Doctoral candidate Lo Lee successfully defended her dissertation, "Understanding Information Activities of Hobbyists in the Making of Arts and Crafts Across Space," on April 4.

Assistant Professor Elizabeth Hoiem has received the Humanities Research Institute (HRI) Prize for Best Faculty Research for her paper, "The Progress of Sugar: Consumption as Complicity in Children’s Books about Slavery and Manufacturing, 1790-2015." The award recognizes outstanding humanities research by a faculty member at the University of Illinois.

For Kam Wells (MS/IM '18), working for the Boston Red Sox is a dream come true. A baseball player and lifelong fan of the sport, Wells was a graduate data analyst for the U of I Division of Intercollegiate Athletics Sports Technology Department while he was an iSchool student. Now he works with player-related data—analyzing and storing it, as well as everything that goes into running a professional baseball team.

According to MS/IM student Zheng Zhang, being the recipient of a scholarship from the iSchool gave him confidence that he was in the right field. Zhang holds a BS in electrical and computer engineering from New York Institute of Technology and a BS in communication engineering from Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications. It was during his undergraduate study that he was advised by a tutor to pursue a degree in information management because of his interests.

Associate Professor Emily Knox will deliver the Masha Dexter Lecture on Gender, Sexuality, and Public Policy at Brown University on April 7. The purpose of the annual lecture is to "memorialize and promote in other students Masha Dexter's extraordinary energy and engagement with the overlapping issues of gender, sexuality, and public policy, as reflected in the broad range of her own activities."

Doctoral candidate Dianah T. Kacunguzi successfully defended her dissertation, "Knowledge Preservation Practices of Herbalists in Uganda: An Ethnographic Study," on March 31

Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden will deliver the 2022 Windsor Lecture on Thursday, April 21, at 7:00 p.m. The lecture, which is co-sponsored by the University Library and Center for Advanced Study, will be held via Zoom, and advance registration is required.

Zines—small-scale, self-published works about anything and everything—have made their way from homes to libraries over the years. As libraries' zine collections grow, librarians must address the acquisition and circulation of these unique publications and develop new ways to promote the creation of future zines. iSchool alumni Ann "A'misa" Matsushima Chiu (MS/LIS '15), Ziba Pérez (MS/LIS ’12), and Josh Lupkin (MS/LIS '08) recently penned chapters on this topic for Zines in Libraries: Selecting, Purchasing and Processing (ALA Editions/CORE, 2022).

The recruitment and admissions team at the iSchool has been awarded the Promotion of Excellence Award from the Association for Graduate Enrollment Management (NAGAP). The award is presented to an individual or team that has "developed or implemented methodology demonstrating best practices, creativity, and/or innovation in graduate enrollment management that could serve as a model across the GEM [graduate enrollment management] profession." The iSchool team received this recognition for the Information Schools and Colleagues Collaborative (ISCC) Network, which was created during the pandemic when travel was restricted, limiting traditional recruitment efforts.

Brigitte Fielder, associate professor in the College of Letters and Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will deliver the 2022 Gryphon Lecture on April 8. Sponsored annually by the Center for Children’s Books (CCB), the lecture features a leading scholar in the field of youth and literature, media, and culture.