Edition), Professor Linda C. Smith (MS '72) and coeditor Melissa A. Wong (MS '94) have assembled chapters from experts in library and information science that focus on new ideas and methods for providing reference service; discuss the effective use of print, online, and fee-based sources; and explore the future of reference services in light of today's fast-changing technology.

The iSchool is pleased to announce the appointment of Martin Wolske as interim director of the Center for Digital Inclusion (CDI). Wolske assumes the position following the departure of Jon Gant, founding director, who recently accepted the deanship of the School of Library and Information Sciences at North Carolina Central University in Durham.

The iSchool is pleased to announce that Matthew Turk has joined the faculty, effective September 9. Assistant Professor Turk holds a joint appointment with the Department of Astronomy in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. His work focuses on how individuals interact with data, and how that data is processed and understood.