The iSchool is pleased to announce that Professor Michael Twidale will serve as interim PhD program director for one year beginning August 16. He will take over from Associate Professor Jana Diesner, who recently concluded her three-year term of service as PhD program director.

Associate Professor and Interim Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Emily Knox and Associate Professor Kyungwon Koh have received a $100,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (LG-246251-OLS-20) for their project, "Measuring the Impact and Value of Makerspaces in Public Libraries." Knox will serve as principal investigator for the one-year exploratory project, which is a partnership with Indian Trails Public Library District in Wheeling, Illinois, that was initially proposed by iSchool alumna Ryann Uden (MS ’06), the library's deputy director.

The iSchool is pleased to announce the appointment of Kevin Trainor as a senior lecturer, effective August 16. He has served as an adjunct senior lecturer at the School since 2008 and as assistant director of the Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship (CIRSS) from 2009 to 2011. In addition to teaching at the iSchool, he has taught full-time as a senior lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Information Studies.

iSchool faculty, staff, and students presented their research at the Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL 2020), which was held virtually August 1-5. The event brought together international scholars focusing on digital libraries and associated technical, practical, organizational, and social issues. 

The Illinois Open Publishing Network is excited to announce the upcoming release of two open access textbooks, Instruction in Libraries and Information Centers: An Introduction by Laura Saunders and iSchool Adjunct Lecturer Melissa A. Wong and A Person-Centered Guide to Demystifying Technology by iSchool Teaching Assistant Professor Martin Wolske. These textbooks represent the first in the Windsor & Downs Press series OPN Textbooks, which seeks to publish high-quality open access textbooks for higher education across the disciplines. 

Associate Professor and PhD Program Director Jana Diesner has been named a fellow in the second cohort of the IAspire Leadership Academy, a leadership program aimed at helping STEM faculty from underrepresented backgrounds ascend to leadership roles at colleges and universities. The IAspire Leadership Academy is part of Aspire Alliance's Institutional Change Initiative, led by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) and the University of Georgia.

Assistant Professor Jodi Schneider has been named a 2020-2021 Linowes Fellow by the Cline Center for Advanced Social Research at the University of Illinois. The fellowship "provides exceptionally promising tenure-stream faculty with opportunities for innovation and discovery using the Cline Center'

Members of Associate Professor and PhD Program Director Jana Diesner's Social Computing Lab will present a tutorial, paper, and posters at the 6th Annual International Conference on Computational Social Science (IC2S2), which will be held virtually from July 17-20. The conference brings together academic researchers, industry experts, open data activists, and government agency workers to explore challenges, methods, and research questions in the field of computational social science.

Associate Professor and Interim Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Emily Knox has been elected president of Beta Phi Mu, the international honor society for library and information studies. 

Two projects led by iSchool faculty members have been selected as Humanities Research Institute (HRI) Research Clusters for 2020-2021. Formerly known as the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, HRI fosters interdisciplinary study in the humanities, arts, and social sciences at the University of Illinois. HRI Research Clusters enable faculty and graduate students to “develop questions or subjects of inquiry that require or would be enhanced by collaborative work.” Projects selected as clusters receive grants of $2,500 to support their activities.