In the 2021-2022 academic year, the iSchool launched its Postdoctoral Research Associate Program. The goal of this program is to prepare candidates for tenure-track assistant professor or other appointments inside and outside of academia. The cohort has grown to five postdocs, and applications are currently being accepted for the 2023-2024 academic year.

The following iSchool faculty, staff, and students will participate in iConference 2023, which will be held virtually from March 13-17 and physically from March 27-29 in Barcelona, Spain.

The iSchool Alumni Association (ISAA) is seeking nominations for three distinguished awards. The awards are given annually at the iSchool alumni reception held at the American Library Association conference. The deadline for nomination is April 1, 2023.

Adjunct Professor Sidney Berger (MSLIS '87) has authored a new book that will provide readers with a definitive glossary of book-related terminology. In The Dictionary of the Book: A Glossary for Book Collectors, Booksellers, Librarians, and Others (2nd Edition), which was recently published by Rowman & Littlefield, he brings “the vocabulary and theory of bookselling and collecting into the modern commercial and academic world” through the addition of more than 700 new entries. 

Penny Ames, admissions and records coordinator, has been selected as the winner of the 2023 Graduate College Excellence Award for Graduate Contacts. The award is given annually as part of the Graduate College's Annual Workshop for Directors of Graduate Study and Graduate Contacts. It recognizes staff members whose service has exceeded expectations in enhancing graduate students' experiences and has positively impacted their graduate program or department's operations.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, more than 10,000 full-time school librarian positions have been lost nationwide over the past two decades. This loss is especially felt by students, since research suggests that reading, writing, and graduation rates improve where schools employ certified school librarians. Thanks to a new program cosponsored by the iSchool and Chicago Public Schools (CPS), five school libraries that had been shuttered for five or more years now have a school librarian in place, with more to come.

The PhD degree program at the iSchool celebrates its 75th anniversary in 2023. This profile is part of a special series featuring PhD alumni. Noah Lenstra (MSLIS '09, CAS '11, PhD '16) is an associate professor of library and information science at the University of North Carolina Greensboro.

As the Pathways Intern with the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Division of Preservation and Access, Daniel Evans published two Jupyter notebooks for researching U.S. print culture. The notebooks, located on the Library of Congress's GitHub repository, will provide researchers with a downloadable data set of newspaper title essays and starter code so that they can create queries specific to their own research needs and interests.

Emily Bruce (MSLIS '17) has found school librarianship to be challenging but rewarding in the six years she has worked in the field. Bruce has experience working in elementary, junior high, and high school libraries, and she currently serves as the librarian at Lincoln High School in Vincennes, Indiana. Her favorite part of being a school librarian is restoring libraries to their full potential.

MSLIS student Rachel Riffe discusses her practicum experience at Forge Biologics.