Professor and Executive Associate Dean Linda C. Smith (MS '72) has been named an Illinois Library Luminary by the Illinois Library Association (ILA). This distinction honors individuals whose efforts have made a significant contribution to Illinois libraries. Smith's nearly 50-year career began when she came to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Graduate School of Library Science (now the School of Information Sciences) in 1971 shortly after graduating summa cum laude in physics and mathematics from Allegheny College (PA). She received her MS from Illinois in 1972 and spent a year at Washington University School of Medicine Library in St. Louis as a trainee in computer librarianship. She then earned an MS in information and computer science from Georgia Institute of Technology in 1975 and a PhD from Syracuse University, School of Information Studies in 1979. 

The University of Illinois is working with six other universities to streamline and improve access to books for students with disabilities who need an alternative to the print format. Part of a two-year effort funded by a $1 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the project includes university libraries, disability resources offices and university presses, as well as the digital repositories HathiTrust, Internet Archive and Bookshare.

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.

Professor Ted Underwood has authored a new book about recent discoveries in literary history and the changes that made those discoveries possible. His book, Distant Horizons: Digital Evidence and Literary Change, will be published by The University of Chicago Press Books in March and is available for pre-order.

Students enrolled in Postdoctoral Research Associate Rhiannon Bettivia's Digital Preservation (IS 586) class can expect to work on real-life projects. 

Sharing and reusing research data is becoming increasingly common in the scientific world, allowing researchers to more easily build on the work of others as they seek new discoveries.

Associate Professor and PhD Program Director Jana Diesner will serve as a keynote speaker at the 1st workshop on reframing research at the European Symposium Series on Societal Challenges in Computational Social Science, which will be held December 5-7 in Cologne, Germany. The theme of the 2018 symposium is “Bias and Discrimination.”

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.