iSchool Affiliate Professor John Price Wilkin, Juanita J. and Robert E. Simpson Dean of Libraries and University Librarian, has been named the 2019 winner of the Hugh C. Atkinson Memorial Award. Wilkin will receive a cash award and citation during an ALCTS event at the ALA Annual Conference in Washington, DC.

Associate Professor Victoria Stodden has been elected Member-at-Large for the Statistics section of The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). AAAS is an international, nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing science, engineering, and innovation around the world for the benefit of all people. As a Member-at-Large, Stodden will support the Statistics section's steering group in its responsibilities, which includes nominating and reviewing Fellows as well as proposing and reviewing symposia for the AAAS Annual Meeting. She will serve a four-year term, starting in February.

Affiliated faculty member Clara Chu, director of the Mortenson Center for International Library Programs, is the recipient of the 2019 American Library Association Ethnic and Multicultural Information Exchange Round Table (EMIERT) Distinguished Librarian Award. The Distinguished Librarian Award recognizes significant accomplishments in library services that are national or international in scope and include improving, spreading, and promoting multicultural librarianship.

Midori Clark (MS '17), director of community relations, development & strategic initiatives for the Pueblo (CO) City-County Library District; Amita Lonial (MS '09), assistant director of the Tacoma (WA) Public Library; and Nataliya Papushina (MS '15), branch supervisor for the Indian Trails Public Library District in Wheeling (IL) are among the twenty-eight public librarians selected to participate in the Spring 2019 PLA Leadership Academy, which will be held March 25-29 in Chicago.

iSchool master's students Laura Rocco and Elise Feltman are the recipients of the first Robert Howerton Graduate Student Research Award from the University Library. The award financially supports students who hold a pre-professional graduate assistantship position at the library and who are engaged in research regarding reference and technical services with plans to publish their work.

Anna Oates (MS '18) won the National Records of Scotland Award for the Most Outstanding Student Work in Digital Preservation for her master's thesis work on the PDF/A standard. She received the award on November 29 at a ceremony at the Amsterdam Museum, as part of an international conference hosted by the Dutch Digital Heritage Network and the Amsterdam Museum on World Digital Preservation Day. According to the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), who sponsored the awards, this year marked the greatest number of nominations the organization has received to date, and those selected as finalists faced tough competition from entries across the world.

A team composed of two iSchool PhD students, Ly Dinh and Jessica Cheng, and a PhD student from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, Li-Min (Cassandra) Huang, won the ASIS&T 2018 Student Design Competition. The competition was held on November 13 during the ASIS&T Annual Meeting in Vancouver, Canada.

Adjunct Lecturer Ruth Shasteen (CAS '13) has received the 2018 Polestar Award from the Association of Illinois School Library Educators (AISLE) for her contributions to school librarianship. Shasteen served as district librarian at Neoga CUSD and high school librarian at Central A&M High School in Moweaqua, both in the state of Illinois. In addition to being a school librarian, she also taught for many years in Illinois classrooms at Sullivan Jr. High School, Sullivan High School, and Bethany Jr-Sr. High School. 

Doctoral student Shubhanshu Mishra won the Best Student Paper Award at the Workshop on Informetric and Scientometric Research (SIG/MET), which was held on November 10 in conjunction with the ASIS&T 2018 Annual Meeting in Vancouver, Canada. Sponsored by Elsevier, the award recognizes achievement in student presentation in the following criteria: design of the study, originality, relevance to the workshop, and adherence to research ethics. 

The Iowa Library Association (ILA) has received the 2018 Downs Intellectual Freedom Award for taking a leadership role in several highly visible challenges to intellectual freedom. The award is given annually by the faculty of the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and cosponsored by Libraries Unlimited.