Adjunct Lecturer Melissa Wong and Laura Saunders, associate professor of library and information science at Simmons University, have co-edited a new book, Reference and Information Services, 6th edition, which was recently published by ABC-CLIO. The first half of the book establishes a foundation of knowledge on reference service and frames each topic with ethical and social justice perspectives, while the second half introduces tools and resources used by reference professionals.

iSchool Associate Professor Masooda Bashir and Informatics PhD student Tanusree Sharma have published a paper, "Use of Apps in the COVID-19 Response and the Loss of Privacy Protection," in Nature Medicine. In the paper, they examine how digital surveillance used to contain the spread of COVID-19 may impact privacy rights.

iSchool PhD student Natã Barbosa and his advisor Associate Professor Yang Wang have received a $65,053 grant from Facebook for their project, "In-Situ Privacy Controls of Profiling and Ad-Targeting." The goal of the project is to design a privacy control framework that makes profiling and ad-targeting more transparent to ordinary Internet users.

Theresa Dirndorfer Anderson has been selected by the iSchool faculty as a research fellow for the 2019-2021 academic years. Research fellows are chosen because their work is relevant to the interests of the School's faculty and students. During the period of their appointments, fellows give at least one public lecture.

Associate Professor and PhD Program Director Jana Diesner is a new associate editor on the editorial board of Science Advances, the open access multidisciplinary journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The journal supports the AAAS mission by extending the capacity of Science magazine to identify and promote significant advances in science and engineering across a wide range of areas. Science Advances editors not only have stellar reputations in their disciplines but also have acknowledged breadth in recognizing and promoting interdisciplinary collaborations. Diesner brings to this role her expertise in computational social science, human-centered data science, network analysis, natural language processing, machine learning, and responsible computing.

Associate Professor and MS/LIS Program Director Maria Bonn and three iSchool alumni have received the 2020 Library Publishing Coalition (LPC) Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Library Publishing, which recognizes significant and timely contributions to library publishing theory and practice. Bonn’s coauthors include Katrina Fenlon (MS '09, PhD '17), assistant professor in the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park; Megan Senseney (MS '08), head of the Office of Digital Innovation and Stewardship at the University of Arizona Libraries; and Janet Swatscheno (MS '14), instructor and digital publishing librarian, University Library, at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Assistant Professor Jessie Chin has received a $389,810 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to identify false information about the HPV vaccine and model its impact on risk perceptions.

Lecturer Elizabeth Wickes has organized and will be leading virtual versions of the Python Trainers Summit on April 23 and Python Education Summit on April 24.

With schools resorting to virtual instruction during the pandemic, educators and families rely on online resources such as the National Park Service's Island of the Blue Dolphins website, which was developed by Sara L. Schwebel, iSchool professor and director of The Center for Children's Books, in partnership with the NPS. In this Q&A, Schwebel discusses how her research on the Island of the Blue Dolphins book led to her work with the NPS and future plans for the Books to Parks initiative.

Dawei Zhou and Yao Zhou, PhD students in computer science, will present the work of iSchool Associate Professor Jingrui He's research group, the iSAIL Lab, at The Web Conference 2020. The conference, which will be held virtually from April 20-24, will address the evolution and current state of the Web through the lens of computer science, computational social science, economics, public policy, and Web-based applications.