Intersections, Fall 2016

Intersections

Fall 2016

P e o p l e I I n f o r m a t i o n I Te c h n o l o g y

School of

Information Sciences The iSchool at Illinois

Fall 2016 School of Information Sciences University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Published by the iSchool Communications Office. For more information or to submit story ideas, please contact brya@illinois.edu.

Dean: Allen H. Renear Editor: Cindy Ashwill Interim Managing Editor: Christy Glaze Contributing Writers: Cindy Ashwill, Cindy Brya, Christy Glaze Photography: Cindy Brya, Christy Glaze, McCandless Photography, L. Brian Stauffer, Thompson-McClellan Photography Design: Pat Mayer

Intersections

Contents

Features A historical perspective: Looking back at our School’s distinguished past

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Celebrating twenty years of excellence in online education

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McDowell teaches skill, science of effective storytelling

9 Darch seeks to improve interdisciplinary scientific research through subseafloor studies 10 Whole Tale enables new discovery by bringing “life” to research articles

501 East Daniel Street Champaign, Illinois 61820 ischool@illinois.edu www.ischool.illinois.edu Phone: (217) 333-3280

4 People use information for analysis, inquiry, collaboration, and play—and in so doing, change the world. The iSchool at Illinois is dedicated to shaping the future of information through research, education, and engagement, both public and professional.

Intersections highlights our current work in these areas as well as achievements of our students, alumni, faculty, and staff.

The University has asked that we discontinue the practice of publishing the names of our donors. As a result, this issue of Intersections does not include an honor roll of donors. Our School appreciates the generous support of alumni and friends, whose contributions make a meaningful difference in the lives of our students and in the ongoing excellence of our academic and research programs.

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News Letter from the dean

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MS/IM degree to offer online enrollments this spring

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Get to know‌

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Research collaboration seeks to improve data management, workflows in NMR spectroscopy

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Georgeann Burch, K-12 program coordinator, retires

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Efron named 2015-2016 Centennial Scholar

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iSchool welcomes new faculty members

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Faculty awards and recognitions

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Staff updates

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Annual lectures

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Little Robot receives Gryphon Award

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iSchool offers Technology Specialist endorsement for professional educators

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Dapier receives 2016 John Phillip Immroth Memorial Award

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Meet rock and roll librarian Andy Leach

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Gannon brings UX expertise to international digital security workshop

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Class Notes

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Grants

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Lancaster legacy to live on through new scholarship

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Scholarships support learning and community engagement

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News

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Looking for ward: a letter from the dean

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he fall semester is underway, and our campus is once again bustling with activity. I am looking forward to a successful academic year—our first as the School of Information Sciences and yet another in our distinguished history of teaching and research excellence. Within these pages, we celebrate the past and look toward the future.

This year is significant for other reasons: it marks the twentieth anniversary of U.S. News & World Report’s number-one ranking of our MS in library and information science (MS/LIS), a position that we have consistently held, as well as the twentieth anniversary of our Leep online learning program. Both accomplishments reflect our School’s tradition of leadership and innovation.

This fall, I am pleased to welcome more than forty students who are beginning our new degree program, the MS in information management (MS/IM). This degree provides advanced information management and analysis skills through a curriculum that can be customized within four professional pathways.

The coursework is grounded in our School’s interdisciplinary, humanistic approach to infor-

“Our students are at the heart of everything we do.They come to our School from a variety of backgrounds with aspirations to succeed, make a difference, and change the world.” mation solutions—focusing on how to best meet people’s needs and benefit society.

As we expand our academic scope as an iSchool, recruitment becomes increasingly important. We are actively recruiting students for all of our outstanding academic programs: MS/LIS, MS/IM, K-12 School Librarianship, Certificate of Advanced Study, and PhD. We also are making plans to establish a new undergraduate information sciences major.

In this issue of Intersections, you will read about the Lancaster Scholarship Fund, which provides tuition support for MS/IM students.

Wilf Lancaster was a trailblazer in the field of library and information science who was honored three times with Fulbright fellowships and received both the Award of Merit and the Outstanding Information Science Teacher Award from the Association for Information Science and Technology. It is fitting that his legacy will benefit future leaders who will address the information management challenges of a rapidly changing world.

You also will learn about the achievements of our faculty through their cutting-edge

research, which encompasses a broad range of intellectual practices around information while advancing our ethic of service, empowerment, and social benet. The value of their expertise is confirmed by appointments and awards that recognize the importance of their contributions to the field.

Our students are at the heart of everything we do. They come to our School from a variety of backgrounds with aspirations to succeed, make a difference, and change the world. Our goal is to prepare these students for whatever the future holds for them, whether it is working in a library, museum, private company, consulting firm, government agency, or university— to name but a few of the places where our graduates are employed. The skills they learn while here will benefit them wherever they go.

Many of the opportunities available to our students are made possible thanks to the generous support of our alumni. Scholarship funds help them afford an education at the University of Illinois. Lecture funds bring prominent scholars to campus to interact with our students. Gifts to our annual fund support student programs and activities throughout the year.

We are fortunate to have such loyal, forwardthinking alumni helping us, in so many ways, realize our mission.

It is an exciting time to be in the School of Information Sciences at Illinois.

Sincerely,

Allen H. Renear, Dean

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The inaugural class of MS/IM students with Dean Allen Renear (left front); Professor Mike Twidale, director of the MS/IM program (back right); and Kirstin Phelps, a doctoral student assisting with the program (far right).

MS/IM degree to offer online enrollments this spring

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ith the expansion of our academic programs successfully underway, the iSchool is pleased to offer an online option for the MS in information management (MS/IM). The application deadline for spring enrollment—both on campus and online—is October 15.

The MS/IM online option will draw upon the experience and infrastructure of our School’s popular Leep program, which supports our top-ranked MS in library and information science (MS/LIS). Hallmarks of our online programs include real-time lectures, engaging discussions in virtual classrooms, and a dynamic online community that fosters a quality educational experience.

“Our experience over the past twenty years with Leep demonstrates that students become part of vibrant distributed learning communities in which they gain new knowledge and insights from each other as well as from the professor. We look forward to giving MS/IM students this same opportunity,” said Professor Linda Smith, associate dean for academic programs.

Designed to meet workforce demand in an info-centric world, the MS/IM provides advanced information management and analysis

“Our degree prepares students for successful careers in the design and management of information systems . . . [providing] useful insights that will benefit organizations and the people they serve.” skills for a broad range of professional roles.

This preparation is grounded in a human-centered approach, emphasizing the practical application of data-driven solutions to make the world a better place.

“Our degree prepares students for successful careers in the design and management of information systems,” said Professor Michael Twidale, program director. “They learn how information can be accessed, organized, and utilized to provide useful insights that will benefit organizations and the people they serve.”

With only three required courses—and a programming course, if needed—the curricu-

lum is flexible and can be customized based on career interests. Students have the opportunity to choose from four professional pathways at the intersection of people, information, and technology: • data science and analytics; • privacy, trust, security, and ethics; • information architecture and design; and • knowledge management and information consulting.

In addition to technical skills, students learn how to work with colleagues possessing diverse skill sets to use analytical insights to produce actionable results. Upon graduating, they are poised to assume leadership roles in a variety of employment settings, including corporations, for-profit and nonprofit organizations, and government.

“The goal of our program is to equip professionals to communicate across disciplinary boundaries with ‘design thinking’ wherein they ask: what is the problem, and how can I use available technologies to address it?” said Twidale.

For more information about the MS/IM, including admission requirements and tuition, visit ischool.illinois.edu/academics/degrees/msim.

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Feature

A historical perspective: Looking back at our School’s distinguished past

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ince its earliest days over a century ago, our School has been at the forefront of shaping professional practice and the development of research, teaching, and scholarship in library and information science. Listed below are some highlights from our distinguished history.

1893 The library science program at the Armour Institute of Technology in Chicago is founded.

1893-1907 Katharine Lucinda Sharp serves as university librarian and founding director of the Department of Library Science, as recommended by Melvil Dewey, American librarian, educator, and inventor of the Dewey Decimal system of library classification.

1897 The Department of Library Science is moved to Urbana and renamed the Illinois State Library School.

1902 The world’s first baccalaureate degree in library science is awarded at Illinois.

1909-1940 Phineas L. Windsor serves as librarian and director of the Library School.

1926 The School is renamed the University of Illinois Library School.

1893

1943-1971 Robert B. Downs serves as library director and director of the School, then as dean of library administration after 1958; following his tenure, oversight of the library and School are separated.

1948 The doctoral degree in library science is established at Illinois; it is now the oldest extant doctoral degree in the field.

1948 A one-year master’s degree is inaugurated as a graduate professional degree, establishing

it as the expected preparation for professional work in libraries.

1948 Beta Phi Mu, an international library science honor society, is founded at the University of Illinois by a group of leading librarians and library educators for the purpose of recognizing and encouraging scholastic achievement among library science students.

1949 The Windsor Lectures are established by alumni to honor the career of Phineas L. Windsor.

Intersections Fall 2016

5 “As this campus looks forward to the celebration of its sesquicentennial in 2017, we can take pride that our School has been part of that history since 1897. Since joining the faculty in 1977, it has been especially rewarding for me to see the growing influence of the iSchool on this campus. We led the campus with the establishment of the first degree program offered online in 1996 and continue to be recognized for our innovations in online education. Our increasingly multidisciplinary faculty are sought out as research collaborators by others across campus. And our faculty, students, and staff are contributing to exciting new outreach activities such as the CU Community Fab Lab and the Illinois Digital Innovation Leadership Program.”

—Linda Smith (MS ‘72), Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Programs

1952 Library Trends, which explores a current topic in professional librarianship in each issue, is first published.

1959 The School is renamed the Graduate School of Library Science.

1969 The Robert B. Downs Intellectual Freedom Award is established to acknowledge individuals or groups who have furthered the cause of intellectual freedom, particularly as it impacts libraries and information centers and the dissemination of ideas.

1971-1978 Herbert Goldhor serves as director of the Graduate School of Library Science.

1979-1985 Charles H. Davis serves as dean of the School.

1981 The School is renamed the Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS).

1986-2001 Leigh S. Estabrook serves as dean. Her accomplishments include building a more interdisciplinary faculty; placing computers on faculty desktops (mid-1980s); launching LEEP, the MS online education program (1996); and securing a separate building for GSLIS (1994) and support for a building addition (completed in 2001).

1992 The Center for Children’s Books, a renowned research collection of youth literature, moves to GSLIS in the early 1990s, bringing with it The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, a leading review journal that has been published since 1947.

1996 GSLIS begins delivering its master’s degree online through LEEP, originally named the Library Education Experimental Program.

2003-2012 John M. Unsworth serves as dean. During his tenure, the School expands its online program, strengthens its technological infrastructure, and increases the number of tenure-system faculty and percentage of underrepresented students.

2005 GSLIS begins offering the Certificate of Advanced Study in Digital Libraries, which provides a thorough and technically focused background in digital libraries.

2008 The Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship (CIRSS) is established with the mission to conduct research on information problems that impact scientific and scholarly inquiry.

2012 The Center for Digital Inclusion is launched to foster inclusive and sustainable societies through research, teaching, and public engagement about information and communication technologies and their impacts on communities, organizations, and governments.

2014 Allen H. Renear is named dean of the School, following more than two years of service as interim dean.

2016 The School offers a new master’s degree in information management.

2016 The School is renamed the School of Information Sciences.

Historical photos courtesy of the University of Illinois Archives.

For a complete historical timeline, visit go.ischool.illinois.edu/timeline.

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6 Intersections Fall 2016

Feature

Celebrating twenty years of excellence in online education

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n 1996, our School was the first on campus to offer an online program, making our topranked master’s degree in library and information science available to students around the world. This groundbreaking program was called the Library Education Experimental Program, or LEEP. Thirty-one students enrolled in the first cohort. With extensive teamwork and innovation, our faculty, staff, and students turned this challenging experiment into a successful model of excellence in distance education.

Twenty years later, the program—now known as Leep online learning—has grown and adapted to meet the changing needs of students around the world, continuing to provide outstanding LIS education via the latest technologies and methods.

“In 2009 the University titled the self-study report for reaccreditation as ‘Excellence, Innovation, and Access.’ Those words encapsulate for me what we have accomplished during the past twenty years of Leep—always striving to create an excellent learning environment as we pursued innovations in online education, providing access to our degree for students far beyond east central Illinois. It has been very rewarding to collaborate with all the faculty,

“The design of the new Welcome Weekends will ensure that our online students have strong connections with faculty, staff, and on-campus students, as well as with others in their cohort, while minimizing travel expenses and their time away from work and other commitments.” staff, and students who have been a part of this,” said Linda Smith, professor and associate dean for academic programs.

More than fifteen hundred alumni have earned their master’s degrees through Leep.

The majority reside in Illinois, but other states with a strong alumni base include California, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington. Leep alumni can be found in forty-six states as well as Washington, D.C. and the Virgin Islands. In-

ternationally, they live in countries including Canada, China, Germany, Norway, Pakistan, and Qatar. Altogether, these alumni hold a variety of job titles and leadership roles in a range of settings.

This fall, the twenty-first cohort of Leep students participated in Welcome Weekend, a three-day event that serves as an orientation to our School and educational community.

Welcome Weekend replaces Boot Camp, the initial seven-day residency, and offers an orientation as well as opportunities to attend workshops and socialize with their fellow classmates. Following Welcome Weekend, students will be able to complete all of their degree requirements online.

“Short residencies on campus have been an integral part of the experience of students pursuing online degrees from our School. The design of the new Welcome Weekends will ensure that our online students have strong connections with faculty, staff, and on-campus students, as well as with others in their cohort, while minimizing travel expenses and their time away from work and other commitments,” said Smith.

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Get to know...

Christopher Murphy master’s student Why did you decide to pursue an LIS degree?

When I started researching schools, I really came to see how valuable someone is who can connect people with information. I also began to see how broad the field of LIS really is —librarians work in all kinds of settings and connect all sorts of people with the information they need. We are living in a time when information has very real value, so it made absolute sense to jump into a field that specialized in exactly that.

Why did you choose the iSchool at Illinois?

The school’s alumni network is what brought me to Illinois. One of my friends at the University of California, Santa Barbara (where I did undergrad) was the chemistry librarian.

He attended the iSchool and had nothing but great things to say. He really emphasized how valuable Illinois is in terms of connecting students with a vast professional network.

After one year, I’d definitely agree! Aside from professional contacts and references from my work at John Deere, it’s through the iSchool that I learned about and joined the Special Libraries Association, began working with incarcerated youth, and made lifelong friendships.

What particular LIS topics interest you most?

I started at the iSchool prior to the launch of the new MS in information management, and it’s interesting to look at how my coursework very closely mirrors that degree’s knowledge management and information consulting pathway. Aside from business information, I am growing more and more comfortable with branching into data science as a field of study.

What do you do outside of class?

Outside of class, I work as the intellectual property researcher at John Deere’s Technology

Innovation Center in the Research Park. I also volunteer at the Champaign County Juvenile Detention Center, where I help provide library services. I live in student housing cooperatives, and I am currently serving as the president for Community of Urbana-Champaign Cooperative Housing (COUCH). And for fun, I enjoy bicycling, reading, and baking, and I started rowing this past spring with the team here at the University.

What career plans or goals do you have?

I am heading in the direction of a career in business information and consulting. I have found that I really enjoy business research—it’s a career that neatly combines a lot of LIS skills, from advanced research to reference services and knowledge management.

Research collaboration seeks to improve data management, workflows in NMR spectroscopy

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eveloped in the 1940s and 1950s, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy measures physical and chemical properties of atoms or molecules by measuring change in the magnetic resonance of the nuclei of atoms. The process is used by scientists for a variety of applications, such as substance identification. In biomolecular science, NMR supports discovery and identification of new drugs, disease and metabolic research, study of structural biology, and more.

Advances in computational applications and data-sharing tools have opened new doors for use of information gleaned from NMR spectroscopy, but new challenges have emerged as well. To make possible its varied applications, myriad software tools are employed from a range of sources and using a variety of semantic approaches. This complicates data management, inhibiting dissemination and reproduction of important findings.

A research team based at the iSchool at Illinois, the University of Wisconsin (UW), and the University of Connecticut Health Center (UCONN Health) is working to solve this problem. Their work is executed through the newly-formed Center for Biomolecular NMR Data Processing and Analysis at UCONN Health with grant support from the National Institutes of Health.

Michael Gryk, iSchool doctoral student and research scientist, is codirecting the second of three technology research and development phases (TRD2) of this effort. In TRD2, Gryk and his colleagues will develop a set of tools to support data management, workflow analysis, and dissemination of NMR research.

Their work will take place within a platform called NMRbox, which was developed during the first phase of technology research and development. Data and workflow management capabilities will be expanded and integrated

with the resources of the Biological Magnetic Resonance Data Bank, a repository for NMR spectroscopy data at UW. With the extension of this data model and platform, scientists using NMR will be able to capture all data and metadata needed to reproduce or analyze the steps taken in a given NMR experiment. From these analyses scientists can optimize workflows by drawing on the most effective methods.

Gryk is no stranger to the science behind NMR spectroscopy. In addition to studying workflows and data processes at the iSchool, he is an associate professor in the Department of Molecular Biology and Biophysics at UCONN Health and holds degrees in biophysics and chemistry. Gryk was among a team of three researchers who conceptualized the precursor to NMRbox, called CONNJUR. Visit www.nmrbox.org to learn more.

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McDowell teaches skill, science of effective storytelling

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hink for a moment about a meaningful event or time in your life, one of your strongest memories.

Chances are you’re thinking of that memory not as a single instance in a vacuum but in the context of what led to it, the people who might have experienced it with you, or the consequences of the actions that took place. You’re probably thinking of that memory as a sequence with a beginning, middle, and end— as a story.

This tendency for humans to hold onto strong memories as stories is evidence of the power of storytelling, a skill Associate Professor Kate McDowell has taught students in the iSchool for a decade.

“It’s really clear that we store what’s most meaningful to us in the form of a story. . . . It’s a structure in which we put the meaning that we care about,” said McDowell. She finds this to be true in her own research and in talking with participants in classes and workshops she teaches on the topic.

There is also hard science backing up this idea. “Our brains are hard-wired for story,” said McDowell. “Scientifically, it’s been shown by pretty rigorous studies that when people are telling and listening to the same story at the

same time, their brain waves actually sync up.

Something very aligning occurs between humans when they are encountering the same story and being absorbed in the narrative together at the same time,” she explained.

Our universal reaction to engaging stories makes storytelling a powerful tool in many contexts. As a result, McDowell’s expertise is in demand.

Since 2014, she has taught several workshops for alumni relations and fundraising professionals at Illinois. With these audiences, she focuses on the importance of listening and techniques for drawing out stories from members of the Illinois community, such as alumni and potential donors. She encourages participants to think about a story’s teller, tale, and audience, and how to elicit stories that strengthen connections to the institution.

This past spring, McDowell shared her storytelling expertise with undergraduate business students in an experimental course. The course featured storytelling among several “soft skills.” Having taught Storytelling (LIS 409) many times both in person and online, McDowell opted to take a hybrid approach in this new course. Prior to each lecture, students watched one of three videos outlining major

aspects of the storytelling process. Topics included the importance of trust in effective storytelling, ethics of storytelling, story ownership (individual, cultural, and institutional/organizational), and aspects of a story that may make it more or less difficult to tell.

Most recently, McDowell delivered the keynote address for the two-day workshop, “Storytelling with Data,” which focused on techniques for using data analysis and storytelling to engage target audiences in a range of settings. McDowell’s talk addressed ways to distinguish engaging pieces of a story—like character, setting, and plot—in data.

“How do you distinguish what’s operating as your character from the setting? With data, there is often a lot to draw from that could be important, but if you’re going to tell a story, you have to pick one thing that’s the most important,” she explained.

One thing McDowell makes clear—no matter the setting—is that storytelling isn’t merely a performance. It’s a complex process that involves knowing your audience, framing a tale to support an information-sharing goal, making complex stories understandable and engaging, and being a good listener.

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Whole Tale enables new discovery by bringing “life” to research articles Adapted from a National Center for Supercomputing Applications press release

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irections for a new piece of “some assembly required” furniture are only useful if the user has the parts listed in the instruction manual. This makes those coffee tables and bookcases relatively easy to put together, compared to designing and constructing your own from scratch.

Scientists at the iSchool and National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are hoping to do the same thing with computer code. “Whole Tale,” a new, five-year, $5-million National Science Foundationfunded Data Infrastructure Building Blocks (DIBBs) project, aims to give researchers the same instructions and ingredients to help ensure reproducibility and pave the way for new discoveries.

“Whole Tale” alludes to both the “whole publication story” and the “long tail of science.”

The project will create methods and tools for scientists to link executable code, data, and other information directly to online scholarly publications, whether the resources used are small-scale computation or state-of-the-art high-performance computing.

“Whole Tale will support the full lifecycle of computational science, from writing code to conducting the experiment to publishing the results, by creating new methods that bring to-

“Whole Tale will support the full lifecycle of computational science, from writing code to conducting the experiment to publishing the results, by creating new methods that bring together existing tools and make them easier to use.” gether existing tools and make them easier to use,” said Principal Investigator (PI) Bertram Ludäscher, professor and director of the iSchool’s Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship (CIRSS).

Ludäscher and iSchool Associate Professor Victoria Stodden (co-PI), both of whom hold affiliated appointments at NCSA, are collaborating with former NCSA research scientist Matthew Turk (co-PI) on the project, which will enable researchers to examine, transform, and then seamlessly republish research data, creating “living articles” that will enable new discovery by allowing researchers to construct representations and syntheses of data. Turk recently joined the iSchool as an assistant professor (see page 13).

“It’s almost expected nowadays that when you publish the paper, you link the paper to

data,” explained Turk. “Linking papers to code as well as data is becoming more common.

Whole Tale will take that a step further and let other researchers replicate the experience of doing the research but in their own way.”

How will Whole Tale work? Through a web browser, a scientist will be able to seamlessly access research data and carry out analyses in the Whole Tale environment. Digital research objects, such as code, scripts, or data produced during the research, can be shared between collaborators. These will be bundled with the paper to produce a “living article” accessible by reviewers and the scientific community for indepth pre- and post-publication peer review.

Augmenting the traditional research publication with the full computational environment will enable discovery of underlying data and code, facilitating reproducibility and reuse.

Project partners also include co-PIs at the University of Chicago, the Texas Advanced Computing Center, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of Notre Dame. For more information about Whole Tale, visit http://wholetale.org.

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Darch seeks to improve interdisciplinary scientific research through subseafloor studies

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eep below the seafloor lives an incredibly complex world of microorganisms, as mysterious as it is extensive. The study of these microbes is relatively new—less than two decades old—and spurred by early hypotheses about their potential scale and impact as well as ongoing technological developments.

Today, the field of deep subseafloor biosphere research relies on scientists with expertise in a range of specialties, such as microbiology, oceanography, bacterial genetics, and biochemistry. Their work is conducted not only in traditional laboratories but also at sea.

How does complex research take place under these circumstances? What infrastructure supports, or could support, large-scale interdisciplinary scientific research? Assistant Professor Peter Darch is investigating questions like these in collaboration with colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Center for Knowledge Infrastructures.

With support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the team is examining scientific collaborations that focus on the deep subseafloor biosphere as case studies of large-scale, interdiscplinary research. Darch and his colleagues visit scientific laboratories and conduct interviews with researchers to determine how scientists share information and preserve it for long-term access across disciplines; how scientists assess the reliability of data from other disciplines; how knowledge products are developed by scientists working in distinct disciplines; and how infrastructures are developed to support this kind of work.

Darch is also exploring how data standards and knowledge infrastructures facilitate trust between scientists who may never meet face to face and often are unable to witness the collection of the data on which they rely.

“We’re challenging the current models of what it means for scientfic research to be interdisciplinary in a world where boundaries between experts are more fluid than ever before.”

“In science today, people increasingly have to accept what they can’t see,” said Darch, referring not only to data sharing within collaborations but also to the proliferation of open data, accessible by scientists and the public

alike. Open data varies in the availability of metadata regarding collection methods.

One large, collaborative project studied by Darch is the Center for Dark Energy Biosphere Investigations (C-DEBI), which is a ten-year, National Science Foundation-funded Science and Technology Center that researches life beneath the seafloor. Scientists affiliated with C-DEBI are distributed across more than 40 institutions globally, and data for their work comes primarily from four field sites around the globe.

Darch spent eight months in a C-DEBI research lab, observing the processes used by scientists. He also conducted dozens of interviews to better understand how scientists from different disciplines work together to turn data into actionable knowledge.

“Spending time in the laboratory has been

INTERNATIONAL OCEAN DISCOVERY PROGRAM JOIDES RESOLUTION SCIENCE OPERATOR

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A crew member looks out over the Pacific Ocean during an Integrated Ocean Drilling Program expedition.

really important for gaining a very fine-grained understanding of the choices scientists make on a day-to-day basis about what data to collect, how to go about collecting those data, and how to record and store data. Further, I’ve also been able to see how scientists negotiate decisions across disciplinary boundaries as they work with collaborators,” said Darch.

In this work and other case studies, Darch observed significant variation in dataset production methods, even between scientists sharing laboratory space. The consequences are compounded as information is shared, reshared, and repurposed for additional unre-

lated studies, making data increasingly difficult to use reliably. This situation highlights the importance of thorough recording of methods and preservation of metadata throughout the data lifecycle.

Ultimately, Darch’s research will lead to recommendations for policies that will encourage increased collaboration across scientific disciplines and streamline the collection and sharing of data across and between projects.

“We’re challenging the current models of what it means for scientific research to be interdisciplinary in a world where boundaries between experts are more fluid than ever before,” said Darch.

Darch joined the iSchool last year after completing postdoctoral research at the Department of Information Studies and the Center for Knowledge Infrastructures at UCLA. His research interests include citizen science, information infrastructures for science, sociotechnical challenges to scientific data curation, and material politics of scientific collaboration. He is particularly interested in profound changes in the organization and conduct of contemporary scientific research that result from the interaction of technologies.

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Efron named 2015-16 Centennial Scholar

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Georgeann Burch, K-12 program coordinator, retires “Over the past eleven years, our K-12 program has grown and flourished thanks to Georgeann’s dedication and talents. The success of our graduates in securing positions is evidence of the strong preparation and mentoring that she has provided.”

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eorgeann Burch (MS ‘04), K-12 program coordinator, retired from the University on May 31, 2016. The first to serve in this role, she joined the iSchool in 2005 following experience as a school library media specialist.

Under her direction, the program expanded in enrollments, offerings, and reputation.

“Over the past eleven years, our K-12 program has grown and flourished thanks to Georgeann’s dedication and talents. The success of our graduates in securing positions is evidence of the strong preparation and mentoring that she has provided,” said Linda Smith, professor and associate dean for academic programs.

Burch was dedicated to helping others succeed. She was a trusted mentor for many stu-

dents in addition to serving as a field experience supervisor, teacher, and administrator.

She led biweekly online student teaching seminars each semester and regularly taught full-semester courses, including School Library Media Center (LIS 516) and Information Books and Resources for Youth (LIS 445). Most recently, she secured approval from the Illinois State Board of Education for a set of courses to qualify students to earn a Technology Specialist Endorsement, opening a new avenue of specialization in the School.

Burch developed an extensive network of alumni and practitioners to assist students in finding practicum placements and jobs in schools and libraries across the state. Many alumni of the K-12 program have returned to campus to participate in the Summer Getaway professional development program she created. She also contributed to the profession more broadly as a speaker at conferences, such as those hosted by the Illinois School Library Media Association, Illinois Reading Council, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, and American Association of School Librarians.

Burch’s contributions were recognized by the Library School Alumni Association, which honored her in June with the 2016 Distinguished Service Award. This award is given annually to an individual who has served the association or School in an exceptional way.

“Georgeann has established a foundation of excellence in educating K-12 librarians that will benefit students and our School in the years to come,” said Smith.

ssociate Professor Miles Efron was named the School’s Centennial Scholar for 2015-2016. The Centennial Scholar award is endowed by alumni and friends and given in recognition of outstanding accomplishments and/or professional promise in the field of library and information science.

“This is a real honor. One of the things that makes this School a great academic home is the excellence and intellectual diversity of our faculty. To be recognized in this way by colleagues whom I really admire is so gratifying.

I give my strongest thanks to the faculty for this recognition and support of my work,” Efron said.

“This award will help me to continue organizing our ongoing participation in the annual Text Retrieval Conference (TREC), hosted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. It will also afford me a much-welcomed freedom to pursue a project in the digital humanities—analyzing data from the HathiTrust—that I have had on the back burner for a few years now.”

Efron joined the faculty in 2009. His research areas include information retrieval in emerging domains such as social media and large collections of digitized books; diachronic issues in information retrieval; and human interactions with information search and retrieval systems. His current work focuses on information filtering problems, with special emphasis on applying unsupervised and semi-supervised statistical learning to filtering-related tasks. He has received funding to support this work from Google and the National Science Foundation.

Efron has published papers in several scholarly journals—including the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology (JASIST), Information Processing and Management, Journal of Digital Information, and Knowledge and Information Systems—and has presented at international conferences, receiving best paper awards and nominations. He currently serves on the editorial board of JASIST.

T

wo new faculty members joined the iSchool this fall, following interdisciplinary research collaborations. Professor Ted Underwood will hold a joint appointment with the Department of English, and Assistant Professor Matthew Turk will hold a joint appointment with the Department of Astronomy.

“Miles is working in new areas of enormous importance and promise, pioneering novel methods of information retrieval and analysis that will help us make better use of

Ted Underwood

Matthew Turk

social media and other new

Underwood’s shift toward the iSchool happened gradually. “I found myself collaborating more and more closely with students and faculty at the iSchool and eventually came to see it as a second intellectual home,” he said. Since 2003, he has been a faculty member in the English Department. He looks forward to helping students there and in the iSchool understand “how one builds a bridge between domain knowledge and information science.”

After receiving his doctoral degree in English from Cornell University in 1997, Underwood worked at the University of Rochester and Colby College before coming to Illinois. He has authored two books—Why Literary Periods Mattered: Historical Contrast and the Prestige of English Studies and The Work of the Sun: Literature, Science and Political Economy 17601860—and is working on a third, The Horizon of Literary History.

Underwood works in the broad collection of fields known as digital humanities. “Specifically, I use digital libraries to cast new light on the literary past, showing how genres and assumptions (about gender, for instance) have changed across long timelines in ways that are sometimes too gradual to see if we’re just reading one book at a time.”

Prior to joining the iSchool, Turk was a research scientist at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and a research assistant professor at the Department of Astronomy. His work focuses on how individuals interact with data, and how that data is processed and understood.

His research areas include how data is organized and the meaning assigned to it, how groups of individuals collaborate in an inherently competitive system, and how the interaction of software and the human experience of knowledge generation can be influenced to increase productivity or understanding.

“Sometimes this takes the form of developing and implementing algorithms for analysis and visualization,” said Turk, “but in other cases, it involves understanding the way that communities form around software and scientific processes.”

Turk received his doctoral degree in physics from Stanford University in 2009. He completed postdoctoral work at the University of California at San Diego and Columbia University.

“The iSchool is in a unique position—the research going on; the world-class faculty, students, and staff; and the new programs (such as information management) make it one of the most exciting places to be on campus,” Turk said.

sources of digital information.”

Dean Allen Renear “Miles is working in new areas of enormous importance and promise, pioneering novel methods of information retrieval and analysis that will help us make better use of social media and other new sources of digital information. He is an extraordinary young scholar who already has great accomplishments to his credit and certainly more to come,” said Dean Allen Renear. “We are very proud to have him here with us.”

Prior to joining the faculty, Efron was an assistant professor in the School of Information at the University of Texas and a postdoctoral researcher and instructor at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill. He holds a PhD in library and information science and an MS in information science from UNC Chapel Hill as well as a bachelor’s degree in English and comparative literature from Occidental College. In addition to his iSchool faculty position, Efron holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Computer Science.

Intersections Fall 2016

Matt Kirk

iSchool welcomes new faculty members

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News

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Faculty awards and recognitions The following faculty were recognized for their professional contributions and/or accomplishments during the past academic year (August 2015-July 2016): Associate Professor Catherine Blake was named a 2016-2017 Faculty Fellow at the Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications.

Assistant Professor Nicole Cooke was appointed to the American Library Association (ALA) Office for Intellectual Freedom’s Our Voices Initiative Advisory Council and the new ALA Task Force on the Context of Future Accreditation. She also received the 2016 ALA Equality Award and a 2016 Kenneth and Sylvia Marantz Fellowship for Picturebook Research from Kent State University.

Assistant Professor Jana Diesner was named a senior fellow of the Dori J. Maynard Senior Research Fellows program.

Assistant Professor Emily Knox was elected to the Board of Directors of the National

Coalition Against Censorship and the Board of Trustees of the Freedom to Read Foundation. She also was named a 2015 Instructor of the Year by the Web-based Information Science Education (WISE) Consortium and the 2015 recipient of the Illinois Library Association (ILA) Intellectual Freedom Award.

Associate Professor Kathryn La Barre began a three-year term as director-at-large for the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T).

Associate Professor Bonnie Mak was named visiting senior fellow at the Center for Humanities and Information at Pennsylvania State University. She also was appointed to the Board of Directors of The Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP) for an eight-year term.

Associate Professor Carol Tilley was elected second vice president of the Comics Studies Society. She also was selected to serve on the judging panel of the 2016 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards.

Staff updates Chieh-Li “Julian” Chin (MS ’12) joined the School’s full-time staff as a visiting research scientist. She supports research grants by assisting with project planning and management, research and IT support, and software development.

Meg Edwards (MS ’04) is now assistant dean for student affairs. Previously, she served as the School’s assistant director for advising and student affairs. Edwards assumed this role as Associate Professor Kate McDowell returned to full-time faculty work.

Ann Ohms (MS ’08) is the new K-12 program coordinator. She advises students interested in pursuing licensure or endorsement as a K-12 library information specialist and supervises teacher-librarian candidates during their student teaching. She was previously employed as a library/media specialist at

Middletown Prairie Elementary School in Mahomet, Illinois.

Vicki Van Uithoven joined the staff as director of budget and planning. In this role, she oversees the business and financial activities of the School.

Moises Orozco Villicaña is the new director of enrollment management. He is responsible for overall recruitment and admissions for the School. He previously served as associate director for recruitment and admissions in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Illinois.

Lila Evans, who joined the University in 1986, retired in January 2016. A member of the front office staff since 2003, she served as an account technician and managed the School’s financial accounts.

Dutton delivers Spring 2016 Windsor Lecture

W

illiam H. Dutton, Quello Professor of Media and Information Policy at Michigan State University (MSU), delivered the Spring 2016 Windsor Lecture, “Information Power Shifts and the Fifth Estate,” on March 14.

Dutton is director of the Quello Center at MSU, which focuses on stimulating and informing debate concerning media, communication, and information policy in the digital age.

In his lecture, Dutton discussed the political role of the internet and outlined his concept of the “Fifth Estate,” a new form of social and political accountability developed by networked individuals. He explained that by enabling a Fifth Estate, the internet can play a role in democratic governance as well as in more democratic forms of accountability in other sectors and institutions of society.

Among his many accomplishments, Dutton is founding director of the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), for which he received a lifetime achievement award. He is a fellow of the International Communication Association (ICA) and recipient of the ICA’s first Frederick Williams Prize for Contributions to the Study of Communication Technology. He also is the recipient of the William F. Ogburn Lifetime Achievement Award from the Communication and Information Technologies Section of the American Sociological Association.

The Windsor Lecture honors the career of Phineas L. Windsor, who served as director of the University of Illinois Library and the Library School from 1909 to 1940. Alumni and friends established the Windsor Lecture fund when Dr. Windsor retired. Marian Thompson (BA Science and Letters ‘50), granddaughter of Phineas Windsor, and her husband, Arnold Thompson (BS Architectural Studies ‘50), continue to generously support the ongoing lecture series.

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Agosto delivers 2016 Gryphon Lecture

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he Center for Children’s Books hosted the 2016 Gryphon Lecture on March 11. The annual lecture, which is free and open to campus and the public, features a leading scholar in the field of youth and literature, media, and culture.

Denise Agosto, iSchool research fellow and professor in Drexel University’s College of Computing & Informatics, delivered this year’s lecture, “The True Story of Teens, Social Media, and Libraries: Using Teen-Centered Research to Break Down Pervasive Stereotypes.” Agosto’s research interests include youth information behaviors, public libraries, multicultural issues in youth library services, and qualitative research methods. She is the recipient of national teaching awards from the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) and the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T).

Little Robot receives Gryphon Award Little Robot, written and illustrated by Ben Hatke and published by First Second Books, is the winner of the 2016 Gryphon Award for Children’s Literature.

The Gryphon Award, which includes a $1,000 prize, is given annually by The Center for Children’s Books (CCB). This year’s committee was chaired by Assistant Professor Deborah Stevenson, CCB director, and Kate QuealyGainer, assistant editor of The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books.

The prize is awarded to the author of an outstanding English-language work of fiction or nonfiction, for which the primary audience is children in kindergarten through fourth grade, that best exemplifies those qualities that successfully bridge the gap in difficulty between books for reading aloud to children and books for practiced readers. With a core of regular committee members, the award has become a way to contribute to an ongoing conversation about literature for inexperienced readers and to draw attention to literature that offers, in many different ways, originality, accessibility, and high quality for that audience.

“Hatke’s graphic novel is both cleverly crafted and utterly irresistible,” said Stevenson.

“Our young heroine is an admirable adventurer and capable wielder of a tool belt, and the little robot she finds, repairs, and befriends is an endearing pet/sidekick. The balance between

wordless sequences and simple speech-balloon dialogue (plus the robot’s sound effects) will reassure tentative readers and encourage them to decode narrative from both visual and textual clues.”

Two Gryphon Honor Books also were named: • Flutter & Hum: Animal Poems/Aleteo y Zumbido: Poemas de Animales (Henry Holt and Co.), written and illustrated by Julie Paschkis • The Long Dog (Scholastic), written and illustrated by Eric Seltzer

The Gryphon Award was established in 2004 as a way to focus attention on transitional reading. “These are some of the most important books children will ever read,” Stevenson said.

“We love having the opportunity, as a committee, to draw attention to the many wonderful books available to encourage early readers to move beyond the practical challenge of decoding to the skill of reading for content and for pleasure.”

The award committee consists of members drawn from the iSchool’s youth services faculty, the editorial staff of The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, public and school librarians, and the library and education community at large.

The award is sponsored by the CCB and funded by the CCB’s Gryphon Fund. Income from the fund supports the annual Gryphon Lecture as well as the Gryphon Award for children’s literature. Gifts to the fund may be made by contacting the Office of Advancement at ischool-advancement@illinois.edu or (217) 244-9577.

News

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Flowers delivers inaugural Willingham Lecture in Change Management

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etty Sue Flowers, former director of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library and Museum (2002-2009), delivered the inaugural Taylor Willingham Lecture in Change Management at the iSchool on March 29.

In her talk, “Archetypes, Visions, and Stories: Managing Change through Dialogue, ” Flowers addressed the question, “How can change be managed where there are differences of opinion, no clear lines of authority, and the stakes are high?” She used three case studies to show how archetypes, visions, and stories can encourage transformation in relation to difficult issues.

Flowers is the former Kelleher Professor of English, associate dean of the Graduate School, and director of the Plan II Liberal Arts Honors

Program at The University of Texas (UT) at Austin. She is a member of the Academy of Distinguished Teachers, a UT Distinguished Alumna, and a recipient of the Pro Bene Meritis Award, the highest honor bestowed by the College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin. Her publications include scenarios for major corporations, two books of poetry, the Penguin English Poets edition of Christina Rossetti’s poetry, and four television tie-in books in collaboration with Bill Moyers, among them the best-seller, Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth.

The Taylor Willingham Lecture in Change Management was established by a gift to the School from Susan Kumar (MS ‘05) and her husband, Parameswaran Kumar. The lecture hon-

ors their friend and former adjunct lecturer Taylor Willingham (1957-2011), who inspired students and faculty alike through her innovative teaching and civic commitment. In addition to teaching at the School, Willingham led Texas Forums, an initiative of the LBJ Library with the goal of engaging Texas residents in discussions about current issues.

Gifts to the Willingham Lecture Fund can be made online at ischool.illinois.edu/giving/ funds or by contacting the Office of Advancement at (217) 244-9577.

iSchool offers Technology Specialist endorsement for professional educators MS/LIS, CAS, and nondegree students who hold a Professional Educator License (PEL) can now add a Technology Specialist (TS) endorsement to their PEL with iSchool coursework.

To receive TS endorsement, students must complete twenty-four hours of relevant coursework and earn a passing score on a content area test administered by the Illinois Licensure Testing System. Courses that will count toward TS endorsement include: • LIS 390CC: Computers and Culture • LIS 390W1A: Web Technologies and Techniques • LIS 451: Introduction to Network Information Systems • LIS 452: Foundations of Information Processing in LIS • LIS 453: Systems Analysis and Management • LIS 458: Instruction and Assistance Systems • LIS 490DB: Introduction to Databases • LIS 490IL: Informal Learning Spaces and Pedagogies • LIS 490TE: Introduction to Technology for LIS • LIS 515: Media Literacy for Youth • LIS 590II: Interfaces to Information Systems • LIS 590LW: Web Design and Construction for Organizations • LIS 590NA: Network Analysis • LIS 590PV: Privacy in the Internet Age Courses previously completed by iSchool alumni will be accepted. MS/LIS and CAS students pursuing TS endorsement may count some or all of their TS coursework toward their degree requirements. Individuals who are not enrolled in a degree program at the School may register for classes as nondegree students on a space-available basis.

Contact an advisor at ischool-advising@illinois.edu to learn more.

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Alumni

Dapier receives 2016

John Phillip Immroth Memorial Award

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arrett Dapier (MS ‘15) was selected by the Intellectual Freedom Round Table (IFRT) of the American Library Association (ALA) to receive the 2016 John Phillip Immroth Memorial Award for defending the principles of intellectual freedom.

In March 2013, students took to the streets to protest the order issued by Chicago Public Schools (CPS) central office administrators to remove Marjane Satrapi’s award-winning graphic novel Persepolis from CPS classrooms and libraries. The students’ protests inspired a public outcry by educators, librarians, and the public. The administrators eventually withdrew their order and returned Persepolis to the city’s high school classrooms and libraries, claiming a “miscommunication” about the status of the book. When the Freedom to Read Foundation, National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), and American Civil Liberties Union submitted Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests asking for the correspondence and other documents relevant to the decision to remove the book, their requests were met with claims that there were no documents to share.

Two years after the attempt to remove Persepolis from CPS classrooms, Dapier—then a master’s student—sought information from the school system via another FOIA request in order to complete a paper on censorship for a class. His request was met with greater success, yielding email correspondence between CPS officials who were actively working to remove Persepolis after receiving a complaint from a school employee. The emails revealed that the “miscommunication” claim was false: the directive to remove Persepolis was revised only after the resultant community outcry and a staff member’s citation of the CPS collection development policy, which prohibited a book’s removal from school libraries without proper review.

Dapier’s research brought national attention to continued attempts by schools to improperly remove books from classrooms and library shelves.

Armed with new information regarding the incident, Dapier informed the ALA, NCAC, and Chicago Reader newspaper. His actions were key to exposing the improper actions of the school system, and the reporting based on his research brought national attention to continued attempts by schools to improperly remove books from classrooms and library shelves.

With the Immroth Award, the IFRT recognized Dapier for continuing to research this incident after it was no longer newsworthy and for exposing wrongdoing that could have resulted in a violation of the constitutional rights of students in CPS. Dapier was given a citation and a $500 prize at the IFRT Awards Reception & Member Social at the ALA Annual Conference in Orlando, Florida, in June.

Dapier also was recognized by the Library School Alumni Association, which honored him with the 2016 Student Award. Given annually, this award recognizes a student who “caught the spirit” of the library and information science profession while employed in a library setting and consequently entered the master’s program, maintaining a strong commitment to return to a professional position in a library setting and inspire others.

Alumni

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Meet rock and roll librarian

Andy Leach

by Andy Leach (MS ‘00), as told to Jamie Malanowski; article courtesy of the University of Illinois Alumni Association

W

hen I saw the ad for the director of library and archives position at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in 2008, I jumped at it. At the time, I had a terrific job as a librarian and archivist at the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College in Chicago.

Because my area of expertise is American popular music, I was confident I would at least get an interview. But things worked out better than expected.

There is no question: I have my dream job.

It’s no exaggeration to say that I learn something new every day. I read something about a producer or a songwriter, and suddenly I have a richer understanding of how this music was born.

The museum opened in 1995, but the library and archives didn’t open to the public until 2012. I was hired three years before that. Part of my job involved getting things off the ground,

and determining staffing, budgeting, and how things would be done. We also needed to digitize a huge part of our holdings: performances, interviews, oral histories, and more. Once we got that under control, I could focus on collecting materials from donors and helping curators with exhibits.

We are the only publicly accessible library devoted to rock and roll in the world, and as such, we are constantly being visited by journalists, scholars, and fans. Presently, we have more than four thousand linear feet of material—correspondence, contracts, flyers, posters, appointment books. We have the personal papers of Ahmet Ertegun, who founded Atlantic Records and was one of the prime movers behind creating the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. We also have the papers of Seymour Stein, founder of Sire Records, which, among other things, recorded the Ramones and Talking Heads and helped establish punk and new wave; Joe Smith, who ran many labels and signed the Grateful Dead; and Mo Ostin, who signed Jimi Hendrix to a record deal after his performance at the Monterey Pop

Festival. We also have the papers of Big Joe Turner and Louis Jordan, stars of the 1940s and 1950s who were rock and roll progenitors, as well as private papers and photos from Scotty Moore, who was Elvis Presley’s guitarist. We have about forty boxes of materials from Jane Scott, who covered rock and roll for the Cleveland Plain Dealer for a half century. Incredible stuff.

The best perk of my job is the people I get to meet. I often host our “Author Series,” which brings in writers of books on rock and roll. One recent guest was Donovan, the great Scottish singer/songwriter from the 1960s. I also give tours. It was a huge treat to accompany George Clinton, the godfather of funk, behind the scenes. He was really engaged by everything he saw—from original Jimi Hendrix lyrics to Beatles autographs to archival photos of Frankie Lymon.

One of my biggest thrills was to show Chuck Berry around. Witnessing someone as iconic as him get excited about seeing a Muddy Waters poster makes you realize that all of us are music fans, even the rock stars.

I come from Carlinville, a small Illinois town near St. Louis. When I came to the University of Illinois, I knew I wanted a career in music—well, I wanted to be a rock musician, but I didn’t like my chances. So I majored in music history, figuring I would teach, and I got a job at the music library. Later, I was a graduate assistant at the Sousa Archives and Center for American Music.

I found it very exciting to work with archival materials. I stayed at Illinois to get my master’s degree in library and information science.

During school, I did play guitar in a rock band called The Bludgers. It was founded by two guys, one from Australia and the other from New Zealand. “Bludger” is down under for “moocher.”

We played straight-ahead rock and roll, in the vein of artists like Tom Petty and the Jayhawks.

Midwestern rock, but with a twang—that was from me—and a New Zealand accent, which didn’t come from me!

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Gannon brings UX expertise to

international digital security workshop

U

“The whole reason that they’re journalists, that they’re creating media content, is because they want to tell the stories of people displaced or targeted by ISIS, of Syrian refugees, and of other marginalized groups across the Arab region.”

ser experience expert Andrea Gannon (MS ‘15) spends most days using her skills to improve payroll processes. She is a senior associate product manager at Workday, a California-based human capital management company.

For one week this spring, however, Gannon was immersed in a totally different environment thousands of miles from home. She and a handful of other women from around the world gathered for a one-week digital security workshop, where they learned from each other and shared their expertise with clandestine journalists.

Organized by the nonprofit group Internews, the workshop was designed to teach digital security skills to female journalists in the Arab region. Participants were taught how to use tools that would allow them to safely continue their work in places where surveillance is prevalent and where their messages could potentially inspire retaliation against themselves or their families. They learned the basics of anti-virus software and techniques such as encrypting emails and mobile phones. They also learned how to think critically and creatively about the resources at their disposal.

Workshop leaders included women with expertise in application development, digital security, and user experience. Gannon’s particular role was to teach a design-thinking approach to digital security and facilitate the ability of each participant to add sophisticated tools to her repertoire. She also served as a consultant for the workshop organizers, assessing the needs of participants and making recommendations for content and logistical improvements for future workshops.

In addition, Gannon advised Internews developers on improvements for tools used by the organization, specifically personas. “My role was to observe and to help create personas so that

when the developers make these tools in the future, they really understand the actual needs of the people that they’re making them for,” Gannon said.

“The whole reason that they’re journalists, that they’re creating media content, is because they want to tell the stories of people displaced or targeted by ISIS, of Syrian refugees, and of other marginalized groups across the Arab region. It made sense to them why you’d want the actual people involved to help with development [of digital security tools], because that’s how you truly understand what the needs are, what the stories are. You don’t want someone else developing an app when they have no idea what the daily dangers are that these women face.”

Though they had gathered to address serious issues, Gannon found that the week together cultivated a strong sense of community and friendship. She returned to the US inspired by the courage of all the women she met.

“They were so brave and so courageous, and really eager to learn about these tools and help us design future tools . . . . I was honored to work with them and learn with them. Some of the security training was new even to me.”

Back on familiar ground, Gannon plans to share what she has learned with other user experience specialists.

“It reminded me that when designing experiences and getting to understand where other people are coming from . . . even the little things that you might not think matter can matter a lot to other people. Regardless of what I’m doing— whether I’m helping to pay people in a fun and new way or helping a woman contact a family member without giving away her location—it’s all tied together in user needs and how I can meet those needs.”

Class Notes

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Decade: 2010s Tad Andracki (MS ’14) was elected to the 2018 Newbery Medal Committee.

Joseph Askins (MS ’12) accepted a position as information literacy programs librarian at the University of South Carolina in November 2015.

Teri D. Barnett (MS ’10) accepted the position of newspaper librarian at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield, Illinois.

Jennifer L. Bauman (MS ’13) moved from the Curatorial Department to the Research & Scholars Center at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, where she is the new coordinator of the Photograph Archives and special collections.

Emily Bayci (MS ’14) accepted a position as a children’s librarian at Naperville (IL) Public Library.

Natalie Bazan (MS ’10) won a Primetime Story Time grant, which she will be implementing in her small community beginning this holiday season.

Amy Bishop (MS ’13) accepted a position as rare books and manuscripts archivist at Iowa State University (ISU) in October 2015. She had served as a project archivist at ISU since 2013.

Anthony Bishop (MS ’13) accepted a position as resident librarian with Syracuse University in November 2015. His focus is reference and instruction.

Courtney Busscher (MS ’14) started work as a research librarian for the law firm Warner Norcross & Judd, where she is responsible for reference and instruction.

Stephanie Charlefour (MS ’11) accepted the library directorship role at the Gay-Kimball Library in Troy, New Hampshire. She is also serving on the 2017 Michael L. Printz Awards Committee and will chair the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) Teens’ Top Ten Award Committee in 2017.

In May 2016, Leighton L. Christiansen (MS ’12) became digital curator for the National

Transportation Library and Bureau of Transportation Statistics at the US Department of Transportation. He will be working with data curators across federal libraries and agencies to improve public access to, and long-term preservation of, publicly funded datasets.

Mary Gen Davies (MS ’11) began working at the Chicago Public Library’s Kelly Branch as a children’s librarian in May 2016. She is currently serving her second year on the American Library Association’s Rainbow Book List Committee.

Mary Dubbs (MS ’13) was appointed to the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) Library Service to Special Population Children and Their Caregivers Committee. She has been a children’s librarian at Oakland (CA) Public Library since 2013.

Hope Dunbar (MS ’15) accepted a position as an archivist in the Archives and Special Collections Department of SUNY Buffalo State College in Buffalo, New York.

Ryan Edge (MS ’13) accepted a new position as digital production and metadata lead at the Gates Archive in Seattle, Washington.

Rachel Fundator (MS ’15) joined the Purdue University Libraries, where she is the information literacy instructional designer. Her primary responsibility is to work with disciplinary faculty, library faculty, instructional technologists, and instructional designers on IMPACT, a course transformation program for large-scale, typically foundational, undergraduate courses.

In this role, she focuses on helping faculty integrate purposeful engagements with disciplinary information within their classrooms in order to support student learning.

Paul J. Gatz (MS ’14) began working as a reference librarian at the Michael E. Moritz Law Library at Ohio State University.

Alanna Graves (MS ’15) of the Cape May County (NJ) Library was presented with the Rising Star Award by the New Jersey Library Association (NJLA) at its annual conference in May. The NJLA Rising Star Award recognizes new librarians for innovative and creative work

that benefits their library, their community, and their profession.

Kira Hall (MS ’14) is distance education librarian at Ashford University in San Diego, California, where she serves as liaison to the College of Education and the College of Health, Human Services, and Science.

Rebecca Herwaldt (MS ’15) was selected to be the teen librarian for the Warrenville (IL) Public Library District. She also works as a youth and young adult librarian at Messenger Public Library in North Aurora, Illinois. “Life is now pretty crazy,” she said.

Elaine Ricketts Hicks (MS ’10) was elected secretary of the Society for Public Health Education. She authored the public health chapter for the twenty-fourth edition of Magazines for Libraries and coauthored an article summarizing a project that includes an information skills course outline developed for community college students (“Foundational courses in health education: Pathways for linking community colleges to baccalaureate programs in health education,” Pedagogy in Health Promotion: The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 2[1]).

Lisa Horsley (MS ’13) accepted a position in serials and acquisitions at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield, Illinois.

Sujin Huggins (MS ’04, PhD ’13) was awarded tenure in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Dominican University, where she is an assistant professor.

Cassidy Jacobson (MS ’15) is now the adult services supervisor at the Bourbonnais (IL) Public Library.

Christina John (MS ’13) married fellow Illinois alum Ted Bluver in October 2015. She currently works as a corporate research analyst with Grant Thornton International Ltd. In April 2016, Katie Jones (MS ’15) accepted a position as agricultural archives specialist in the Archives and Special Collections Department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Taylor Kirch (MS ’14) was promoted to lead librarian at Pandora.

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Bradley Kuykendall (MS ’15) was elected to the Executive Board of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association.

tion focusing on IT accessibility and disabilities and is the first of its kind offered by an accredited institution in the United States.

Carl Lehnen (MS ’13) accepted a position as reference and liaison librarian at the University of Illinois at Chicago beginning in May 2016.

He will act as liaison to the School of Literatures, Cultural Studies, and Linguistics.

Anupama Pal (MS ’12) moved to Boston in July 2015 and recently joined the Boston College Law Library as a legal information librarian and lecturer in law.

Sarah Lindenbaum (MS ’13) received a Bibliographical Society of America fellowship in support of work on her project, “Reconstructing the Library and Reading Habits of Early Modern Book Collector Frances Wolfreston.”

Angie Maranville (MS ‘12) is director of library technical services and information systems for the Brookens Library at the University of Illinois at Springfield.

In April 2016, Colleen McClowry (MS ’12) joined Spotify as a knowledge manager in the analytics department.

Casey McCoy (MS ’14) accepted a position as science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) librarian at the San Jose Public Library, where she has worked as a branch librarian since June 2015.

Kimberly Medema (MS ’13) began her position as the collections and resource management librarian at Regis University in October 2015. She is a department head and oversees cataloging and acquisitions.

Gail Murray (MS ’15) is the content management and outreach librarian for the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction in Madison.

Sarah Nagle (MS ’15) is a business and technology librarian at Pikes Peak Library District in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Tim Offenstein (MS ’11) is the lead information design specialist and campus accessibility liaison at the U of I Technology Services unit.

In Spring and Summer 2016 he cotaught a course he codeveloped titled, “Understanding Disability and Assistive Technology” (AHS 494), as a part of the Information Accessibility Design and Policy (IADP) program. The IADP program is an online graduate-level certifica-

Erica Parker (MS ’15) accepted a position as project coordinator for the Illinois Digital Newspaper Project at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library.

Erin Prentiss (MS ’12) is the recipient of the 2016 Professional Development Grant sponsored by the American Library Association (ALA) New Members Round Table (NMRT). This $1,000 award provides funding to assist with airfare, lodging, and conference registration fees for attendance at the ALA Annual Conference and fosters in-person participation in ALA and NMRT professional activities.

the University’s rich history through exhibits, interactive displays, and public programming.

It will open during the University of Illinois sesquicentennial celebration in 2017.

Alexander T. Salopek (MS ’15), was appointed acquisitions/government documents librarian at Library of the Supreme Court of the United States in Washington D.C., effective May 16, 2016.

Laura Sheets (MS ’12) is an instructor/librarian at Volunteer State Community College in Gallatin, Tennessee (a suburb of Nashville).

She coordinates all library instruction sessions for the main and satellite campuses and for distance education services.

Helenmary Sheridan (MS ’15) began a new position as repository services coordinator in the Scholarly Communications and Publishing unit at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign Library.

Rob Radtke (MS ’14) began working with the user experience group at John Deere in 2015.

In his spare time, he pursues research related to his career goals.

Kathleen Sherwood (MS ’12) is the campus librarian at Globe University’s Madison West campus. She previously worked for the McHenry Public Library District.

Colin Rhinesmith (PhD ’14) has been named a 2016-2017 faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. He will collaborate on projects that promote digital inclusion and broadband adoption in US communities and beyond.

Rhinesmith joined the faculty of the School of Library and Information Science at Simmons College as a senior lecturer on July 1, 2016.

Maureen Sill (MS ’14) accepted the position of architecture librarian at the Graham Resource Center at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

After three years as an assistant professor in the Faculty of Information Studies at Western University, Sarah T. Roberts (PhD ’14) joined the Department of Information Studies, Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, at the University of California, Los Angeles on June 1, 2016.

Ryan A. Ross (MS ’10) recently became coordinator of history and traditions programs at the University of Illinois Alumni Association (UIAA) and will oversee the design and development of UIAA’s new Welcome Center on the Urbana campus. The Welcome Center will celebrate

Krystal Smith (MS ’14) is now a children’s librarian at the West Pullman Branch of the Chicago Public Library. She also specializes in young adult services.

Stacey Smith (MS ’15) has been promoted to full-time librarian at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology.

Rachel Suntop (MS ’15) accepted a position as a floating librarian at the Manatee County Public Library system in Bradenton, Florida.

Kate Tallman (MS ’11) is now a government information librarian at the University of Colorado-Boulder.

Anna Trammell (MS ’15) accepted a position as the archival operations and reference specialist at the University of Illinois Student Life and Culture Archives.

Class Notes

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Anne Wells (MS ’12) accepted a position as audiovisual archivist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in November 2015.

Karen Whyte (MS ’14) began working as a librarian at Galen College of Nursing in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Lauren Wojcik (MS ’12) recently began her term as president of the Hospital Library Interest Section of the South Central Chapter of the Medical Library Association. She is a medical librarian at Seton Healthcare Family in Austin, Texas.

Lynn Yarmey (MS ’11) became director of RDA/US Community Development for the Research Data Alliance. She will be telecommuting from Boulder, Colorado, to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.

Cheryl Ziegler (MS ’14) was named director of library and archives for the Union League Club of Chicago.

Decade: 2000s Jill Barr-Walker (MS ’09) completed her master’s in public health at the London School for Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and started work as clinical librarian at the University of California, San Francisco.

Melissa Bowles-Terry (MS ’09) earned tenure and promotion to associate professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Libraries.

Robin Bradford (MS ’00) was awarded the 2016 Romance Writers of America (RWA) Cathie Linz Librarian of the Year award, which recognizes a librarian who demonstrates outstanding support of romance authors and the romance genre. Bradford is the collection development librarian at Timberland Regional Library (WA).

Marcia Brandt (MS ’08) retired in May after thirty-five years as a school library media specialist. Now a free agent, she is seeking her next adventure.

Marci Cohen (MS ’00) is assistant head of the Boston University Music Library.

Sarah Faye Cohen (MS ’03) is now managing director of the Open Textbook Network (OTN).

Working with academic libraries across the country, OTN fosters libraries’ strategic role in advancing access, discovery, and engagement with open textbooks. This exciting and cuttingedge work is at the nexus of libraries, open practices, technology, policy, and pedagogy.

A real plus for Cohen is that it brings her to libraries around the country where she often meets fellow iSchool alumni.

In 2015, Sarah Park Dahlen (MS ’09, PhD ’09) helped Lee & Low Books administer the Diversity Baseline Survey to more than thirteen thousand employees in the publishing industry. The survey asked questions regarding race, gender, sexuality, disability status, and department. The Lee & Low blog published the results, which have sparked some publishers and review journals to implement new diversity initiatives.

Nanette Donohue (MS ’03) was elected to a three-year director-at-large term on the Board of Directors of the Illinois Library Association.

Joshua Finnell (MS ’07) has been appointed scholarly communications librarian at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Brian Franklin (MS ’06) accepted the digital and web services administrator position at the Brookens Library at University of Illinois at Springfield in November 2015.

Jill Gage (MS ’04), reference librarian and bibliographer for English literature and history at the Newberry Library, was appointed custodian of the John M. Wing Foundation on the History of Printing, effective June 6, 2016.

In September 2015, Joseph Goetz (MS ’09) began work as an information literacy librarian at Rice University’s Fondren Library.

Harriett Green (MS ’09) was elected section vice-chair/chair-elect of the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) Literatures in English Section. She also was promoted to associate professor with indefinite tenure at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,

where she is the English and digital humanities librarian.

Jeanne Hamilton (MS ’08) was named director of the Bloomington (IL) Public Library, as of June 1, 2016.

Merinda Hensley (MS ’06) was elected section vice-chair/chair-elect of the Association of College & Research Libraries’ Instruction Section.

She also was promoted to associate professor with indefinite tenure at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she is the digital scholarship liaison and instruction librarian.

Wendy Holliday (MS ’02), head of teaching, learning, and research services at Northern Arizona University, received the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) Instruction Section’s (IS) Miriam Dudley Instruction Librarian Award. The award recognizes a librarian who has made a significant contribution to the advancement of instruction in a college or research library environment.

Kate Fultz Hollis (MS ’04) is finishing her master’s degree in biomedical informatics at Oregon Health & Science University and has been hired by that graduate program. She works remotely and has been publishing in medical informatics. Her student team won two national awards in a recent medical informatics design challenge. “Hello to all former Leep people!” she said.

Kirsten Y. Howley (MS ’09) is a senior business analyst at Science Applications International Corporation. She is a member of an executive steering committee that is working to modernize enterprise information and data systems used by a community of 15,000 employees.

Melissa Jeter (MS ’08) authored two chapters for the new book, The Library’s Role in Supporting Financial Literacy for Patrons (Rowman & Littlefield).

Migdalia Jimenez (MS ’07) accepted a position as a programming and reference librarian at La Grange (IL) Public Library.

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Lindsay King (MS ’08) was an invited speaker for the workshop, “Culture Analytics Beyond Text: Image, Music, Video, Interactivity, and Performance,” which was part of the Culture Analytics long program at the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics held at the University of California, Los Angeles. She also presented in a session titled, “Doing ‘Stuff’ with Data,” at the LIBER (Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche) conference in Helsinki, Finland. King is assistant director for access and research services at the Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library at Yale University.

Catherine A. Lemmer (MS ’05) was named director of Lake Forest (IL) Library, effective May 16, 2016.

Sarah Morris Lin (MS ’06) was awarded a 2016 Emerging Leader Award by the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL). The award recognizes newer AALL members who have made significant contributions to the association and/or law librarianship and who have demonstrated potential for leadership and continuing service.

Helen R. Linda (MS ’07) was awarded the Green Mountain Award at the Vermont Library Conference on May 18, 2016, “for distinguished service, support, and contributions to Vermont libraries.”

Dallas Long (MS ’02) graduated from Illinois State University (ISU) in May 2016 with a doctorate in higher education administration.

Long is associate professor and associate dean for access, technical services, special collections, and archives at ISU’s Milner Library.

Joshua Lupkin (MS ’08) was appointed Charles Warren Librarian for American History at Harvard University’s Widener Library.

David B. Malone (MS ’02) became dean of the College and Seminary Library at Calvin College, effective July 1, 2016. Previously, Malone was associate professor of library science at Wheaton College, where he oversaw the Resource Description and Digital Initiatives group.

Kevin McLaughlin (MS ’04) became head librarian at the Veterans Affairs Illiana Health Care System facility in Danville, Illinois, in October 2015.

Kevin Messner (MS ’02) was promoted to head of branch libraries at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

Muzhgan Nazarova (PhD ’07) was elected member-at-large of the Library History Round Table of the American Library Association.

Megan Sapp Nelson (MS ’03) was selected to serve as curriculum developer for the Association of College & Research Libraries Research Data Management Roadshow.

After eight years at Forrester Research, Leslie Ann Owens (MS ’01) has taken on a new role at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She is now the executive director of the Center for Information Systems Research and senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Mary Pergander (MS ’02) retired in June 2015 from her position as director of the Deerfield (IL) Public Library. She previously worked at Fremont (Mundelein) and Lake Bluff public libraries, both in Illinois. She pursued her master’s later in life, after a career in health care, because being a librarian was her dream job, she said.

Kinsley L. Riggs (MS ’07) recently accepted the position of information services manager for the Johnson County Library. She and her husband, Daniel, also recently celebrated the first birthday of their daughter, Lydia.

Jennifer Sackett (CAS ’01) was named the 2015-2016 North Carolina Library Director of the Year by the North Carolina Public Library Directors Association. She successfully led the state’s public libraries in their legislative campaign to increase state aid by one million dollars, which is the first recurring increase in ten years. Sackett was also recognized for leadership in guiding the Lincoln County Public Library through its emergence as a county library system from a regional system— expanding access to digital resources using

student ID numbers for e-cards—and significant growth in services and programming.

In March 2016, Jennifer Woodruff Tait (MS ’00) became content editor for The High Calling, a publication of the Theology of Work Project.

The purpose of this grant-funded position is to work on website content, metadata, tagging, and information architecture. Tait was ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church in April.

In February 2016, Marijane White (MS ’08) joined the Ontology Development Group at the Oregon Health & Science University Library as an ontologist, where she will be working on the Science Experts Network Curriculum Vitae (SciENcv) and Open Research Information Framework (OpenRIF) projects.

Lizz Zitron (MS ’09) is the 2017 and 2018 co-chair of the Amelia Bloomer Project List, an annual booklist of the best feminist books for young readers ages birth through eighteen.

The project is part of the Feminist Task Force of the Social Responsibilities Round Table of the American Library Association.

Decade: 1990s Kregg Argenta (MS ’91) accepted a cataloging position at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield, Illinois, effective April 1, 2016.

Kim Armstrong (MS ’91) was appointed director of the Big Ten Academic Alliance’s Center for Library Initiatives, effective March 1, 2016.

Richard Bazile (MS ’95) accepted the position of assistant dean of Learning Commons and academic support services at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland, Ohio. He plans, directs, and oversees the objectives of the Learning Commons (library and campus academic technology) and campus-based academic support services (e.g., tutoring). Previously, he was assistant director of technology at Miles College in Birmingham, Alabama.

Paul Bracke (MS ’97) was appointed dean of the Foley Library at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, effective August 15, 2016.

Class Notes

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Karen Bronshteyn (MS ’96) accepted a position as associate director of research and worldwide library services at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in July 2015.

Anthony Cook (MS ’97) was honored with the Rochester Exchange Club’s sixtieth annual Book of Golden Deeds Award. The award recognizes dedicated volunteers who give “endless hours of their time and talents toward making their communities better places to live,” according to the Exchange Club.

Judith Currano (MS ’99) received the 2016 Rose L. Vormelker Award at the Special Libraries Association 2016 Annual Conference, in recognition of “her commitment to advancing the development and knowledge of people from all backgrounds (especially her fellow librarians) who are engaged in the study of chemistry.”

In January 2016, John Finn (MS ’95) became the new director of the Lewis & Clark Library System in Helena, Montana. The library has five outlets, including three branch libraries and one bookmobile. It is the oldest library in the state of Montana.

Lisa (Broehl) German (MS ’92), dean of University Libraries and Elizabeth D. Rockwell Chair at the University of Houston, was elected to a three-year term on the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) Steering Committee.

Lorraine Haricombe (MS ’88, PhD ’92) was elected by the membership of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) to serve a threeyear term as a member of the ARL Board of Directors. She is vice provost and director of libraries at the University of Texas at Austin.

Damon E. Jaggars (MS ’95) was appointed vice provost and director of University Libraries at The Ohio State University, effective February 1, 2016.

Heather Jagman (MS ’96), coordinator of reference, instruction, and academic engagement at DePaul University, is one of two winners of the Association of College &

Research Libraries (ACRL) Instruction Section (IS) Ilene F. Rockman Publication of the Year Award, which recognizes an outstanding publication related to library instruction published in the past two years. Jagman and Troy A. Swanson were selected for the award in recognition of their work as editors of the book, Not Just Where to Click: Teaching Students How to Think about Information, which was published in 2015 by ACRL. Chad Kahl (MS ’98), interim associate dean for public services and information technology at Illinois State University, has been awarded the 2016 Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) Law and Political Science Section (LPSS) Marta Lange/SAGE-CQ Press Award.

The award, established in 1996 by LPSS, honors an academic librarian or law librarian who has made distinguished contributions to bibliography and information service in law or political science.

In January 2016, Rachel Gavelek Konkle (MS ’99) took on a new role as medical informational data analyst at Baxalta in Deerfield, Illinois, following more than fifteen years at Abbott/AbbVie. Jason Kuhl (MS ’99) was elected to a threeyear director-at-large term on the Board of Directors of the Illinois Library Association.

DeAnne Luck (MS ’92) was awarded the Tennessee Library Association Honor Award, which recognizes “any person or group who has made a significant contribution to the furtherance of librarianship on a statewide or national level.” After working in varied positions and settings, she is currently a faculty member in the library science program at Middle Tennessee State University.

Nancy Mactague (MS ’97) retired in January 2016 after more than seventeen years as director and research librarian at Aurora University in Aurora, Illinois. In retirement, she plans to devote more time to her historical art research into reuse of the built environment in Italy.

John Millard (MS ’95) is now assistant dean of libraries at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

Steve Oberg (MS ’91) was elected vice-president/president-elect of NASIG—a professional society for serials and e-resources librarianship—for the second time, seventeen years after first serving in that capacity, when he was the youngest to ever hold that office. He is the only person to be elected to this role twice and is looking forward to it again.

Marek Sroka (MS ’94) was elected member-atlarge of the Library History Round Table of the American Library Association. He is an associate professor of library administration at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Ellen Swain (MS’95) was promoted to full professor at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign. She is a professor of library administration and archivist for the Student Life and Culture Archives.

Sandy Wolf (MS ’93) retired in December 2015 from her position as library operations associate with the LIS Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Lisa Zhou (MS ’97) passed away on March 22, 2016. Zhou had a successful career at the University of Illinois at Chicago Library, where she held several positions from 1990 to 2015.

She also was an active member of professional associations, including the American Library Association and the Chinese American Librarians Association, of which she was the 2013-2014 president.

Decade: 1980s Elizabeth “Betsy” Arand (MS ’85) recently received a twenty-five-year award from Sno-Isle Libraries in Washington. She began her career there as a traveling reference librarian, was the assistant managing librarian at the Oak Harbor community library for seventeen years, and has been the managing librarian at the Freeland community library for the past seven years.

Michèle V. Cloonan (MS ’84, PhD ’88), dean and professor emerita of the School of Library and Information Science at Simmons College, was awarded the Preservation Publication Award by the Society of American Archivists

Intersections Fall 2016

25

for the book she edited, Preserving our Heritage: Perspectives from Antiquity to the Digital Age. The award recognizes an outstanding work that contributes to the “advancement of the theory and practice of preservation in archives institutions.”

Sandra L. Edwards (MS ’80) retired in April 2016 after thirteen years with the Maricopa County Library District in Arizona. She is currently serving a three-year term as presidentelect, president, and past president of the Arizona Library Association.

A new book by David Hunter (PhD ’89), The Lives of George Frideric Handel, was published

by Boydell Press in November 2015. In early 2016, Hunter became interim head of the University of Texas at Austin Fine Arts Library, where he also serves as music librarian. In Fall 2016, the library will open a large makerspace with computer game-making stations, a recording studio, and labs for animatronics, fabrics, and fabrication.

Mark McKnight (MS ’84) was elected vice president/president-elect of the Music Library Association (MLA). His two-year term as president will begin in March 2017. He has been a member of MLA since 1984 and most recently served as editor of the MLA Technical Reports monographic series.

Nicole Wedemeyer Miller (MS ’89), iSchool adjunct lecturer, wrote a new book that is a resource for librarians looking to develop or enhance family history and genealogy services.

Coauthored with Rhonda L. Clark, Fostering

Family History Services: A Guide for Librarians, Archivists, and Volunteers, was published by Libraries Unlimited in February 2016.

Sara Tompson (MS ’87) received the George Mandel Memorial Award from the Aerospace Section of the Engineering Division of the Special Libraries Association (SLA). The award, given at the SLA 2016 Annual Conference in June, celebrates recipients’ contributions to aerospace and engineering librarianship over their careers. Tompson is president-elect of the Southern California Chapter of SLA. Decade: 1970s Wanda V. Dole (MS ’75) accepted the position of interim director of library services at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois, for six months beginning in January 2016.

Claudia Dahldorf Fishler (MS ’76) retired from her position as assistant director of the Santa Monica Public Library, where she worked for nine years. Her career included twenty-five years of government service and forty years as a librarian.

Michael A. Golrick (MS ’76) was elected vice president/president-elect of the Association of Specialized and Cooperative Library Agencies, a division of ALA. He served in this role in 2015-2016 and is president in 2016-2017.

Kathryn M. Harris (MS ’71) is president of the Abraham Lincoln Association. In February 2016 she became the first woman and the first African American to hold this position since the association was founded in 1909.

Internet for Lawyers, which was founded in 1999 by Carole Levitt (MS ’77), provides in-person continuing education seminars for lawyers. The company has added a new webinar division, CLEseminars.com, which brings internet research and law practice management courses to lawyers via the web.

Barbara J. Nolan (MS ’72) retired from her position as director of the Danville Public Library on October 30, 2015, after forty-three years at the library, the first six of which were as director of children’s services.

Gail Yokote (MS ’72) served as chair of the Board of Regents of the National Library of Medicine from 2012 to 2016. She is the associate university librarian for collection services at the University of California, Davis.

Decade: 1960s Virginia Ruth Weiser (MS ’67) passed away on January 3, 2016, at her home in Santa Barbara, California. Weiser enjoyed a successful career as a teacher and librarian. She earned a bachelor’s degree in home economics at Hunter College in 1947 and a master’s degree in food and nutrition at Michigan State University in 1949. After teaching at several universities, she completed her master’s at Illinois in 1967.

She went on to work as a librarian at the Biomedical Library at the University of California, Los Angeles, and later as the life sciences librarian at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She retired in 1991.

Send us your news!

We’d love to hear from you! Send us your updates as well as any employment or internship opportunities, conferences of interest, or other opportunities for iSchool alumni to connect in your area.

Office of Advancement and Alumni Relations School of Information Sciences 501 East Daniel Street Champaign, IL 61820 ischool-advancement@illinois.edu (217) 244-3274 ischool.illinois.edu/people/alumni/mail

Connect with us!

Intersections Fall 2016

26

Grants

Principal Investigator

Funder

NEW GRANTS (funding awarded between July 1, 2015, and June 30, 2016) Catherine Blake

Department of Veterans Affairs

Maria Bonn

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Ian Brooks

Basal Cell Carcinoma Nevus Syndrome Life Support Network

Timothy Cole

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Nicole Cooke

University of Illinois Provost

Jana Diesner

National Science Foundation (subaward through the National Center for Supercomputing Applications)

Jana Diesner

Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information

Jana Diesner

National Science Foundation (subaward through the National Center for Supercomputing Applications)

J. Stephen Downie

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Michael Gryk

National Institutes of Health (subaward through University of Connecticut)

Bertram Ludäscher

National Science Foundation

Bertram Ludäscher

National Science Foundation

Bonnie Mak

Pennsylvania State University

Jerome McDonough

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Allen Renear

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Deborah Stevenson

Institute of Museum and Library Services

Vetle Torvik

Abbott Nutrition

Terry Weech

University of Illinois Provost

ACTIVE GRANTS (funding awarded prior to July 1, 2015) Masooda Bashir

National Science Foundation

Catherine Blake

Institute of Museum and Library Services

Jana Diesner

Intelligent Medical Objects

Jana Diesner

Social Media Research Foundation

Jana Diesner

Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information

Jana Diesner

Ford Foundation

J. Stephen Downie

HathiTrust

J. Stephen Downie

Institute of Museum and Library Services (subaward through Tufts University)

J. Stephen Downie

National Endowment for the Humanities

J. Stephen Downie

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (subaward through Columbia University)

J. Stephen Downie

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (subaward through McGill University)

J. Stephen Downie

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (subaward through McGill University)

J. Stephen Downie

National Science Foundation

Miles Efron

National Science Foundation

Jon Gant

University of Illinois Extension

Bertram Ludäscher

National Science Foundation

Bertram Ludäscher

National Science Foundation (subaward through University of New Mexico)

Bertram Ludäscher

National Science Foundation

Vetle Torvik

National Science Foundation

Vetle Torvik

National Institutes of Health (subaward through National Bureau of Economic Research)

Michael Twidale

National Science Foundation

Grant Title

Award Amount

Information Forum Requirements to Promote Knowledge Capture, Knowledge Sharing, and Community Interaction on the VHA Data Portal

$95,767

Humanities Without Walls 2

$242,719

Development of an Individualized Longitudinal Survey System to Adapt Complex Adaptive Systems Methodology Applied to Continuous Quality $4,973 Quality Improvement Assessments to Identify Subpopulations of Patients whose Lifestyle, Diet, Environment Similarly Aect Disease Outcome States Exploring the Benefits for Users of Linked Open Data for Digitized Special Collections

$248,000

Provost Faculty Retreat Grant: Building a Cultural Competence Repository

$4,000

Developing Organizational Expertise and Resources for the Responsible Conduct of Research with Human Generated and Publicly Available Data $5,000 Selection and Influence: Identification of Link Formation Mechanisms in Scientific Collaboration Networks

$33,000

Increasing Organizational Expertise in the Responsible Conduct of Research with Big Publicly Available Data

$5,000

Workset Creation for Scholarly Analysis and Data Capsules (WCSA+DC): Laying the Foundations for Secure Computation with Copyrighted Data in the HathiTrust Research Center Phase I

$1,170,000

Center for Biomolecular NMR Data Processing and Analysis

$123,182

CC*DNI DIBBS: Merging Science and Cyberinfrastructure Pathways: The Whole Tale

$625,869

BCSP: Collaborative Research: ABI Development: Exploring Taxon Concepts (ETC) Through Analyzing Fine-Grained Semantic Markup of Descriptive Literature

$336,645

Senior Fellowship, Center for Humanities and Information

$67,750

Preserving Intangible Cultural Heritage

$25,500

Publishing Without Walls

$1,000,000

App Authors: Closing the App Gap II

$248,205

Computer-Assisted Text-Mining Across Biomedical Papers and Patents for Competitive Intelligence

$25,000

Provost Faculty Retreat Grant: A Study of the Feasibility of Illinois and French Graduate Students in Library and Information Science Collaborating on Research Related to International Librarianship

$4,000

Enhancing the Cyber Security Workforce - The Human Angle

$161,708

Developing a Model for Sociotechnical Data Analytics (SODA) Education

$498,777

Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning and Machine Learning Analysis for Medical Information Classification and Impact Assessment $150,000 NodeXL

$4,500

Authority Based Scientist Network Analysis Modeling

$47,475

Computational Impact Assessment of Issue Focused Media and Information Products

$150,000

HathiTrust Research Center: New Opportunities through Computational Analysis of HathiTrust Digital Library 2014-2018

$499,677

Repository Services for Accessible Course Content

$7,173

Exploring the Billions and Billions of Words in the HathiTrust Corpus with Bookworm: HathiTrust + Bookworm Project

$324,841

Enriching the Collaborative Enterprise: Proposal to Form a Management Board for J-Disc (Jazz Discographic Database)

$32,122

Text Mining the Novel: Establishing the Foundations of a New Discipline

$48,000

Single Interface for Music Score Searching and Analysis

$15,000

Doctoral Consortium Support for JCDL 2015

$15,126

SMALL: Improving Information Retrieval by Analysis of Temporal Evidence in a Unified Model

$408,908

Enhancing Economic Development in Illinois with Digital Tech Hub Creativity Studios

$300,000

Collaborative Research: ABI Development: Kurator: A Provenance-Enabled Workflow Platform and Toolkit to Curate Biodiversity Data

$748,829

DataONE (Observation Network for Earth)

$416,623

BCC: Collaboration Research: Designing SKOPE: Synthesized Knowledge of Past Environments

$133,877

Collaborative Research: STEM Workforce Training: A Quasi-Experimental Approach Using the Eects of Research Funding

$175,918

Innovation in an Aging Society

$393,174

Collaborative Research: ABI Innovation: Rapid Prototyping of Semantic Enhancements to Biodiversity Informatics Platforms

$292,306

Intersections Fall 2016

27

28 Intersections Fall 2016

Support

Lancaster legacy

to live on through new scholarship

T

o his many students, Professor F. Wilfrid ‘Wilf’ Lancaster was a dedicated teacher and mentor with a down-to-earth quality, a father figure with warmth and hospitality, and one who always recognized their contributions to his research and writings.

He was so admired that in spring 2008, Library Trends published the Festschrift, “Essays Honoring the Legacy of F. W. Lancaster” (Volume 56, Issue 4). Edited by two of Lancaster’s former students, Lorraine Haricombe (MS ‘88, PhD ‘92) and Keith Russell (MS ‘72), the Festschrift included contributions from Lancaster’s friends, family, students, and colleagues, celebrating his accomplishments and paying homage to his life’s work.

Lancaster, a professor emeritus who passed away in 2013, was a faculty member at the iSchool from 1970 until his retirement in 1992.

A true visionary, he was an early predictor of today’s electronic media and storage systems with his transformative book, Toward Paperless Information Systems (1978). Now Lancaster’s legacy as a teacher and scholar will live on at the iSchool with the creation of the Frederick Wilfrid Lancaster Scholarship for students enrolled in the new MS in information management program.

During his distinguished career, Lancaster was integrally involved in the design and management of MEDLARS, the National Library of Medicine’s computerized bibliographic retrieval system for articles in academic journals in medicine and allied health professions. He taught courses in information retrieval, bibliometrics, bibliographic organization, and the evaluation of library and information services.

“In the classroom, Professor Lancaster went well beyond the simple transmission of factual information,” said his former student Clifford Haka (MS ‘77), “engaging students in a manner that trained us to ‘think like librarians.’ By that I mean to look beyond the processes of

A true visionary, he was an early predictor of today’s electronic media and storage systems with his transformative book, Toward Paperless Information Systems (1978). information retrieval and evaluation (the two courses that I took from ‘Wilf’) to understand the implications for users.”

Lancaster served as the editor of Library Trends from 1986 to 2006 and was the author of fifteen books. He was a University Scholar from 1989 to 1992, honored three times with Fulbright fellowships, named a fellow of the Library Association of Great Britain, and recognized with the ASIS&T Award of Merit and Outstanding Information Science Teacher Award. During his career, he was engaged in a

wide range of consulting activities for organizations around the world, including UNESCO and the United Nations.

Whether it was because he, too, was a transplant to the US or because of his own extensive travels overseas, he had a special connection with international students at the School and advised a significant number of them. They arrived in the United States from Brazil, Canada, Mexico, India, Pakistan, China, Malaysia, Philippines, South Africa, the Dominican Republic, and Taiwan.

“We had students over [to our home] frequently, primarily the students from foreign countries,” his widow, Cesaria Lancaster, recalled. “We were sort of their family in absentia. We and our children got to be very close to the students.”

Lancaster’s legacy extends well beyond his pioneering work in online retrieval and his many scholarly achievements. He had a big impact on his students, who are now leading scholars in the field.

“I know there are many proud alumni like me who continue to be inspired by the evolution of our beloved alma mater to offer innovative opportunities to help solve society’s most pressing problems,” Haricombe said.

“The new Lancaster Fund offers us just such an opportunity to support the next generation of students in the new [MS in information management degree program].”

“Wilf would be very honored to have a scholarship in his name,” Cesaria said.

Gifts to the Lancaster Scholarship Fund may be made online at ischool.illinois.edu/giving/funds or by contacting the Office of Advancement at (217) 244-9577.

Your gift makes a difference in the educational experience of our students When you support iSchool students, you can change the course of someone’s life. Every gift, large or small, matters.

For more giving opportunities, or to make a gift, visit: ischool.illinois.edu/giving/funds

Student support provides valuable financial assistance and maintains the excellence of our top-ranked academic programs. Here are just a few ways your gift can make an impact.

Annual Fund Gifts support a wide range of activities that supplement academic studies and promote the professional development of our students.

Frederick Wilfrid Lancaster Scholarship Fund Gifts support students in the MS in information management (MS/IM) program.

Endowed Chair in the History of Libraries and the Information Professions Gifts are matched on a one-to-one basis. An endowed chair will build on the distinction of our School and assist scholars in completing work that will make a difference in the field of library and information science.

Taylor Willingham Lecture in Change Management Gifts support a lecture series with a focus on developing and managing change to benefit organizations and communities. Donations to this fund are matched on a one-to-one basis.

Scholarships support

learning and community engagement

A

s an iSchool student, Thomas Mukonde (MS ‘16) received the Harold and Rose Marie Ames Scholarship and the Mary Louise Kaulfuss Scholarship. “I was very grateful for having been recognized with these scholarships,” he said. “The funds helped me complete my studies and engage in other learning opportunities outside of the School.”

Mukonde came to Illinois after receiving his bachelor’s degree in history from Georgetown University. He chose the iSchool because he found it to be the best fit for his interest in children’s librarianship. At Illinois, his interest broadened to include youth information behavior and marginalized populations. “All my classes were excellent,” he said. “I loved volunteering in the Center for Children’s Books and my practicum at the Champaign Public Library’s Douglass Branch.”

Currently, Mukonde is running a nongovernmental operation in Zambia called Lubuto Library Partners. “We have just won a

grant to implement a mentoring and scholarship program for adolescent girls and young women and to provide sexual and reproductive health education in our Zambian libraries,” he said. “The grant is from the

DREAMS (Determined, Resilient, Empowered, AIDS-Free, Mentored, and Safe) initiative, led by the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).”

Intersections Fall 2016

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School of

Information Sciences The iSchool at Illinois

Non Profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Permit No. 75 Champaign, IL

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 501 East Daniel Street, MC-493 Champaign, IL 61820-6211

Chancellor Jones assumes campus leadership Effective September 26, Chancellor Robert J. Jones assumed leadership for the Urbana campus. Dr. Jones is an experienced, accomplished scientist and research university leader, who previously served as president of the University at Albany, State University of New York.

Upcoming application deadlines: October 15 • MS/LIS on-campus and online admission for Spring 2017 • MS/IM on-campus and online admission for Spring 2017 November 15 • CAS on-campus and online admission for Spring 2017 December 15 • PhD on-campus admission for Fall 2017 Have questions?

We’d love to talk with you. ischool-advising@illinois.edu (217) 333-3280

ischool@illinois.edu I ischool.illinois.edu I Phone: (217) 333-3280