By using products such as soap, shampoo, body lotion, toothpaste and makeup, the average consumer may be exposed to dozens of chemicals each day. It's not easy, though, to know exactly what is in many consumer products or what potential risks they pose, either individually or in combination.

Associate Professor Victoria Stodden will present her research at A University Symposium: Promoting Credibility, Reproducibility and Integrity in Research on December 9 at Columbia University

Reporting new research results involves detailed descriptions of methods and materials used in an experiment. But when a study uses computers to analyze data, create models or simulate things that can’t be tested in a lab, how can other researchers see what steps were taken or potentially reproduce results?

The iSchool and the Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong are cohosting the workshop "Digital Scholarship Centers: Building Library Services for Data-Driven Scholarship" from November 28-30 at the University of Hong Kong.

Professor Emeritus Abdul Alkalimat will give the keynote presentation at the 30th Symposium on African American Culture and Philosophy, which will be held from December 1-3 at Purdue University. This year's symposium will explore the "humanity" in the digital humanities as well as Africana/Black studies' perspectives.

Assistant Professor Emily Knox will participate in the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Annual Convention, to be held November 17-20 in Atlanta, Georgia. She will serve as a panelist for the session, "How Teachers, Parents, and Communities Can Keep Students Reading."

Doctoral candidates Ana Lucic and Henry A. Gabb will present work with Associate Professor Catherine Blake at the 40th annual American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) Annual Symposium held from November 12-16 in Chicago.

Assistant Professor Nicole A. Cooke is the 2016 recipient of the Larine Y. Cowan Make a Difference Award for Teaching and Mentoring in Diversity, given annually by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The award honors Dr. Larine Y. Cowan, past director of the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Access. 

In early November, Senior Lecturer Maria Bonn presented a talk and served on a "Neapolitan" session panel at the 2016 Charleston Conference–Issues in Book and Serial Acquisition in Charleston, South Carolina. The conference is an annual gathering of librarians, publishers, electronic resource managers, consultants, and vendors of library materials.

Assistant Professor Jana Diesner will moderate a panel on Natural Language Processing (NLP) at the Big Data Summit on November 10 in Champaign. The annual summit brings together experts from the University of Illinois Research Park, industry, and academia to share knowledge about big data and its business applications.

Associate Professor Bonnie Mak has been invited to share her expertise at a National Science Foundation (NSF) workshop on "Social Facets of Data Science." The workshop will examine data science as an important and growing profession that sits at the intersection of the STEM fields and the liberal and creative arts. 

Associate Professor Kathryn La Barre has been invited by the Knowledge Organization Research Group (KOrg) to work with doctoral students and faculty in the School of Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

The iSchool is pleased to announce the appointment of Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe (MS ’94) as editor of its quarterly journal Library Trends. Hinchliffe will begin her new role on January 1, 2017. A leader in the field of library and information science, Hinchliffe is professor and coordinator for Information Literacy Services and Instruction in the University Library

At the end of October, Professor Emeritus Dan Schiller delivered a series of lectures in China focusing on the theme, "Networks and Age of Nixon." Schiller was invited to talk as part of Peking University's Global Fellowship Program. Prior lecturers in the Global Fellowship Program include Fredric Jameson and Francis Fukuyama and, going back to its earliest years, John Dewey.

A new book by Sidney Berger (MS '87) offers readers a definitive glossary for understanding how books are made and how they are described in the bookselling, book collecting, and library worlds. The Dictionary of the Book: A Glossary for Book Collectors, Booksellers, Librarians and Others (published by Rowman & Littlefield) was released this month.

Allen Renear, professor and dean of the iSchool, will deliver a keynote at the 7th Asia-Pacific Conference on Library & Information Education and Practice (A-LIEP), which will be held on November 3-4 in Nanjing, China. In the talk, “Data Science and the Information Professional,” he will discuss the ethical and social obligations of information professionals from the perspective of data science.

Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe (MS '94), iSchool affiliated faculty member, will be a keynote speaker at the Library Assessment Conference, to be held October 31-November 2 in Arlington, Virginia. 

Associate Professor Carol Tilley will present "Dear Sirs: I Believe You're Wasting Your Time" at the National Archives on October 27. The title of her talk, which is sponsored by the Center for Legislative Archives, refers to Senate hearings in the 1950s that investigated the link between comics and juvenile delinquency.

Associate Professor Bonnie Mak will return to The Pennsylvania State University to participate in the inaugural Information + Humanities conference on October 28-29.

Professor Alistair Black’s latest book, Libraries of Light: British Public Library Design in the Long 1960s, is now available from Routledge. In the book, Black argues that the architectural modernism of the post-war years was symptomatic of the age’s spirit of renewal.