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Thomer and Weber receive best paper award

Doctoral student Andrea K. Thomer and recent graduate Nic Weber (PhD '15) are the winners of the 2015 Best Paper Award given by the Association for Information Science and Technology’s (ASIS&T) Special Interest Group for Scientific and Technical Information (SIG-STI). Thomer and Weber presented their paper, "The Phylogeny of a Dataset," at the 77th ASIS&T Annual Meeting, held October…

Knox receives ILA Intellectual Freedom Award

Assistant Professor Emily Knox is the 2015 recipient of the Illinois Library Association (ILA) Intellectual Freedom Award.The award, presented by the ILA Intellectual Freedom Committee, recognizes an individual or group for outstanding contributions in defending intellectual freedom or the advancement of these principles.

Get to know Alea Perez (MS '15), youth services librarian

Alea Perez is passionate about reading and librarianship, especially when it comes to teen services. On top of completing her master's studies this August, she manages her own YA lit website and recently started a new job as the head of youth services at the Westmont (IL) Public Library. Why did you decide to pursue an LIS degree? As a child, I was constantly surrounded by books thanks to…

Dubin, Thompson to participate in RDA Plenary

Research Associate Professor David Dubin and doctoral candidate Cheryl A. Thompson will participate in the sixth Research Data Alliance (RDA) Plenary Meeting in Paris, France, on September 23-25. Dubin will cochair a meeting of the Research Data Provenance interest group, and represent that group in a joint meeting with the Metadata, Data in Context, and Metadata Standards Catalog…

New grant to fund health sciences data collection tool

Ian Brooks, GSLIS research scientist and founding director of the Health Sciences Group at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), is the principal investigator of a new project to develop a secure, longitudinal platform for health data collection. Collaborating on this effort is James A. Solomon, clinical assistant professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at the…

Illini Gadget Garage will provide a space to repair electronics on campus

You’ve dropped your cellphone and cracked the screen. Or your computer needs a memory upgrade, the headphone jack no longer works or the hard drive has failed. You’ve had the electronics for several years, and you could just buy the latest device with the newest features. Or you could fix the one you have. If repairing an electronic device yourself sounds prohibitively complex and you aren…
from left: William Bullock, Joy Scrogum, and Martin Wolske

Alumnus Colin Rhinesmith named Benton Faculty Research Fellow

Colin Rhinesmith (PhD '14) has been named the new Benton Faculty Research Fellow by the Benton Foundation, a private foundation working to ensure that media and telecommunications serve the public interest and enhance democracy. In this role, Rhinesmith will conduct original research as well as advise the foundation on new research opportunities. In his first project for Benton, Rhinesmith is…

Alumna Gail Bush named Illinois Library Luminary

GSLIS alumna Gail Bush (MS ’77) has been named an Illinois Library Luminary by the Illinois Library Association. Bush’s passionate career in Illinois libraries spans five decades of service in academic, corporate, and school librarianship, as well as public library trusteeship. After earning a doctorate in educational psychology, Bush’s tenure as a library practitioner was followed by moving…

Alumni encourage matching gifts to complete first endowed chair at GSLIS

Thanks to a generous pledge from Lionelle Elsesser (AB '66, MS '67) and husband James Elsesser (BS '66, MS '67), GSLIS is one step closer to realizing its first faculty chair, the Endowed Chair in the History of Libraries and the Information Professions. Gifts of any size will be matched on a one-to-one basis up to a total contribution of $225,000 by the Elsessers, and the resulting $450,000…