The iSchool is pleased to announce the appointment of new directors for its master's degree programs. Associate Professor Maria Bonn will serve as program director for the MS in library and information science (MS/LIS), and Associate Professor Catherine Blake will serve as program director for the MS in information management (MS/IM). They will begin their three-year terms on May 16.

The iSchool is pleased to announce that Jingrui He will join the faculty as an associate professor in August 2019. She is currently an associate professor of computer science and engineering at Arizona State University (ASU).

Associate Professor Victoria Stodden has been selected to serve on the Reproducibility Badging and Definitions Working Group for the National Information Standards Organization (NISO). NISO is a U.S. nonprofit association that develops, maintains, and publishes technical standards to facilitate the creation, management, and interchange of information so that it can be trusted for use in research and teaching.

Four Illinois professors are creating the Innovation Illinois Community Laboratory + Interactive Exhibit with $150,000 in funding from the University of Illinois System, as part of an investment in the arts and humanities. This project will involve a yearlong course that welcomes undergraduate students from all disciplines, who will spend the year imagining, researching, and prototyping social innovation projects that will become part of a traveling exhibit.

Assistant Professor Elizabeth Hoiem has been named the 2019 recipient of the Judith Plotz Emerging Scholar Award, which is given annually by the Children's Literature Association (ChLA). The award recognizes an outstanding article of literary criticism by an early career scholar on the topic of children's literature within a given year.

Associate Professor Maria Bonn will present her research at a preconference workshop during the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) biennial conference, which will be held April 10-13 in Cleveland, Ohio. With its theme of "Recasting the Narrative," ACRL 2019 will focus on what it means to be an academic library professional in the twenty-first century.

Yoo-Seong Song, faculty member and librarian at the University Library, now has a joint appointment with the iSchool. As a result, he will increase the number of courses he teaches for the School and participate more broadly in advising students who focus on information consulting and related areas.

Associate Professor Kyungwon Koh and her collaborators from the University of Oklahoma and Norman Public Schools will present their research at the 2019 American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting, which will be held on April 5-9 in Toronto, Canada. The theme of this year's meeting is "Leveraging Education Research in a Post-Truth Era: Multimodal Narratives to Democratize Evidence."

Associate Professor and BS/IS Program Director Emily Knox and John T. F. Burgess, assistant professor in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama, have co-edited a new book. Foundations of Information Ethics, recently published by ALA Neal-Schuman, covers principles and concepts in information ethics as well as the history of ethics in the information professions. 

The following iSchool faculty, staff, and students will participate in iConference 2019, which will be held March 31-April 1 in Washington, D.C. The annual event brings together scholars, researchers, and information professionals to share insights on critical information issues. The theme of this year's conference is "Inform. Include. Inspire."