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Comstock named to PLDA
“All of us share a deep passion for and long-term dedication to the core motivations behind the founding of PLDA. ” – Sharon Comstock
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Senior Lecturer Sharon Comstock has been named to the first roster for the Public Library Data Alliance (PLDA) by the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies (COSLA) and the National Information Standards Organization (NISO). Representing an array of stakeholders, this group will continue the work of the COSLA’s Measures that Matter initiative.
The dozen founding members of the PLDA will work from ideas and concepts put forward by the Measures that Matter Action Plan Implementation Group, of which Comstock was a member. This work is expected to generate additional projects led by working groups comprised of subject matter experts and stakeholders drawn from volunteers beyond the core PLDA membership.
The vision for the PLDA includes promoting thought leadership, coordination, commitment, resources, and momentum. It will engage broadly with diverse stakeholders to propose strategic actions around data that reflect the role and impact of public libraries at the local, regional, state, and national levels, and also create a communications infrastructure for the field.
“All of us share a deep passion for and long-term dedication to the core motivations behind the founding of PLDA,”
Comstock said. “Very few professions have more than 100 years’ worth of data sets. Library staff past and present have a demonstrated commitment to measurement, and I think our opportunity now is to ask different questions. Community inquiry starts with a belief that the community is where the knowledge is.”
Formation of the PLDA was one of the recommendations resulting from the Measures that Matter initiative. Funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS RE-0016-0181-16), the initiative centered on coordinating conversation and action around public library data gathering and use, allowing libraries to continuously improve services aligned with community needs and accurately represent the rich story of the twenty-first century public library.
Comstock joined the iSchool in August 2019. She was previously an inquiry and impact officer at the Evansville (IN) Vanderburgh Public Library and adjunct instructor at Kent State University. Comstock holds a PhD in library and information science from Illinois and an MA from Northwestern University.
Adapted from a joint COSLA and NISO news release
Career fairsgo virtual
The School of Information Sciences moved its career fairs to a virtual format this fall. The Virtual Career & Internship Fair hosted by the iSchool on September 23 was attended by 35 employers and 676 students, including 295 students from the iSchool. The Government, Library, Archives, and Museum (GLAM) Employers Virtual Career Fair was held on October 7, attracting 26 employers and 155 students from six library programs. Of the GLAM attendees, 83 students were from the iSchool, more than triple the number who participated last year.
Teaching Associate Professor and Acting BS/IS Program Director Judith Pintar has been selected by the Office of the Provost and the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs as the University of Illinois Distinguished Teacher-Scholar for the 2020-2021 academic year. The program offers faculty members an opportunity to engage in an in-depth analysis of the craft and art of teaching, consider new approaches, and put their insights to work in ways that will benefit their students and the campus community. Pintar will receive $7,500 for her project and an additional $7,500 for a research assistant. Pintar’s award will support her project, “Gameful Pedagogy: Instructional Design for Student Well-Being.” As part of the project, faculty who serve as undergraduate program directors will be invited to attend a series of discussions, facilitated by the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning (CITL), in order to identify specific factors in course design that foster student wellness and encourage their incorporation into undergraduate syllabi across campus. Student focus groups will be held in the fall semester to provide the program directors with insights to inform the instructional design process. Students will be asked to outline a Students’ Bill of Rights—similar to the Gamers’ Bill of Rights—which emphasizes course design factors that have the greatest impact on their well-being. “By viewing class design through a new vantage, assessing elements of syllabi as one would assess fairness in rules of play, faculty participants may empathize with how students feel about their courses, which we hope will lead to a recognition of the connection between teaching practices and students’ well-being,” Pintar said. “The work that I do as a Teacher-Scholar will become part of the suite of resources that CITL offers to improve instructional design and transform teaching practice across our campus. Because my proposed work is also part of the pedagogical vision associated with Games@Illinois, it will be incorporated into that initiative as well.”
Pintar serves as director of Games @ Illinois: Playful Design for Transformative Education, a project funded by the Provost’s Investment for Growth program. Her research interests include digital storytelling, game studies, and the development of interactive and narrative AI. She earned her PhD in sociology from Illinois.
Knox elected president of Beta Phi Mu
Associate Professor and Interim Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Emily Knox has been elected president of Beta Phi Mu, the international honor society for library and information studies.
Knox was inducted into Beta Phi Mu in 2003 upon receiving her master’s in library and information science from the University of Illinois, and she has served as the faculty liaison to the Alpha Chapter (Illinois) since 2014. She was elected director of the national organization in 2015 and appointed treasurer in 2018. Knox’s book, Book Banning in 21st Century America, was the first monograph in the Beta Phi Mu Scholars Series. “I’m excited to work with members of the Beta Phi Mu board as the organization adapts to the landscape of higher education in the twenty-first century,” Knox said. “The national board recently amended the bylaws to permit undergraduates in information sciences and related fields to become members.Hopefully, students in the iSchool’s newly launched BS in information sciences program will soon be invited to join the honor society.”
Knox joined the iSchool faculty in 2012. Her research interests include information access, intellectual freedom and censorship, the intersection of print culture and reading practices, and information ethics and policy.
In memoriam: Charles H. Davis and William T Henderson
Charles Hargis
Davis (“Charlie,” “Chuck,” “Dave”), former dean and professor emeritus in the iSchool at Illinois, died at his home in Bloomington, Indiana, on September 24. He was 82 years old. He is survived by his wife, Debora (Ralf) Shaw, who was a member of the Illinois iSchool faculty from 1984-1988. Davis earned an MA in library science and PhD in information science from Indiana University, specializing in computer programs dealing with chemical
William (Bill)
T Henderson, associate professor emeritus, died at home on June 11 at the age of 90. He is survived by his wife of 67 years, Professor Emerita Kathryn Luther Henderson.
Bill received his bachelor’s degree in floriculture from the University of Illinois. He was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army’s Quartermaster Corps and served in Korea during the Korean Conflict. Upon returning to the States following promotion to first lieutenant and discharge from the Army, he was accepted as a divinity student at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago. Kathryn accepted a position as a librarian there, and they were married on August 22, 1953. Bill added a master’s degree in library science from the University of Chicago to the master of divinity he received at McCormick Seminary, and he served for seven years as the seminary’s first acquisitions librarian. He also was ordained as a minister.
In 1965, Kathryn was asked to join the faculty of the Graduate School of Library information retrieval. He joined the Drexel University Graduate School of Library Science as an assistant professor in 1969. Three years later, he joined the University of Michigan School of Library Science as an associate professor with tenure. He then moved to the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, as professor and dean of the Faculty of Library Science. In 1979, he was recruited as dean of the Graduate School of Library Science at the University of Illinois, which under his leadership was later renamed the Graduate School of Library and Information Science. He served as dean until 1986, continuing as a professor until his retirement from Illinois in 1993 as professor emeritus. He and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Bill had the opportunity to choose a position in the University Library from among several openings and chose preservation, an emerging area of concern in libraries as collections were growing, aging, and becoming increasingly in need of careful stewardship and increased care.
Bill and Kathryn team-taught preservation courses and organized conferences related to preservation. Their course was always included on the university’s list of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students.
In May 2011, the University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science Alumni Association selected Bill as the recipient of its Distinguished Service Award in recognition of his outstanding service to the School.
For many years, Bill was the Alpha chapter secretary of Beta Phi Mu, the international honor society for library and information studies. In November 2014, Alpha Chapter established the Kathryn Luther and William T Henderson Award in recognition of the high esteem in which they were held by fellow chapter members and in order to inspire future generations with their example. then became a senior fellow and adjunct professor at Indiana University’s School of Library and Information Science.
Davis was an active member of the American Society for Information Science, serving as president of the organization from 1982-1983. His two books with James E. Rush, Information Retrieval and Documentation in Chemistry, and Guide to Information Science, were foundational for the study of information science. He and Debora Shaw co-edited the collaboratively written Introduction to Information Science and Technology, published for the American Society for Information Science
and Technology.
Because of his lifelong interest in agriculture, Bill was a member of the Champaign County Farm Bureau. For many years the Hendersons served on the Selection Committee that determines the recipients of the Champaign County Farm Bureau Foundation agricultural scholarships. In January 2020, Bill and Kathryn were awarded the Foundation’s newly established Luther Circle Award. He was a member of St. Peter’s United Church of Christ, serving on various committees and having a role in Christian education endeavors. He was a longtime member of the American Library Association, the American Theological Library Association, the Illinois Library Association, and Beta Phi Mu. When the current building of the School of Information Sciences was being renovated, there were repeated calls for a conference room where classes and seminars could be held. A continuing legacy of Bill is the William T and Kathryn Luther Henderson Conference Room. Memorial contributions may be made to the William T and Kathryn Luther Henderson Fund at the University of Illinois Foundation, P.O. Box 734500, Chicago, IL 60673-4500.
Blake leads Midwest Big Data Innovation Hub
As its second year of new funding begins, there is new leadership at the Midwest Big Data Hub (MBDH), with a swap in principal investigators and the appointment of a new executive director. iSchool Associate Professor Catherine Blake, previously a co-principal investigator (PI) on the project, has moved into the PI role, while William (Bill) Gropp, director and chief scientist of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications pandemic, many public health organizations have found themselves overwhelmed by the need to make fast, data-focused operation decisions, but often they do not have enough staff with (NCSA) and the Thomas M. Siebel Chair in the Department of Computer Science at Illinois, transitions to co-PI duties. Longtime Hub staff member John MacMullen was named executive director in January. “I’m excited and honored to step into the role of principal investigator for the Midwest Big Data Hub,” said Blake, who also serves as associate director of the Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship (CIRSS) and director of the graduate programs in information management and bioinformatics at the iSchool. “The community developed during the first phase has made the MBDH well positioned to leverage the rapidly growing data and information collections and technologies in Phase 2 that focus on opportunities, interests, and resources that are unique to the Midwest.”
The MBDH, co-led by the NCSA and the iSchool, serves a twelve-state region that encompasses Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, the necessary data science skills. The University of Illinois, meanwhile, has a diverse student population with strong technical skills and professional expertise who would like to help combat the pandemic but do not know how to get involved.
To bridge this gap, the Center for Health Informatics (CHI), a partnership with the Grainger College of Engineering under the direction of iSchool Research Scientist Ian Brooks, in collaboration with the World Health Organization/PanAmerican Health Organization (WHO/ PAHO), has developed the CHI Mobilizing Experts in Illinois (CHIME in Illinois) initiative. Through this new international public health initiative, agencies who
Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. It is part of the National Science Foundation’s regional Big Data Innovation Hub (BD Hubs) program that comprises offices in the Midwest, West, South, and the Northeast. Initially funded in 2015, the second phase started in summer 2019 and will run until 2023. The goal of the MBDH awards, which will total over $4 million for both phases, is to catalyze data science efforts around important priority areas in the Midwest.
Priority areas for MBDH currently include advanced materials and manufacturing; water quality; big data in health; digital agriculture; and smart, connected, and resilient communities. In addition, MBDH leads cross-cutting initiatives to broaden the participation in data science education, develop cyberinfrastructure for research data management, and address cybersecurity issues around big data.
CHIME in Illinois brings together students, international public health agencies
With the advent of the COVID-19
Adapted from an MBDH news release have identified specific technical and informational needs are matched with teams of University of Illinois students with the necessary skills and experience to work on their projects, all under the supervision of CHI-affiliated faculty.
In one recent collaboration, students are working with researchers from PAHO to create a tool that will increase access to and usability of international COVID-19related health metrics. The tool will offer a web interface that draws on updatable data sources, delivering a holistic view of the continent as well as current localized information. That evidence can then be used to mobilize and strengthen existing information systems and to support requests for increased funding.
Bashir receives grant to study privacy measures in public libraries
Associate Professor Masooda Bashir has received a $150,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS LG-246404-OLS-20) for her project, “Securing our Public Libraries: A Forum on Privacy and Security.” The project seeks to identify the existence and absence of privacy protecting technologies (software and/or hardware) in public library systems.
Dean for Academic Affairs Emily Knox and Associate Professor Kyungwon Koh have received a $100,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (LG-246251OLS-20) for their project, “Measuring the Impact and Value of Makerspaces in Public Libraries.” Knox will serve as principal investigator for the one-year exploratory project, which is a partnership with Indian Trails Public Library District in Wheeling, Illinois, that was initially proposed by iSchool alumna Ryann Uden (MS ’06), the library’s deputy director.
The Indian Trails Public Library District, led by Executive Director Brian Shepard (MS ’05), has had a makerspace since 2017. While makerspaces can be found in public libraries across the country, library administrators have found that little information is available on how to demonstrate their makerspaces’ impact and value. This project will provide the tools needed to develop an initial
In today’s digital world, public libraries play a critical role in offering free public internet access. The American Library Association (ALA), with its well-established reputation of protecting patrons’ privacy, has updated its interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights to include technological measures to protect patron privacy. However, Bashir notes that with such a wide variety of library sizes, funding, staff training, equipment, vendors, and software, it is not clear if any widespread technological measures are currently in place that adhere to the ALA guidelines. According to Bashir, there is “an important gap in the conversations we are having about privacy and security technologies implemented in our public libraries.” This gap exists due to the lack of shared vocabulary among public libraries Emily Knox framework and future toolkit for measuring the impact, value, and accessibility of public library makerspaces. “Library makerspaces represent a shifting role of libraries as an institution for knowledge creation,” said Koh, co-principal investigator on the project. “Makerspaces increase access that libraries offer to community members, including a range of resources, technologies, programs, experts, and peers.”
and differing levels of technical skillsets and resources across library systems. The IMLS grant will support a national forum on privacy and security, in which experts and public library representatives will collaborate on an exploratory study of what technological mechanisms are in place to protect patron privacy in our nation’s libraries.
Bashir’s research interests lie at the interface of information technology, human psychology, and society; especially how privacy, security, and trust intersect from a psychological point of view with information systems. Associate Professor Yang Wang will serve as key project staff. He conducts research focusing on usable privacy and security technologies, social computing, human-computer interaction, and
Knox and Koh receive grant to study public library makerspaces
Associate Professor and Interim Associate
explainable artificial intelligence. Kyungwon Koh
Knox’s research interests include information access, intellectual freedom and censorship, the intersection of print culture and reading practices, and information ethics and policy.
Koh’s areas of expertise include digital youth, the maker movement, learning and community engagement through libraries, human information behavior, and competencies for information professionals.
