PhD student Yaman Yu has been named a recipient of the 2025 Google PhD Fellowship in Privacy, Safety, and Security. The fellowship program recognizes outstanding graduate students who are conducting exceptional and innovative research in computer science and related fields, with a special focus on candidates who seek to influence the future of technology. Google PhD fellowships include tuition and fees, a stipend, and mentorship from a Google Research Mentor for up to two years. Google.org is providing over $10 million to support 255 PhD students across 35 countries and 12 research domains.

School faculty, staff, and students will present their research at the 2025 Illinois Library Association (ILA) Annual Conference, which will be held on October 14–16 in Rosemont. The theme of this year's conference is "You Belong Here."

Join the iSchool for the Association of Illinois School Library Educators (AISLE) annual conference, held October 5–7 at the I Hotel and Conference Center in Champaign, Illinois. The theme for the conference is “Libraries Build Connections.”

The iSchool at Illinois is pleased to announce the publication of The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books 79 (1). This issue features 80 original book reviews of new children’s books that will appear in publishers' fall catalogs.

PhD candidate Andrew Zalot successfully defended his dissertation, "'Tweet of the Town:' Synthesizing Local and Social Media Discourse on Book Bans," on July 3.

A book by Associate Professor Elizabeth Hoiem, The Education of Things: Mechanical Literacy in British Children's Literature, 1762-1860, has been named a finalist for the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP) Book History Book Prize. 

A team of researchers from the SALT (Social Computing Systems) Lab has been selected as a winner in an international hackathon hosted by the Berkeley Center for Responsible, Decentralized Intelligence. The LLM Agents MOOC Hackathon brought together over 3,000 students, researchers, and practitioners from 127 countries to build and showcase innovative work in large language model (LLM) agents, grow the AI agent community, and advance LLM agent technology.

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. 

A new National Park Service website explores the children’s book Lyddie as part of the Books to Parks series that connects children’s books to park service sites. Sara Schwebel, the director of the Center for Children’s Books at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign School of Information Sciences, worked with the National Park Service to develop the content for the Lyddie site and the other Books to Parks websites.

The iSchool is pleased to announce that Colin Rhinesmith joined the faculty as a visiting associate professor on January 1, 2025. His position will become permanent following approval by the University of Illinois Board of Trustees. He previously served as founder and director of the Digital Equity Research Center at the Metropolitan New York Library Council.

Associate Professor Elizabeth Hoiem has won the 2025 Justin G. Schiller Prize from The Bibliographical Society of America for her book, The Education of Things: Mechanical Literacy in British Children's Literature, 1762-1860 (University of Massachusetts Press). The prize, which recognizes the best bibliographical work on pre-1951 children's literature, includes a cash award of $3,000 and a year's membership in the Society. 

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. 

A book edited by Postdoctoral Research Associate Cheeno Marlo Sayuno and Eugene Evasco has received a National Book Award from the Republic of the Philippines. The award, sponsored by the National Book Development Board and the Manila Critics Circle, is an annual prize that honors the most outstanding titles written, designed, and published in the Philippines. 

Teenagers use generative artificial intelligence for many purposes, including emotional support and social interactions. A study by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers found that parents have little understanding of GAI, how their children use it and its potential risks, and that GAI platforms offer insufficient protection to ensure children’s safety.

iSchool faculty, staff, and students will present their research at the 2024 Illinois Library Association (ILA) Annual Conference, which will be held on October 8-10 in Peoria. The theme of this year's conference is "Libraries are Lit: Sparking Innovation and Imagination."

Adjunct Lecturer Kristen Mattson has authored a second edition of her book, Digital Citizenship in Action: Empowering Students to Engage in Online Communities, which was recently released by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). In the new book, Mattson provides additional history and context to the digital citizenship conversation as well as opportunities to bring digital citizenship into the classroom.

A collaborative project of the iSchool's Center for Children's Books (CCB) and the National Park Service (NPS) has been honored by the Organization of American Historians. The Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument, which features the Books to Parks website, received the Stanton-Horton Award, which recognizes "excellence in National Park Service historical efforts that make the NPS a leader in promoting public understanding of and engagement with American history."

A book edited by Associate Professor Sarah Park Dahlen and Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, associate professor in the University of Michigan's Marsal Family School of Education, has received the Children's Literature Association (ChLA) Edited Book Award. The annual award recognizes the contributions of an outstanding edited collection of essays to children's literature history, scholarship, and criticism. 

Assistant Professor Elizabeth Hoiem has authored a new book on how children learned about the material world at the close of the eighteenth century. The Education of Things: Mechanical Literacy in British Children's Literature, 1762-1860, funded in part by a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, was recently published by the University of Massachusetts Press.

Associate Professor Kate McDowell will deliver two keynotes on library data storytelling this month.