When planning their estate, Emily (MS/LIS '77) and David (MS/LIS '83) Batista wanted to give back to the university that prepared them for their successful careers as librarians. For this reason, the Batistas' $1.2 million estate gift to the University of Illinois will be directed to the iSchool and University Library.

Librarians need to be able to communicate about social justice issues, and teaching social justice storytelling to library school students will help them develop the skills to do so, two researchers say. Associate Professor Kate McDowell and Nicole Cooke, a former Illinois information sciences professor who now teaches at the University of South Carolina, analyzed how to teach those skills through a storytelling assignment with their students.

As he works toward his PhD in information sciences, William Langston is receiving financial support through the Diversifying Higher Education Faculty in Illinois Program (DFI). The program provides competitive need-based financial awards to underrepresented students in the state of Illinois who are interested in becoming full-time tenure-track faculty and staff at colleges and universities in Illinois.

MS/LIS student Katie Colson and Cora Godfrey (MS/LIS '22) won first prize for their paper at the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) conference's student forum. The conference, which supports innovation in metadata design and best practices across the metadata ecology, was held virtually on October 3-7.

With funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Associate Professor Jodi Schneider is leading a project in collaboration with the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) to prevent the spread of retracted research.

Schneider was recently awarded a $249,998 grant to continue her work to create consistent community practices for publishers, preprint repositories, and discovery services to identify and signal that publications have been retracted or have expressions of concern.

As a single parent raising two young children, Stephanie Dietrich (MS/LIS '18) needed a career where she could balance her family life and work life. After working with foster families in Chicago on the Children's Supplement Security Income (SSI) Project, she also knew that she wanted a career where she could serve her community. Dietrich, who holds a bachelor's degree in sociology, decided to make the jump to public education, returning to school for her MS/LIS degree with a K-12 teaching certification.

iSchool faculty, staff, and students will participate in the annual conference of the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE), which will be held from October 24-26, and the 85th annual meeting of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T), which will be held from October 29-November 1. Both conferences will take place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Thirteen iSchool master's students were named 2022-2023 Spectrum Scholars by the American Library Association (ALA) Office for Diversity, Literacy, and Outreach Services. This "Spectrum Scholar Spotlight" series highlights the School's scholars. MS/LIS student Megha Bamola earned her bachelor's degree in urban planning from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Not too many medical students would take a year off from their studies to learn more about an area that interests them. Of course, Dipesh Navsaria (MS/LIS '04) was not your average medical student. He entered the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Urbana with three degrees—a BA in biology and English and a master's in public health from Boston University and a master's in physician assistant (PA) studies, from George Washington University.

The iSchool at Illinois announces the appointment of three tenure-track faculty, Jiaqi Ma, Meicen Sun, and Haohan Wang, and four specialized faculty, Brandon Batzloff, David Charles, Renee Hendricks, and Adam Rusch.