Professor Emily Knox has been appointed to serve as interim dean of the School of Information Sciences, pending approval by the Board of Trustees. Until officially approved, her title will be interim dean designate. The appointment will begin April 1, 2025.
Angelica Townsend joined the iSchool on March 17 as an office administrator. She will serve as the primary administrative support for the interim executive associate dean and the assistant dean for diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.
School Librarian Licensure Coordinator Lauren Ochs and recent graduate Hannah Fiedler (MSLIS '24) are featured in episode six of "Can’t Shelve This," a podcast produced by Reaching Across Illinois Library System (RAILS) in collaboration with Illinois Heartland Library System (IHLS).
Matt Fabian (MSLIS '24) joined the iSchool on March 17 as an office support specialist. He will serve as the first point of contact for all visitors to the iSchool building.
The Center for Children's Books (CCB) at the iSchool is a crossroads for critical inquiry, professional training, and educational outreach related to youth-focused resources, literature, and librarianship. The CCB houses a non-circulating research collection of children’s and young adult books, with emphasis placed on books published within the last two years. The CCB recently moved to a new home in the iSchool building at 501 East Daniel Street.
The School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is pleased to announce the publication of Library Trends 72 (4). This issue, "Community Librarianship," discusses the evolution of the roles and responsibilities of libraries to support and serve the communities in which they exist. Anna Maria Tammaro and Crystal Fulton served as guest editors. All articles are open for public access.
Last semester, students in the Business Intelligence Group (BIG), the student consultancy group affiliated with Associate Professor Yoo-Seong Song's Applied Business Research class (IS 514), worked with Wismettac, a Japanese food distribution company. As a large global company with 47 offices in North America, Wismettac sought to study how data science and AI-based technologies could help the company's operations.
The School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign seeks nominations for the 2024 Robert B. Downs Intellectual Freedom Award. The deadline for nominations is April 14, 2025. The award is cosponsored by Sage Publishing.
The Center for Children's Books (CCB) collaborated with the National Park Service (NPS) to launch a new Books to Parks website on Lyddie, a 1991 novel by Katherine Paterson that highlights the experiences of young women working in textile mills in nineteenth-century Lowell, Massachusetts.
Glen Layne-Worthey, associate director for research support services for the HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC), and Isabel Galina Russell, researcher at the Institute for Bibliographic Studies at the National University of Mexico, have edited a new book, The Routledge Companion to Libraries, Archives, and the Digital Humanities, which was recently released by Routledge.
