Doctoral candidate Cheryl Thompson successfully defended her dissertation, "Data Expertise and Service Development in Geoscience Data Centers and Academic Libraries," on May 8.
iSchool faculty and students will participate in the University of Illinois Social Media Analytics Summit, which will be held on Tuesday, May 2, from 8:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. The event will take place at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) auditorium.
With a passion for making books accessible to anyone at any age, Justin Williams made it his mission to seek a career in a library that would allow him to connect with others and make an impact in their lives through the use of stories and information. Williams is set to graduate this May and has a job lined up at as a teen librarian for the White Oak Library District in Lockport, Illinois.
Master's student Ritse Adefolalu has received the Marilyn Kay Maynard Scholarship awarded by the Illinois School Library Media Association (ISLMA). The scholarship is designed to encourage students who wish to gain licensure to work in Illinois as a school librarian, with three scholarships awarded each year.
Doctoral candidate Jinseok Kim successfully defended his dissertation, "The impact of author name disambiguation on knowledge discovery from large-scale scholarly data," on April 24.
Master's student Kortney Rupp has been selected by the Special Libraries Association (SLA) as recipient of the 2017 Marion E. Sparks Award. This award provides funding to attend the 2017 SLA Annual Conference, which will be held June 16-20 in Phoenix, Arizona.
Doctoral candidate Claudia Serbanuta successfully defended her dissertation, "Voices from the Other Side of the Wall: The Case of Romanian Libraries of the 1970s and the 1980s," on April 24.
Master's student Saajan Dehury was part of the winning team at Campus 1871, a startup pitch competition held on March 31-April 2 at 1871, Chicago's Center for Technology and Entrepreneurship.
Professor Alistair Black and doctoral candidate Henry Gabb have been honored by the American Library Association's Library Research Round Table (LRRT) with the 2017 Jesse H. Shera Award for Distinguished Published Research.
As a computer networks software developer, Shubhanshu Mishra realized that he was less interested in software than in understanding its users and their social interactions. This insight led him to the iSchool at Illinois, where he is learning skills in his PhD studies that will prepare him for a new career in information science.
Jessica Followell is the 2017 master's student recipient of the Graduate Student Essay Award from the Children's Literature Association. Followell won the award for her essay, "Miracle Cures and Moral Lessons: Victorian Legacies in Contemporary Representations of Children with Disabilities," which examines two plot devices that emerged in children's literature during the Victoria era to discuss disabilities—the miracle cure and the moral lesson.
Master's student Ian Harmon has earned a fellowship from the Society for Scholarly Publishing. Out of 70 applicants, Harmon was chosen as one of twelve to receive the highly competitive fellowship. He will be provided with a wide range of career development opportunities.
Doctoral candidate Karen Baker successfully defended her dissertation, "Data Work Configurations in the Field-Based Natural Sciences: Mesoscale Infrastructures, Project Collectives, and Data Gateways," on April 10.
Master's student Leanna Barcelona uses materials from the past to connect with students today in her artistic and award-winning exhibits. Barcelona's graphic design skills were recognized again this month when she won first prize in the Image of Research competition sponsored by the Graduate College.
Doctoral candidate Mikki Smith successfully defended her dissertation, "Print Networks and Youth Information Culture: Young People, Amateur Publishing, and Children’s Periodicals, 1867-1890," on April 3.
The iSchool was well represented at the international conference, "Information and Power in History," which was held at the VU University Amsterdam on March 16-17. Organized by the Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands, in collaboration with Radboud University and Utrecht University, the conference attracted scholars from a wide variety of historical and other disciplines.
A former speech-language pathologist with a passion for social justice, master's student Nisha Mody found her calling in the field of library and information science. While at the iSchool, Mody has served on various committees and been recognized as an American Library Association (ALA) Spectrum Scholar and as part of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Initiative to Recruit a Diverse Workforce.
The following iSchool faculty, staff, and students will participate in iConference 2017, which will be held March 22-25 in Wuhan, China. The event brings together scholars, researchers, and information professionals to share insights on critical information issues.
Join iSchool faculty, staff, and students for the following activities during the Association for College & Research Libraries (ACRL) Conference in Baltimore, including our reception on Thursday, March 23, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. at the Hard Rock Café Baltimore.
Kristina Williams believes deeply in the strength of character built by service to one's community and the enrichment gained through civic and neighborly engagement. It was this commitment to community involvement, which she observed in iSchool students, that first attracted her to the MS/LIS degree program.
