Postdoctoral Research Associate Rhiannon Bettivia (PhD '16) is the co-author of a chapter in Politics of Scale: New Directions in Critical Heritage Studies, a newly published book edited by Tuuli Lähdesmäki, Suzie Thomas, and Yujie Zhu. In the chapter, "The Dynamics of Scale in Digital Heritage Cultures," Bettivia and Elizabeth Stainforth, a lecturer at the University of Leeds, examine scalar politics as enacted through Europeana, the EU digital platform for cultural heritage, and the Digital Public Library of America.

Professor Bertram Ludäscher will be presenting research with group members during Philadelphia Logic Week 2019. The event, which will be held from June 3-7 at St. Joseph's University, brings together several conferences dedicated to the research on logic, knowledge representation, reasoning, transformations and provenance.

Starting this weekend, the University of Illinois will host the 2019 ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL), a major international forum focusing on digital libraries and associated technical, practical, and social issues. The conference will be held from June 2-6 at the iHotel and Conference Center in Champaign. In addition to the University, cosponsors of JCDL include the iSchool and University Library.

Associate Professor and BS/IS Program Director Emily Knox has published a paper, "Silencing Stories: Challenges to Diverse Books," in The International Journal of Information, Diversity, & Inclusion (IJIDI). According to Knox, over the past few years, there have been an increasing number of diverse books on the Most Challenged Books List from the American Library Association (ALA) Office for Intellectual Freedom. Her latest work expands on a previous discourse analysis of censorship on challenges to diverse books through more robust analysis of the challenge cases.

Doctoral candidate Aiko Takazawa successfully defended her dissertation, "'Tutteli to Japan': a Case Study of Spontaneous Collaboration in Disaster Response," on May 17.

Conservation organizations and foundations have invested billions to preserve natural resources and biodiversity across the globe, but the effectiveness of these investments over time is not always clear. A new multi-institutional project, led by a University of Illinois researcher and supported by a $550,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, will trace key outcomes of $655 million in the foundation's global conservation investments made over 40 years.

Earlier this month, the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released a committee report examining computational reproducibility and replicability in science, with the goals of improving research rigor and transparency. The congressionally mandated report was authored by an ad hoc committee of national experts, including iSchool Associate Professor Victoria Stodden.

Drexel University's College of Computing and Informatics has selected PhD student Jessica Cheng as a LEADS-4-NDP 2018-2019 Fellow. LEADS-4-NDP, the LIS Education and Data Science for the National Digital Platform program, is part of the Institute of Library and Museum Services (IMLS) Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program.

Doctoral candidate Paige Cunningham successfully defended her dissertation, "Exploring Communication Patterns in Massive Open Online Courses," on May 6.

With support from the National Humanities Center, Professor Ted Underwood is examining patterns of human perspective throughout two centuries of literary history. The Center is a residential institute for advanced study in art history, classics, languages and literature, philosophy, and other fields of the humanities. In addition to pursuing their own research and writing at the Center, fellows form seminars and study groups with cohorts holding shared research interests.