Doctoral candidate E.E. Lawrence will present their research at the 2018 Popular Culture Association National Conference, which will be held March 28-31 in Indianapolis. Lawrence will give the talk, "Promoting Romance Reading and Improving Taste," during the Libraries, Archives & Museum area's "Embracing Scorned Literature" session.

Assistant Professor Jodi Schneider, CAS student Janina Sarol (MSIM '17), and undergraduate Linxi Liu will discuss their research at the European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR 2018) in Grenoble, France. Sarol will present their paper, "Testing a Citation and Text-Based Framework for Retrieving Publications for Literature Reviews," at the conference’s Bibliometric-enhanced Information Retrieval workshop on March 26.

Leah Davis, senior research associate with the Center for Digital Inclusion (CDI), will speak at the Information and Communications Technology in Organizations and Society Conference (ICTO2018) on March 23 in Paris. Davis and Alice Robbin (Indiana University) will present their paper, "The Problematic of Governance under Conditions of Catastrophic Disaster: Theoretical Frames for Understanding the Response to the Hurricane Season in the United States, 2005-2017," which has been selected as a finalist for best conference paper.    

The following iSchool faculty, staff, and students will participate in iConference 2018, which will be held March 25-28 in Sheffield, UK. 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 "Transforming Digital Worlds."

Adjunct Assistant Professor Debra Mitts-Smith (MS '98, PhD '07), author and expert on children's and young adult literature, will serve as the distinguished speaker for the 2018 Charles W. Mann Jr. Lecture in the Book Arts on March 22 at Pennsylvania State University.

Doctoral candidate Paige Cunningham will speak at the Coursera Partners Conference, which will be held March 6-8 at Arizona State University. The theme of this year's conference is "Learners First: Beyond the Campus Walls." Participants will discuss best practices for creating top-quality, in-demand, and affordable online learning experiences.pai

Assistant Professor Emily Knox and iSchool alumnus James LaRue (MS '81), director of the American Library Association's (ALA's) Office for Intellectual Freedom and the Freedom to Read Foundation, will serve as panelists for a special forum on March 5 at the University of Oregon. The event is part of the University's 2018 event series, which aims to address challenging, contemporary issues of free expression on college campuses.

David Mimno, assistant professor in the Information Science department at Cornell University, has been selected by the iSchool faculty as a research fellow for the 2017-2019 academic years. Research fellows are chosen because their work is relevant to the interests of the School's faculty and students. During the period of their appointments, fellows give at least one public lecture.

Senior Lecturer Maria Bonn will discuss scholarly communication at The Collective, an annual gathering of librarians, archivists, and library staff at academic libraries. The 2018 Collective, which will take place from February 28-March 1 in Knoxville, Tennessee, will center around the theme, "The Library as Test Kitchen," and feature a "test kitchen environment" where participants can "try out 'recipes' for next generation librarianship."

Master's student Natalie Leoni is the winner of this year's Graduate Student Exhibit Contest and the C. Barbara Mueller Award for Excellence in Exhibition Design, sponsored by the University of Illinois Library. Her exhibit, "Mapping Fiction," showcases holdings from the University Library's collections, displaying literary maps from books such as Winnie-the-Pooh and The Hobbit. The exhibit highlights how maps like these were created and disseminated.