Associate Professor Bonnie Mak has been appointed to the Advisory Committee of the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities (IPRH), which promotes interdisciplinary study in the humanities, arts, and social sciences. Her two-year term began on August 15.

Assistant Professor Emily Knox has been invited to participate in a Nation of Makers meeting at the White House on August 24 as a representative of Makerspace Urbana. The meeting brings together individuals who run, support, and/or are involved with makerspaces around the country.

Makerspaces offer community members the space, tools, and technology to turn their ideas into reality.

Associate Professor Victoria Stodden has been invited to serve on the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Coordinating Committee. The twenty-member committee, representing a diverse group of stakeholders across disciplines, encourages adoption and implementation of TOP Guidelines through education, communication, and outreach.

The iSchool is pleased to announce that Ted Underwood has joined the faculty, effective August 16. Professor Underwood also holds a joint appointment with the Department of English in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

How are changes in computing driving interest in related fields among undergraduates? How will an influx of graduates with computer science and information science skills affect the computing workforce? Associate Professor Victoria Stodden will address questions like these in a panel discussion next week at the Workshop on the Growth of Computer Science Undergraduate Enrollments.

Associate Professor Carol Tilley will speak this Saturday, August 13, at the Comics & Fandom Fest in Urbana, hosted by The Urbana Free Library (TUFL) and other local sponsors. Events will be held at the library and around town throughout the day. Tilley will give a presentation on great women in comics at 4:00 p.m. in the Lewis Auditorium at TUFL.

Assistant Professor Nicole A. Cooke and doctoral candidate Jeanie Austin will speak this week at the National Diversity in Libraries Conference, which will be held August 10-13 at the University of California, Los Angeles.

iSchool faculty, staff, and students will participate in the upcoming International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) World Library and Information Congress in Columbus, Ohio, on August 13-19. This annual conference brings together LIS professionals and students from more than one hundred and twenty countries and provides opportunities for networking and professional development.

Doctoral students Kahyun Choi and Yun Hao and Professor J. Stephen Downie will present their paper, "WiMIR: An Informetric Study On Women Authors In ISMIR," at the 17th International Society for Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR) Conference. Coauthors of the paper include Xiao Hu (PhD '10), Jin Ha Lee (PhD '08), Audrey Laplante, and Sally Jo Cunningham.

 Affiliated faculty member Clara Chu, director and Mortenson Distinguished Professor at the Mortenson Center for International Library Programs at Illinois, has been selected to serve as the American Library Association (ALA) representative to the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO through June 2018.