Leep (MSLIS online) students Amanda Helm and Kaitlyn Weger have been selected to receive scholarships from the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI). The scholarship provides financial assistance to current employees of CARLI Governing Member Libraries who are pursuing a master's degree in library and information science (MSLIS) at the University of Illinois. CARLI provides library services and support to 128 Illinois public universities, community colleges, private colleges and universities, and special libraries.

PhD student Smit Desai received the Gary Mardsen Travel Award to present his research at the ACM conference on Conversational User Interfaces (CUI) 2023, which was held on July 19-21 in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. The award, worth $2,500, supported Desai’s travel expenses.

A paper coauthored by PhD student Sullam Jeoung, Associate Professor Jana Diesner, and Associate Professor Halil Kilicoglu was named Best Long Paper at TrustNLP: Third Workshop on Trustworthy Natural Language Processing, which was held in conjunction with the Annual Conference of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2023).

The possibilities of high-performance computing are boundless. Every day new and exciting innovations and discoveries are announced that have utilized the power of cyberinfrastructure, and such advancements that benefit all of society should also include all of society in their process. That's why the Midwest Big Data Innovation Hub (MBDH) has been working to amplify and demystify resources available to communities of persons with disabilities.

iSchool faculty, staff, and students will present their research and contribute in a number of other ways at DH2023, the annual conference of the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO), on July 10-14 in Graz, Austria. The digital humanities (DH) conference is the largest event of the international DH community and unites scholars from across the globe. The theme of this year's conference is "Collaboration as Opportunity."

Office Support Specialist Dimitria Johnson has been elected president of Illinois Administrative Professionals (IAP, formerly known as The Secretariat), an organization for University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign employees in certain Civil Service classifications. She began her one-year term on July 1.

The iSchool Alumni Association (ISAA) is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2022 Alumni Awards: Emily Knox (Distinguished Alumna Award), Pia Hunter (Leadership Award), and Ruth Shasteen (Distinguished Service Award).

In honor of Professor Emerita Linda C. Smith's contributions to the field of library and information science (LIS), Anita S. Coleman and Martha Kyrillidou have coedited "Library and Information Science, Interdisciplinary Perspectives: A Festschrift in Honor of Linda C. Smith," which comprises Volume 71, Issue 1, of Library Trends. The journal is published quarterly by Johns Hopkins University Press and is available by subscription both in print and online in Project MUSE.

A project led by the Game Studies and Design program in Informatics is among the eleven proposals that were selected to receive funding through the University of Illinois Investment for Growth program. Since the program was created in 2018, the University has invested more than $78 million to provide seed funding for projects that generate revenue, advance the University's mission, and address areas of high and emerging student demand.

Sara Benson (MSLIS '17), affiliate associate professor at the iSchool, has been recognized with the Campus Excellence in Public Engagement Faculty & Staff - Emerging Award for her wide-ranging work in helping people understand the intricacies of copyright.