Library professionals have long held sacred the right of patrons to privacy while using library facilities, and the privilege is explicitly addressed in the American Library Association's Bill of Rights. The advent of the digital age, however, has complicated libraries' efforts to secure and protect privacy, Associate Professor Masooda Bashir has learned.

Associate Professor Jingrui He is developing computational tools to protect against leaks and/or unauthorized use of sensitive data held and distributed among Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agencies and other parties. Her project, "Privacy-Preserving Analytics for Non-IID Data," has been awarded a three-year, $651,927 grant from the DHS Center for Accelerating Operational Efficiency (CAOE).

MSLIS student Claire Thomas has won the master's level 2023 Children's Literature Association (ChLA) Graduate Essay Award for her essay, "Bisexual Representation and Experimental Form in Kristin Cashore's Jane, Unlimited." The award includes a $400 award, one-year complimentary ChLA membership, and complimentary registration to the ChLA Annual Conference.

Members of Associate Professor Dong Wang's research group, the Social Sensing and Intelligence Lab, will present their research at The ACM Web Conference 2023, which will be held from April 30 to May 4 in Austin, Texas. The conference is the premier venue to present and discuss progress in research, development, standards, and applications of topics related to the Web.

The iSchool will be well represented at the 16th annual Undergraduate Research Symposium on April 27. The symposium, the signature event of Undergraduate Research Week, brings together students, faculty, and staff from all disciplines on the UIUC campus. During the event, visitors will learn about undergraduate research projects through oral and poster presentations, including creative performances and art exhibits. All are welcome to attend the symposium, which will be held in the Illini Union.

iSchool faculty and students will present their research at the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2023), which will take place on April 23-28 in Hamburg, Germany. The annual conference brings together researchers and practitioners who have the overarching goal of making the world a better place with interactive digital technologies.

Associate Professor Ryan Cordell and Assistant Professor Emily Maemura will discuss their research at a symposium exploring the materiality and historical value of digital texts. Sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, Preserving and Analyzing Digital Texts will be held online on April 21 from 3:00-4:30 p.m. Eastern Time.

iSchool Research Scientist Ian Brooks and Associate Professor Kate McDowell are leading an international effort to combat health infodemics such as that which arose following the COVID-19 pandemic.

A paper coauthored by PhD student Yuerong Hu, HTRC Associate Director for Research Support Services Glen Layne-Worthey, Alaine Martaus (PhD '19), Professor J. Stephen Downie, and Associate Professor Jana Diesner, "Research with User-Generated Book Review Data: Legal and Ethical Pitfalls and Contextualized Mitigations," has received the Lee Dirks Award for Best Paper at iConference 2023.

Associate Professor Emily Knox has received the 2023 Eli M. Oboler Memorial Award from the Intellectual Freedom Round Table of the American Library Association (ALA). She was selected for the award, which recognizes the best published work in the area of intellectual freedom, for her book, Foundations of Intellectual Freedom (ALA Neal-Schuman, 2022).