Intersections - Spring 2019

Intersections

Spring 2019

People

Celebrating Linda Smith (see page 12)

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Information

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Te c h n o l o g y

Spring 2019 School of Information Sciences University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Intersections is 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 Managing Editor: Cindy Brya Contributing Writers: Cindy Ashwill, Cindy Brya Photography: Cindy Brya, L. Brian Stauffer, Thompson-McClellan Photography Design: Pat Mayer

Intersections

Contents

New Faces

First Professorship

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

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.

On the cover: Professor and Executive Associate Dean is pictured with May 2019 MS/LIS graduates Halle Burns (left), recipient of the Kathryn Luther & William T Henderson Award, and Sharon Han (right), recipient of the Anne M. Boyd/Beta Phi Mu Award.

Linda Smith Celebration

NASA Internship

12-13

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News Growth and opportunity: A letter from the dean

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iSchool at Illinois to launch BS in information sciences

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MS/LIS program granted continued ALA accreditation status New faces Books by faculty explore literary history, information ethics iSchool holds first Midwinter Getaway Oates receives digital preservation award

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Giving First professorship established at the iSchool

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Passion for libraries leads scholarship recipient on path to LIS

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Research Schneider receives NIH funding for biomedical informatics research

10

Hoiem recognized by ChLA as emerging scholar

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Master’s Student Showcase

11

Stodden focuses on providing code rather than data with research

11

Features Celebrating Linda Smith

12-13

Smith named Illinois Library Luminary

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Digital Preservation class assists the Carpentries with digital stewardship

14

Visualizing UFO data leads to recognition in University-wide competition

14

2018 Downs Intellectual Freedom Award given to Iowa Library Association

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Baby Monkey, Private Eye receives Gryphon Award Wisniewski delivers 2019 Gryphon Lecture Internship spotlight: NASA

16 16-17 17

Alumni Four alumni named 2019 Movers and Shakers

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Siegel recommends mentorship to busy professionals

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Ross brings University history to life at Illinois

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Class Notes

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News

Intersections Spring 2019

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Growth and opportunity: A letter from the dean

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“During this time of rapid growth, we remain committed to the principles that have resulted in our School’s resounding success.”

nother academic year has ended, one that has been filled with change for the iSchool. From programs to people to a groundbreaking gift, we have experienced major transitions— many of which are ongoing—but our commitment to teaching exceptional students, advancing cutting-edge research, and engaging with local and national communities remains constant.

A key transition is the upcoming retirement of Professor and Executive Associate Dean Linda Smith. A beloved educator, Linda has served for more than 40 years as a professor, researcher, and administrator. Her stature in our field is, of course, legendary, and for our School she has been a a vital source of wisdom and guidance, and an exemplar of loyalty and commitment, during a precarious time in higher education. In the words of Leigh Estabrook, professor emerita and former dean, “The important constant has been Linda Smith, who has held to a vision of this field as a whole and has been deeply respected by those who have worked with her.”

While Linda’s retirement represents a challenge for our School, we are fortunate to have the expertise of not one, but two, experienced administrators to assume her responsibilities. Associate Professor Kate McDowell, who previously served as assistant dean for student affairs, has assumed the role of interim associate dean for academic affairs. Sonya Chambers, a University of Illinois expert in change management who holds a CMA, CFM, and MBA, joined us in January as associate dean for administration. These two leaders have completed the process of succession planning and initiated new procedures to meet the needs of our rapidly growing School.

This fall, the iSchool will begin accepting applications for our new bachelor’s degree in information sciences. This degree, the first of its kind on campus, will focus on both the social and technical aspects of information, preparing students not only for a wide range of roles in the workplace but for twenty-first century citizenship as well.

Another first for our School is the establishment of an endowed professorship, the Mildred M. Luther and Kathryn Luther Henderson Professorship in Preservation and Technical Services.

The professorship honors the careers of Mildred Luther (1926-2017), a University of Illinois alumna and distinguished employee, and iSchool Professor Emerita Kathryn Luther Henderson, who focused her academic career on technical services and preservation. We are extremely grateful for this generous gift, which will strengthen our School’s reputation and reinforce our number-one ranking.

During this time of rapid growth, we remain committed to the principles that have resulted in our School’s resounding success. Our goal remains the same—to bring the values of library and information science to more professions and settings. These values include our ethic of service, respect for diversity and the cultural heritage of all peoples, the protection of privacy and intellectual freedom rights, and more. Our profession’s interdisciplinary, human-centered approach has never been needed more than it is today.

Allen H. Renear, Dean

iSchool at Illinois to launch BS in information sciences

“This new degree will allow students to attain rewarding careers in the rapidly growing field of information science.”

—Emily Knox

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he iSchool at Illinois is pleased to announce plans to launch a Bachelor of Science degree in information sciences (BS/IS). The first degree of its type on campus—and among public universities in the state of Illinois—it will equip graduates to compete successfully in today’s technologycentered job market.

A STEM-designated degree, the BS/IS will combine technology skills with a broad understanding of how people interact with information. Consistent with other iSchool programs, it will offer a human-centered, interdisciplinary approach to managing and using information.

Students will prepare for work in the public or private sector, including areas such as education, health care, business and finance, arts and communications, and government.

Examples of career paths include data ana-

lyst, user experience designer, database manager, policy analyst, technology support specialist, and web content analyst/manager.

Associate Professor Emily Knox, BS/IS program director, will provide leadership for the new degree. “The BS/IS focuses on helping people use information and technology to meet their goals and benefit society. It will offer an education in the core values of library and information science—including equitable and open access to information, user privacy and confidentiality, information ethics, inclusion and diversity, and intellectual freedom—to a wider audience,” she said.

The BS/IS will include seven required courses, including a database course and research methods course, and a range of electives for degree customization. Students will learn how to: • Design information systems and services • Organize, manage, and enhance information • Interpret data for real-world application and collaboration “This new degree will allow students to attain rewarding careers in the rapidly growing field of information science,” said Dean Allen Renear. “It also is strongly aligned with the University’s strategic plan, making transformative learning experiences available to students from diverse backgrounds and preparing them to make a difference in society.”

The BS/IS will be offered on campus beginning in fall 2020. Students can get started early in fall 2019, completing the following courses required for the degree: Social Aspects of Information Technology, and Computers and Cultures.

For more information about the BS/IS degree, please contact Associate Professor Knox at ischool-is@illinois.edu.

MS/LIS program granted continued ALA accreditation status

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he Committee on Accreditation (COA) of the American Library Association (ALA) has granted continued accreditation status through 2025 to the iSchool’s MS/LIS program. The decision was based on the “totality of the accomplishment and the environment for learning” of the program.

“Our School’s MS degree in library and information science has been at the forefront of innovation for many years. We look forward to continued success, expanding our course offerings and curriculum to provide the best possible education for students in a rapidly evolving field,” said Dean Allen Renear.

Continued accreditation is based on a comprehensive program evaluation that includes a Self-Study, External Review Panel Report, response to the External Review Panel Report, and a meeting with the COA. The COA meeting occurred on January 26, 2019, and continued status was granted on January 27, 2019. This outcome confirms that the iSchool’s program meets the rigorous standards set forth by ALA, which evaluate the excellence of a program’s systematic planning, curriculum, faculty, students, and administration, finances, and resources.

The MS/LIS at Illinois has been ranked #1 in library and information studies by U.S. News & World Report since 1996. In addition to retaining the top position, the following iSchool specialties currently rank highly: #1 in Digital Librarianship, #1 in Services for Children and Youth, #3 in School Library Media, #6 in Health Librarianship, #6 in Information Systems, and #8 in Archives and Preservation.

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News

New faces The iSchool at Illinois is pleased to announce the addition of new faculty and staff.

Faculty

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Anita Say Chan, Associate Professor Chan’s research and teaching interests include globalization and digital cultures, innovation networks and the “periphery,” science and technology studies in Latin America, and hybrid pedagogies in building digital literacies.

Inkyung Choi, Lecturer Choi’s research interests stem from her intellectual curiosity about social and cultural pluralistic perspectives, which influence ways of organizing knowledge.

Staff

Nigel Bosch, Assistant Professor Bosch uses machine learning/data mining methods to study human behaviors, especially in learning contexts. His research examines data such as facial expressions, audio recordings, log file records of user actions, and other sources that provide insight into learners' behaviors.

Teresa Adams, Account Technician II Adams provides support for the business and financial activities of the iSchool.

Sonya Chambers, Associate Dean for Administration Chambers provides executive leadership, oversight, and coordination for the School’s administrative units and works closely with the dean and the other associate deans to advance the School’s strategic initiatives.

Troy Driskell, Office Support Specialist Driskell provides support for the iSchool’s admissions and student records.

Beth Etchison, Grants & Contracts Associate Etchison administers all postaward grants and contracts for the School and serves as backup for iSchool pre-award activities.

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Sharon Comstock Senior Lecturer Comstock has ten years of experience in conducting human subject social science and education research of protected class populations, including youth, young adults, and African-American women working in Chicago at-risk neighborhoods as K-12 teachers in under-performing schools.

Michael Greifenkamp, Information Technology Specialist Greifenkamp assists in updating and maintaining the iSchool’s Linux server infrastructure, to support the computational and storage needs of faculty and staff.

Jingrui He, Associate Professor He’s general research theme is to design, build, and test a suite of automated and semi-automated methods to explore, understand, characterize, and predict real-world data by means of statistical machine learning.

Dustin Janes, Office Administrator Janes provides support for the iSchool’s program directors and interim associate dean for academic affairs.

Yoo-Seong Song, Associate Professor Song has been teaching courses at the iSchool for eight years, specializing in information consulting and applied business research. His interests include knowledge management, business information, and experiential learning for information profesionals.

Tad Schroeder, Assistant Director of Facilities Schroeder provides support for maintenance, daily operations, and building infrastructure.

Katelyn Talbott, Academic Advisor Talbott provides academic advising and program planning for MS/LIS students; coordinates student communications for Student Affairs.

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News

Books by faculty explore literary history, information ethics

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rofessor Ted Underwood’s latest book, Distant Horizons: Digital Evidence and Literary Change, examines recent discoveries in literary history and the changes that made those discoveries possible. Underwood shows how digital archives and statistical tools can deepen our understanding of issues that have always been central to humanistic inquiry. Large digital libraries like HathiTrust have made it possible for historians to survey hundreds of thousands of books across several centuries. Underwood explains how quantitative methods have become more flexible, “allowing us to grapple with slippery perspectival questions that wouldn’t have been suited to numbers in the twentieth century.”

Associate Professor and BS/IS Program Director Emily Knox and John T. F. Burgess, assistant professor in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama, have co-edited a new book, Foundations of Information Ethics, which covers principles and concepts in information ethics as well as the history of ethics in the information professions. It examines topics such as human rights, information access, privacy, discourse, censorship, and global digital citizenship, synthesizing the philosophical underpinnings of these subjects while providing relevant case studies. Knox contributed a chapter along with her iSchool colleagues, Assistant Professor Peter Darch and Assistant Professor Masooda Bashir.

iSchool holds first Midwinter Getaway

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he iSchool’s first annual Midwinter Getaway took place on February 16 and 17 on the Urbana campus. The event, which was held in coordination with The Center for Children’s Books (CCB) and the Champaign-Urbana Community Fab Lab, brought together youth information professionals for community engagement, professional development, and networking. Among the activities participants enjoyed was a Best of The Bulletin Book Talk & Tasting and an interactive workshop at the Fab Lab. “It was so refreshing to observe adults engaging in meaningful play! From the construction of crafty Arduino pom pom robots to themed vinyl stickers, participants had the chance to CCB Director Deborah Stevenson leads the Best of The Bulletin session.

Intersections Spring 2019

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nna Oates (MS ’18) won the National Records of Scotland Award for the Most Outstanding Student Work in Digital Preservation for her master’s thesis work on the PDF/A standard. She received the award on November 29 at a ceremony at the Amsterdam Museum, as part of an international conference hosted by the Dutch Digital Heritage Network and the Amsterdam Museum on World Digital Preservation Day. According to the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), who sponsored the awards, this year marked the greatest number of nominations the organization has received to date, and those selected as finalists faced tough competition from entries across the world.

Oates’ work originated from her research as a student in the Oxford-Illinois Digital Library Placement Program. In her summer 2017 placement, she spent six weeks at Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries. Her project focused on student theses in Oxford’s Institutional Repository and the challenges faced in meeting the ISO 19005 Standard, which specifies how to use the Portable

Laura Molloy (University of Oxford), Anna Oates, and Laura Mitchell (National Records of Scotland) Document Format (PDF) for long-term preservation of electronic documents. When she returned from England, Oates extended her research project into a master’s thesis and submitted the abstract to and presented at iConference.

“Although embedded in theoretical points of inquiry, my student work applies directly to current practices of institutional repositories that store and give access to theses and dissertations,” Oates said. “But the work isn’t just adding to an already existing conversation; it’s engaging in a topic that has been a bit overlooked. Some institutions have blindly accepted PDF/A as an optimal file format without consideration of what

normalization—the process to make a PDF/A—is doing to the original file. This is really problematic for digital preservation, long-term sustainability, and authenticity of student research.”

She hopes that her work will raise institutional awareness of these issues as well as of the importance of the topic and that managers will be encouraged to make more informed decisions for their workflows and file format policies.

Oates is currently employed as a scholarly communication and discovery services librarian for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

engage in activities they could easily replicate with students and/or youth,” said School Librarian Program Coordinator Ann Ohms. “One of the most rewarding experiences within the Fab Lab workshop was the opportunity to observe iSchool students’ expertise in facilitating professional learning for current library professionals. The learners truly became the experts.”

The School will hold the annual Summer Getaway on July 11-12 and look forward to offering the Midwinter Getaway again in 2020.

Participants work on projects in the Champaign-Urbana Community Fab Lab.

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N GeI V wIsN G

First professorship established at the iSchool

“With this gift, Mildred continues her devoted support for the University by recognizing the extraordinary contributions, to the field, to

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he iSchool is pleased to announce the establishment of its first endowed professorship, the Mildred M. Luther and Kathryn Luther Henderson Professorship in Preservation and Technical Services. The professorship was established through the generosity of Mildred Luther (1926-2017), a loyal Illinois employee and alumna with a special family connection to the School.

Mildred Luther grew up on her family’s farm and attended a one-room schoolhouse in Champaign County. After graduating from Champaign High School in 1944, she began working as a clerk in the Catalog Department of the University of Illinois Library to help her parents finance her education.

She worked full time during summers and part time during the academic year while attending the University on a full-time basis.

After earning her bachelor’s degree, she accepted a full-time position in the Catalog Department. From 1950 to 1967 she worked in the Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost. In 1967, when the Office of the Chancellor on the Urbana campus was established, she was chosen to assist in organizing the office and serve as its business manager. She held this position until her retirement in 1993, having completed 49 years of service to the University.

“Millie knew everyone on campus,” recalled her sister, iSchool Professor Emerita Kathryn Luther Henderson. “She was the first voice people heard when they phoned the Chancellor’s Office. She was very involved in the planning of the Swanlund Administration Building [where the Chancellor’s Office is located]. Millie was a great organizer, quiet, behind the scenes, always making sure things happened, and never left a job undone.”

the School, to the University, and to the world, of Kathryn Luther Henderson.”

Mildred Luther Dick Wilson, former associate chancellor for development and vice president of the University of Illinois Foundation, worked with Luther for more than fifteen years in the Chancellor’s Office and interacted with her as a benefactor after she retired from the University.

“She was extraordinarily loyal to the University and had great admiration for the accomplishments of her sister, Kathryn,” said Wilson. “These two motivations resulted in her initial gift to establish the Mildred M. Luther Endowment Fund in the School and also led to subsequent gifts creating the Mildred M. Luther and Kathryn Luther Henderson Endowed Fellowship and the Mildred M. Luther and Kathryn Luther Henderson Professorship in Preservation and Technical Services. I am confident that Millie would be proud of what her endowments have accomplished for the University that she loved.”

Technical services and preservation were her sister’s areas of research and teaching.

At the iSchool, Kathryn developed the technical services class, and she and her husband, Associate Professor Emeritus William T Henderson, developed and team-taught the preservation class.

Kathryn preceded her sister at the University, earning a bachelor’s degree in history (1944) and library science (1948) and

—Allen Renear master’s degree in library science (1951).

After working at the University of Illinois Library and the McCormick Theological Seminary Library, she returned to Urbana to join the faculty of the Graduate School of Library Science, now the iSchool, in 1965.

Her teaching is remembered long after the students have left the classes. Especially remembered are the extensive syllabi she developed anew each offering of the course and her careful attention and copious remarks given each student’s assignment. Her teaching has been recognized with awards locally, nationally, and internationally.

“This is such a wonderful expression of support for the mission of our School and our University,” said Professor and Dean Allen Renear. “Kathie Henderson has been a powerful intellectual figure at our School.

Her sister Mildred, who graciously made this gift, throughout her life provided vital wise and expert support for decades of University leaders, support that helped the University navigate many challenges and become the great institution it is today. With this gift, Mildred continues her devoted support for the University by recognizing the extraordinary contributions, to the field, to the School, to the University, and to the world, of Kathryn Luther Henderson.”

Your support makes a difference.

Endless opportunities for social good are possible through partnerships with the iSchool. We hope you will participate in the University’s fundraising campaign by making a gift to

With Illinois, we can change the world.

support our School’s priorities: accessible education, student experience, and faculty support. Together, we can make a positive difference in the world.

For more information about giving to the iSchool, or to make a gift, visit go.ischool.illinois.edu/give

Passion for libraries leads scholarship recipient on path to LIS

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esar Ortega fell in love with libraries at the age of thirteen, when he joined the Aurora (IL) Public Library’s Teen Advisory Board. The board was composed of a group of teens from around the city who created programs for the library.

“After being a part of the Teen Advisory Board, I knew I wanted to create that same space for other people,” he said. “I would like to thank Hannah Sloan, the teen librarian at my library who has supported me all these years, for instilling in me a passion for libraries.”

Ortega currently balances his job as a reference assistant at the Santori Public Library in Aurora with his coursework as a master’s student in the Leep online program. His main area of interest is young adult librarianship, since it had such a profound impact during his formative years. He describes the iSchool experience so far as “absolutely amazing.”

“The classes have taught me so much, and the teachers have been nothing less

than perfect. The iSchool staff have gone above and beyond in reaching out to me during some troublesome times with family medical issues. It meant the world to me to have a School that was willing to support

me and work with me when everything felt like it was spinning out of control,” he said.

Ortega is the recipient of the iSchool’s G. Edward Evans Minority Student Scholarship, which was established by Evans (PhD ‘69) to facilitate increased enrollment of underrepresented groups in LIS education and the information professions. The scholarship has eased Ortega’s financial burden and allowed him to focus on school.

“I am very grateful to Dr. Evans and everyone who has supported my scholarship,” Ortega said. “It has been a great help, and I know the next recipient will feel exactly the same way.”

After completing his MS/LIS degree, Ortega plans to become a young adult librarian and hopes one day to become the library director of the Aurora Public Library system.

“I want to become the director for my hometown library so that I may give back to the community that has given me so much,” he said.

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10 Intersections Spring 2019

Research

Schneider receives NIH funding for biomedical informatics research

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ssistant Professor Jodi Schneider (MS ’08) has received funding from the National Institutes of Health to develop a series of automated informatics tools for reviewing medical literature more quickly and easily.

The project, “Text Mining Pipeline to Accelerate Systematic Reviews in Evidence-Based

Medicine,” was funded through a subaward from the University of Illinois at Chicago that will cover $228,006 in direct costs.

Schneider is co-principal investigator with Neil Smalheiser, associate professor of psychiatry at UIC, and Aaron Cohen, a professor in the Oregon Health & Science University’s Department of Medical Informatics and Clinical Epidemiology.

The team is currently testing three informatics tools: a meta-search engine for finding articles in medical literatures across different databases; an automated randomized control trial (RCT) tagger for identifying human randomized controlled clinical trial articles; and an aggregator tool that clusters together RCT articles predicted to arise from the same underlying clinical trial.

“Our evaluation work will help improve tool development and find new directions

for it,” said Schneider. “In the long-run, this work could help automate the process of conducting systematic reviews, perhaps not only maintaining but also even improving their quality.”

Schneider studies scholarly communication and social media through the lens of arguments, evidence, and persuasion. She is developing linked data (ontologies, metadata, Semantic Web) approaches to manage scientific evidence. She holds a PhD in informatics from the National University of Ireland, Galway. Prior to joining the iSchool in 2016, Schneider served as a postdoctoral scholar at the National Library of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, and INRIA, the national French Computer Science Research Institute. She has also received an XSEDE start-up award for her research in biomedical informatics.

Hoiem recognized by ChLA as emerging scholar

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ssistant Professor Elizabeth Hoiem has been named the 2019 recipient of the Judith Plotz Emerging Scholar Award, which is given annually by the Children’s Literature Association (ChLA). The award recognizes an outstanding article of literary criticism by an early career scholar on the topic of children’s literature within a given year.

Hoiem received the award for her article, “Radical Cross-Writing for Working Children: Toward a Bottom-up History of Children’s Literature,” which was published in

The Lion and the Unicorn (vol. 41, no. 1). She accepted the award at the ChLA conference, which was held June 13-15 in Indianapolis.

In her article, Hoiem challenges the accepted historical narrative of the emergence of children’s literature as a middle-class genre. She examines texts such as political handbills and journals, which were affordable to and circulated by working-class families. She suggests that scholars have thus far unwittingly eliminated from consideration those texts written for and embraced by Radical working-class readers.

“In my article, I argue that the way we have defined children’s literature actually limits which historical voices we represent in the canon,” Hoiem said. “In order to have a more diverse history of children’s literature, one that includes voices from different classes, races, and genders, we need to define children’s literature to include a wider variety of forms, subjects, and reading practices.”

Patrick Fleming, assistant professor of English at Fisk University and member of the Judith Plotz Emerging Scholar Award

committee, noted of Hoiem’s work, “By bringing attention to texts used by children but not usually considered children’s literature, Hoiem contributes to growing interests in childhood studies in the nineteenth century and beyond.”

Hoiem teaches in the areas of reading and literacy, history of children’s literature, and fantasy literature. In her research and teaching, she explores the history of technological innovations in children’s literature, from early children’s books and toys to contemporary applications of digital pedagogy. She received a 2018 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for her current book project, “The Education of Things: Mechanical Literacy in British Culture, 1752-1860.” This project investigates the class politics of “object lessons,” a mode of experiential learning that developed during the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with the rise in child labor and mass literacy. Her recent articles are published in The Lion and the Unicorn and Children’s Literature. Hoiem holds a PhD in English from Illinois.

11 Intersections Spring 2019

Master’s Student Showcase The 2019 iSchool Master’s Student Showcase was held on April 5. This annual event is an opportunity for MS/LIS, MS/IM, and CAS students to present projects, research, or other work of interest to the iSchool community in both a poster session and lightning talk format.

Right: Poster presentations covered a variety of topics, such as creating a Tableau dashboard governance for business intelligence analysis and building an open-access journal.

Stodden focuses on providing code rather than data with research

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haring and reusing research data is becoming increasingly common in the scientific world, allowing researchers to more easily build on the work of others as they seek new discoveries. A new research project being conducted by Associate Professor Victoria Stodden and Illinois Computer Science Professor Darko Marinov aims to answer key questions about how researchers can reliably share the code used to generate their data rather than the more costly data itself.

“Our question was, when is it possible to save only the code that produced simulated data, and that’s all I need to save, and when do I also need to save the data?” Stodden said. “Simulation codes can produce massive amounts of data, for example petabytes of data. If I can rerun the code and regenerate the data, in theory I don’t even need to save the data. For what types of codes is that possible? That’s exactly the question we’re trying to answer.”

The National Science Foundation is funding the work by Stodden and Marinov, providing $300,000 over two years. Stodden, who also is an Illinois Computer Science faculty affiliate, is the PI on the project. Marinov is the co-PI. As Stodden, who is the lead investigator for the project, explains, the format for scholarly articles has changed little in decades. It provides only a small space to discuss how researchers derived their results.

But as computation has become more integral to research across virtually every scientific field, that format has become inadequate, she said.

“There’s such an amount of complexity— the computer can do X calculations per second. So how do you actually explain the increased complexity of computational research in words in a small section in a paper?

It can be very, very difficult,” Stodden said.

Now some journals, she said, have begun to require researchers to publish their data and code along with their findings. Stodden and Marinov, an expert on the testing and reliability of software, wondered whether providing the code alone could reliably allow the results of a given paper to be reproduced. And if it is the code that accompanies the published research, what kind of standard should it meet?

“If code is going to travel with this scholarly output, the community will need to come to some type agreement regarding code standards,” she said.

For their project, the two are focusing on physics research as an example because of its intensive computational needs. In preliminary work using articles from the Journal of Computational Physics, Stodden and her group tried to replicate the computational results from 55 articles and were unable to reproduce any. After contacting the authors, Stodden says they came away with the impression that many believed reproducing their computational results would be straightforward, something they found not to be the case.

Eventually, Stodden and Marinov hope to determine whether and how code could be reliably substituted for data for a wide range of fields.

“We want to learn how to do better scientific software, software that is more reliable, and that researchers can trust more,” Stodden said. “These questions have come about not because the scientific community isn’t doing a good job; they came about because computation is so important, and increasingly so. We’re chasing fascinating opportunities here.”

-Courtesy of Illinois Computer Science

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Features

Celebrating Linda Smith After more than forty years of dedicated service, Professor and Executive Associate Dean Linda C. Smith will retire from the School of Information Sciences at the end of June. On May 3, the iSchool hosted a celebration of her distinguished career as well as her contributions to the School and the field of library and information science.

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Particularly in her role as Associate “Dean for the School, Dr. Smith has been

Dr. Linda C. Smith has had a tremendous “career contributing pioneering research on

success in becoming an Assistant Professor in LIS. She always had her door open for me to feel supported and ask questions about succeeding as a doctoral student.

Dr. Smith is a brilliant academic in the field of LIS and her academic contributions continue to resonate across the field. I am so grateful she was my advisor and mentor.

extraordinary. She has overseen innovation in this role, including being key to the creation and sustaining of the muchlauded online Master’s program in Library and Information Science, vanguard in its time and at the top of the field throughout its existence. Along with faculty colleagues, she has supported numerous initiatives that have generously benefitted students, the research program at Illinois, and the field in its entirety. One with which I am intimately familiar is the Information in Society fellowship, a multiyear grant that Dr. Smith won from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, to support future faculty interested in the interdisciplinary social studies of information. As the recipient of one of the Information in Society fellowships, I can affirm that it was life-changing, and indeed put me on the path to the career I now have.

artificial intelligence systems, bibliometrics, and innovative uses of emerging technologies in information science services and pedagogy. Beyond these substantial achievements, she is known by her colleagues and students as an outstanding mentor who goes above and beyond to support and anchor her mentees. Her dedication to her students, as advocate and protector, has been a constant reminder to me of the powerful role educators may have in the lives of their students. I use the lessons she taught me daily, hoping to pay forward her particular brand of mentorship and guidance to my own students. I hold Dr. Smith in the highest regard, as do all who know her and have worked near her.

The impact she has had in our field, in terms of both research and mentorship, is unparalleled and will continue to reverberate as a part of her lasting legacy.

Melissa Villa-Nicholas Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Library and Information Studies University of Rhode Island

Sarah T. Roberts Assistant Professor, Department of Information Studies University of California, Los Angeles

Miriam Sweeney Assistant Professor, College of Communication & Information Sciences The University of Alabama

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Dr. Linda Smith was indispensable to my “experience as a doctoral student and my

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Dean Allen Renear congratulates Linda Smith.

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Linda shares her gift from iSchool faculty and staff.

Smith named Illinois Library Luminary

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Linda has been a faculty member at the “iSchool since 1977. Much of that time it was called the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, and much of the time was critical, sometimes perilous, for library and information science education.

The iSchool has thrived due to the quality of our students, the dedication of our faculty and staff and the ability of that team to evolve quickly, continuing to exert national leadership, through rapid change and potential challenges to our identity.

The important constant (glue) has been Linda Smith who has held to a vision of this field as a whole and been deeply respected by those who have worked with her. Her knowledge of the history of the School, combined with her interdisciplinary perspective, make her a respected voice in pondering and undertaking change. She is quite a remarkable person, and I cannot imagine the iSchool having evolved successfully without her care, concern, and extremely hard work to make it so over 40 years.

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Leigh S. Estabrook, Dean Emerita

Dean Emerita Leigh Estabrook gives remarks at the celebration.

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rofessor and Executive Associate Dean Linda C. Smith (MS ’72) has been named an Illinois Library Luminary by the Illinois Library Association (ILA). This distinction honors individuals whose efforts have made a significant contribution to Illinois libraries.

Smith’s nearly 50-year career began when she came to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Graduate School of Library Science (now the School of Information Sciences) in 1971 shortly after graduating summa cum laude in physics and mathematics from Allegheny College (PA). She received her MS from Illinois in 1972 and spent a year at Washington University School of Medicine Library in St. Louis as a trainee in computer librarianship. She then earned an MS in information and computer science from Georgia Institute of Technology in 1975 and a PhD from Syracuse University, School of Information Studies in 1979.

Currently, Smith serves as executive associate dean for the iSchool, where she began as an assistant professor in 1977. She has been routinely named to the University’s List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent throughout her tenure and was named a University Distinguished Teacher-Scholar in 1999. She works with graduate students on campus (MS, CAS, PhD) and, since 1997, online (MS, CAS).

A prolific writer, she has authored books, journal articles, chapters, reports, and conference papers, and has served as co-editor for five editions of Reference and Information Services: An Introduction (Libraries Unlimited). Her most recent publication is the co-authored chapter, “Transforming Library and Information Science Education by Design,” published in Advances in Librarianship (v. 44A, 2018). Smith is also the recipient of numerous awards, honors, fellowships, and grants. She has been an invited speaker in Finland, The Netherlands, Sweden, and throughout the United States.

Her memberships include the American Library Association, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Association for Information Science and Technology, Association for Library and Information Science Education, Association for Computing Machinery, Beta Phi Mu, Health Science Librarians of Illinois, Illinois Library Association, Medical Library Association, and Special Libraries Association, among others. She continues to serve on a variety of committees at the University and in professional associations, most recently as a member of the American Library Association's Committee on Accreditation.

-Courtesy of the Illinois Library Association

Front row: Professor Emerita Kathryn Luther Henderson and Associate Professor Emeritus William T Henderson. Back row: Professor Emeritus Donald Krummel, Adjunct Professor Fred Schlipf, Professor Emerita Betsy Hearne, and Professor Linda Smith

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Digital Preservation class assists the Carpentries with digital stewardship

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tudents enrolled in Postdoctoral Research Associate Rhiannon Bettivia’s Digital Preservation (IS 586) class can expect to work on real-life projects.

“Students in 586 are often pursuing a terminal professional degree,” Bettivia explained. “They are going to graduate and head off to be leaders in this field.”

Over the course of the summer and fall 2018 semesters, students in Bettivia’s class worked on a project for the Carpentries, a volunteer community of over one thousand instructors worldwide who are teaching scientists basic lab skills for research computing. The project came about after Elizabeth Wickes, iSchool lecturer and member of the Carpentries’ Executive Council, approached Bettivia about some challenges the Carpentries were facing as a uniquely large-scale distributed digital community.

“I devised a multi-semester set of projects that began last summer, given the scale of the Carpentries and their digital stewardship challenges,” Bettivia said. “Students were tasked with scoping and documenting the Carpentries’ digital footprint across a number of web-enabled platforms and breaking down these findings into functional series. After doing this, groups of students took a deeper look at selected series, including social media materials and assessment data as well as a particular GitHub [repository], to identify the digital stewardship challenges associated with the given platforms.”

At the end of the summer semester, students presented their findings to Carpentries employees and Executive Council members. Based on this initial work, the Carpentries identified one particular series that would serve as a pilot for future digital stewardship work. Students enrolled in Bettivia’s class last semester took on this task, becoming familiar with the output from the first leg of the project, researching the client, and splitting into five groups to interview different stakeholders within the Carpentries community.

“The fall 2018 students created visualizations of current workflows around a particular data stream at the Carpentries. In the second half of the semester, students changed groups to consolidate and share their findings from their various stakeholder meetings. In pooling their data, they created master workflows of current practice, and suggested changes that would ensure the longevity of the materials by crafting archival information package models and proposing workflow changes as well as using new tools and platforms,” Bettivia said.

Working on the Carpentries project, students learned technical skills around workflow modeling and the use of platforms and tools common to digital preservation. They also learned important executive skills, such as working with different stakeholders within real-world organizations, balancing time and communication when working with international clients, presenting specialist information to generalist audiences, and creating professional postconsultation write-ups.

“Working with the Carpentries was a valuable experience in consolidating information, client interaction, and how to come up with recommendations that best suits the Carpentries’ capacity as a nonprofit organization,” said MS/LIS student Miyuki Meyer.

According to Bettivia, working with actual clients prepares students by presenting them with the kind of work they might do in the future, while also providing valuable experiences and career preparation.

“Many students have taken a project from 586 and turned it into a line on a CV, a paragraph in a cover letter, an internship, a practicum, a fellowship, a grant application, or a job,” she said. “The students did a superlative job on the Carpentries project.

The challenge I set them was massive and thorny, and they more than rose to the occasion. I was truly impressed with their work.”

Visualizing UFO data leads to recognition in University-wide compeition

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ecent MS/IM graduate Suyash Singh received Honorable Mention in the Data Visualization Competition sponsored by the University of Illinois Library’s Scholarly Commons. The competition provided students with an opportunity to demonstrate their skills in visually communicating information.

Singh’s submission, “Wild for UFOs,” was developed as part of his final project for the iSchool’s Data Visualization (IS 590DV) course. The instructor, Assistant Professor Matthew Turk, provided the dataset, which is also accessible from the National UFO Research Center website.

“We were at liberty to use the tool of our choice to build an infographic with the insights derived from the dataset,” said Singh.

“I used Tableau Visualizations to create the infographic, and once the submission was done, I assembled the workbooks and created a Dashboard out of them.”

His interactive Tableau Dashboard features a map of the U.S. with UFO sightings represented based on their location, size, and time of day. The visualization also gives details about individual UFO sightings, like this sighting from 1977 that occurred in Illinois: “We saw a huge cigar-like metallic object that seemed to hang in the sky directly over the treetops.”

Singh noted that, among the observations he made about UFOs while working on the project, “It was very interesting to see that the number of UFO sightings recorded were at late night hours on the weekends; i.e., the drinking hours.”

2018 Downs Intellectual Freedom Award given to Iowa Library Association

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he Iowa Library Association (ILA) has received the 2018 Downs Intellectual Freedom Award for taking a leadership role in several highly visible challenges to intellectual freedom. The award is given annually by the faculty of the School of Information Sciences at Illinois and cosponsored by Libraries Unlimited.

The ILA and its Intellectual Freedom Committee (IFC) were cited for their sustained commitment. Three recent examples are: • 2015: For working with the American Library Association (ALA) Office for Intellectual Freedom to reinstate Sherman Alexie’s Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian in the Waterloo (IA) Community School District curriculum.

• 2017: For defending the retention of Peter Chbosky’s Perks of Being a Wallflower in the AP English curriculum of Hempstead High School in Dubuque after the book was challenged.

• 2018: For offering support and guidance to the Orange City Public Library following challenges to the inclusion of LGBTQ books in the library’s collection and a subsequent burning of those books by a nonresident that was shared on YouTube.

In addition, the ILA and IFC have taken a proactive approach to meeting threats to intellectual freedom and the First Amendment. They have partnered with the ACLU of Iowa to raise awareness of intellectual freedom issues and sponsored a session with trustees of Iowa libraries to discuss the importance of being proactive in a challengeprone environment and how to respond when challenges occur. Professor Terry Weech, a member of the Illinois iSchool faculty, noted that it was especially appropriate to honor the ILA’s sustained commitment to intellectual freedom, given the historical role of Iowa libraries in establishing the profession’s commitment to the principles of intellectual freedom.

“The American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights is based in part on the proclamation adopted in 1938 by the Des Moines Public Library Board to resist pressures to censor materials in their library,” Weech said.

A reception to honor the ILA was held in Seattle during the ALA Midwinter Meeting. Libraries Unlimited provided an honorarium for the recipient and cosponsored the reception.

The Robert B. Downs Intellectual Freedom Award is presented annually to acknowledge individuals or groups who have

furthered the cause of intellectual freedom, particularly as it affects libraries and information centers and the dissemination of ideas. Granted to those who have resisted censorship or efforts to abridge the freedom of individuals to read or view materials of their choice, the award may be given in recognition of a particular action or longterm interest in, and dedication to, the cause of intellectual freedom. The award was established in 1969 by the iSchool’s faculty to honor Robert Downs, a champion of intellectual freedom, on his twenty-fifth anniversary as director of the School.

With Libraries Unlimited, an imprint of ABC-CLIO, assuming cosponsorship of the award in 2012, ABC-CLIO has been dedicated to supporting the Downs Award for more than thirty years. As a publisher committed to advancing library professional development and independent critical thought, Libraries Unlimited and the entire ABC-CLIO family are strong advocates of intellectual freedom rights and the dissemination of all ideas. The iSchool at Illinois is honored to share sponsorship with Libraries Unlimited and appreciates the contributions it and the other imprints of ABC-CLIO have made in defending intellectual freedom through the years.

Members of the Iowa Library Association Board of Directors Back row (l-r): Jillian Rutledge, Waverly Public Library (incoming Director); Dara Schmidt, Cedar Rapids Public Library; Brianna Glenn, De Soto Public Library; Samantha Helmick, Burlington Public Library (ALA Councilor); Cara Stone, Iowa State University; Zach Stier, Ericson Public Library in Boone (incoming Director); Ryan Gjerde, Preus Library at Luther College Front row (l-r): Dan Chibnall, Cowles Library at Drake University (Vice-President/President-Elect); Tom Kessler, University of Northern Iowa (Treasurer); Mike Wright, Dubuque County Library District (President); Misty Gray, State Library of Iowa (Secretary); Mara Strickler, Algona Public Library (incoming Vice-President/President-Elect)

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Baby Monkey, Private Eye receives Gryphon Award Baby Monkey, Private Eye written by Brian Selznick and David Serlin and illustrated by Brian Selznic (Scholastic Press, 2018), is the winner of the 2019 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). The prize is awarded to the author of an outstanding Englishlanguage work of fiction or nonfiction for which the primary audience is children in kindergarten through fourth grade, and which 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 the literature that offers, in many different ways, originality, accessibility, and high quality for that audience.

“By making a few tweaks to familiar formats, Selznick and Serlin have created something new and irresistible,” said Deborah Stevenson, director of the CCB and editor of The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books. “Playful pages with huge print are paced for maximum momentum as the titular detective solves five different goofy mysteries, stopping along the way to have a snack and put on his pants. It’s a title that will segue neatly from read-aloud to read-alone and invite savvy older sibs to share reading with kids just getting the hang of narrative literacy. Selznick’s soft grayscale pencil art, with significant items picked out in red, maximizes the cuteness factor on Baby Monkey but also throws in sophisticated details (identified in a concluding key) that foreshadow each mystery and add seek-and-find entertainment for readers and their grown-ups.”

Two Gryphon Honors also were named: • Secret Sisters of the Salty Sea (Greenwillow/HarperCollins, 2018), written

and illustrated by Lynne Rae Perkins: Readers join Alix, her older sister, and their parents on a summer beach vacation for sunny days, yummy sweets, and family time. Perkins (who also illustrates in homey vignettes) writes with confiding intimacy and thoughtful accessibility; although there’s clear story arc, the chapters are each satisfying adventures in their own right, giving readers plenty of breathing space.

• Dear Substitute (Disney Hyperion, 2018), written by Liz Garton Scanlon and illustrated by Chris Raschka: In sixteen short entries written in direct address, our narrator chronicles the various disruptions and oddities that occur when a substitute comes to class, from troubles with the student roster to missed library time to changed class rules. Big print, simple vocabulary, and Raschka’s eye-catching watercolors make this an excellent choice for young readers.

“Kids who’ve mastered decoding words and letters are at a crucial ‘What’s next?’ stage, and the Gryphon Award answers that question,” Stevenson said. “It’s our mission and our pleasure to draw attention to the amazing books in a variety of genres that serve readers who are starting to stretch their reading muscles and find books to learn from and love.”

This year’s award committee consisted of Stevenson; Kate Quealy-Gainer, assistant editor of The Bulletin; and Elizabeth Bush, reviewer at The Bulletin, iSchool adjunct faculty member, and longtime school librarian.

The award is sponsored by CCB and funded by CCB’s Gryphon Fund. Income from the fund supports the annual Gryphon Lecture as well as the Gryphon Award for children’s literature.

Gifts may be made to the fund by contacting Jill Gengler in the iSchool Advancement Office at (217) 265-6252 or gengler@illinois.edu.

Wisniewski delivers 2019 Gryphon Lecture

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amela Wisniewski, iSchool research fellow and assistant professor in the College of Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Central Florida, delivered the 2019 Gryphon Lecture on March 8 at the iSchool. Sponsored annually by the CCB, the lecture features a leading scholar in the field of youth and literature, media, and culture. It is free and open to the campus and public.

In “Taking a Teen-Centric Approach to Adolescent Online Safety,” Wisniewski discussed her research into understanding adolescent online risk experiences and how teens cope with these risks, challenging some of the assumptions that have

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“My research shows that parents are often not authoritative figures when it comes to the risks their teens are experiencing online; thus, an over-reliance on parental mediation to ensure teen online safety may be problematic.”

—Pamela Wisniewski

been made about how to protect teens online.

“My research shows that parents are often not authoritative figures when it comes to the risks their teens are experiencing online; thus, an over-reliance on parental mediation to ensure teen online safety may be problematic,” said Wisniewski. “We may want to move toward new approaches that empower teens by enhancing their risk-coping, resilience, and self-regulatory behaviors, so that they can learn to more effectively protect themselves from online risks.”

Wisniewski graduated from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte with a PhD in computing and information systems and was a post-doctoral scholar at the Pennsylvania State University. She has over six years of industry experience as a systems developer/business analyst in the IT industry. Wisniewski’s research interests are situated at the juxtaposition of HCI, social computing, and privacy. Her goal is to frame privacy as a means to not only protect end users, but more importantly, to enrich online social interactions that individuals share with others. Her research has been featured by popular news media outlets, including ABC News, NPR, Psychology Today, and U.S. News and World Report.

Recent MS/LIS graduate Michael Pritz discusses his internship with NASA, which resulted in his full-time employment as a librarian with the agency.

What is your area of interest at the iSchool?

One of the best things about this program is the opportunity it offers students to explore a variety of different career paths. So even though my main area of interest is public libraries, I’ve always had it in the back of my mind to keep my options open no matter what, just because you never know what’s out there if your head is down.

Where do you work, and what is your role?

Since June, I’ve been a full-time Library & Archives intern at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The position is part of NASA’s Pathways Program, which is essentially their recruitment program for current students and recent graduates.

Langley’s Technical Library holds the largest aerospace collection in the entire country, so some of what I do involves helping scientists and engineers achieve their research objectives, whether that’s providing a comprehensive literature search on a particular topic or pointing them in the direction of a specific document. My main focus lately, however, has been redesigning the library’s website to make it more modern and user-friendly.

How did you find out about the position?

I learned about the position the same way I’ve learned about every other library job I’ve had in the past 2+ years—from the iSchool weekly newsletters.

What new skills have you acquired during your time with the organization?

We’re currently in the process of moving to a new building, so it’s been fascinating to witness firsthand just what an enormous undertaking it is to move an entire library collection from one place to another. Other

than that, I wouldn’t say that I’ve necessarily acquired new skills per se, but I’ve definitely gotten a chance to refine/expand upon skills I’ve acquired through class and/or previous jobs. For example, I knew nothing about web design prior to taking Web Design and Construction for Organizations (IS 590WDO) with Diane Kovacs. That class gave me the tools to be able to come here and feel confident heading the library’s web design effort.

Likewise, I didn’t have a very good understanding of how databases at libraries were structured or even accessed prior to taking Information Organization and Access (IS 501) with Linda Smith. That class gave me the skills to be able to navigate my way around all the various technical databases and repositories offered by NASA’s library. Aside from that, I’ve also acquired a lot of new nerdy/ scientific technical jargon, which is always fun.

What do you like best about working at the organization?

Well, it’s NASA, so there are a lot of really cool extracurricular things happening all the time, especially for the interns. Since I’ve been here, I’ve seen the original site where the Apollo Moon landings were first simulated, walked inside an enormous Subsonic Wind Tunnel, and signed a birthday card for Katherine Johnson. Just this past week I got to hang out in one of the theaters at the center and watch the live feed from the InSight landing on Mars, which was kind of surreal. Overall, I would say the atmosphere at Langley is very similar to that of a college campus. Plus the people here are also really great, too—especially the folks I work with in the library.

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Alumni

Four alumni named 2019 Movers and Shakers

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our iSchool alumni are included in Library Journal’s 2019 class of Movers & Shakers, an annual list that recognizes fifty professionals who are transforming what it means to be a librarian. Jarrett Dapier (MS ’15) and Gwen Evans (MS ’02) were honored in the Change Agents category; Heather Thompson (MS ’13) was honored in the Educators category; and Anton Chuppin (MS ’99) was honored in the Digital Developers category.

Dapier is a young adult librarian at the Skokie (IL) Public Library. His interest in social justice and theater has led him to produce both his own original work and adaptations starring local teens, who are recruited for roles and crew positions in the library’s teen volunteer program. He is currently producing a stage adaptation of Andrea Davis Pinkney’s poetic tribute to Martin Luther King’s life and death. His theatrical adaptation of Chris Crutcher’s YA novel, The Sledding Hill, is avail-

able for free download through the ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom.

Evans is executive director of the 118member academic library consortium OhioLINK. She and her deputy director, Amy Pawlowski, negotiated statewide electronic textbook pricing agreements with six publishers that resulted in an estimated $39.7 million annual savings for students attending higher education institutions in Ohio. Evans devised the overall strategy, reached out to major campus stakeholders, and led marketing and implementation efforts.

Thompson is a youth services programming librarian at the Kenosha (WI) Public Library. She and Heather Beverley, children’s services assistant manager for the Cook Memorial Public Library District in Libertyville (IL) created a blog, STEMinlibraries.com, which provides librarians worldwide with turnkey STEAM (science, technology, engi-

neering, arts, mathematics) programming.

Each post contains information on how to run the program, experiments and the science behind them, supply lists, and suggestions on how to adjust activities to make them age-appropriate.

Chuppin is manager of IT interfaces at the Calgary Public Library (CPL) in Canada.

He led the development of a staff web interface to integrate and simplify all library, staff, and user transactions and interactions.

Chuppin and his design team met with staff across 20 library branches throughout Calgary to understand their needs and practices. According to Roberta Kuzyk-Burton, learning and development specialist at CPL, with the new interface, “Staff are spending less time using the technology and can concentrate more on providing higher level customer service and delivering more programming and outreach.”

Siegel recommends mentorship to busy professionals

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erving as a mentor for iSchool students has been a rewarding experience for Leora Siegel (MS ’91), senior director of the Chicago Botanic Garden’s Lenhardt Library.

“My experiences over the past two decades as a librarian have provided insight into the profession, and I’m happy to share my knowledge if it can benefit a student or new grad or new professional, figuring out the path they wish to take,” she said.

Since 2000, Siegel has worked in various capacities at the Lenhardt Library, which is focused on plants and the natural world. The Library has a renowned rare book collection, circulating book collection, kids’ corner, and science library for scientists and graduate students in a joint plant biology and conservation program at Northwestern University. The library offers many public programs, including four rare book exhibits each year with associated talks, a seed library, and “one-book one-garden” book discussions.

“Collaborations are vital for a small research library, and as such we have a membership in the Chicago Collections Consortium supporting our institutional archives and a partnership in the Biodiversity Heritage Library focused on our digitizing efforts for the rare book collection,” Siegel said. “With two digitization grants underway right now (from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Illinois State Library) there is always important work that needs attention.”

She highly recommends the iSchool mentorship program to other alumni, noting that the minimal time commitment makes mentoring “workable for those with a busy schedule.”

“In one semester there are three halfhour Skype calls with targeted questions and one optional on-site visit. By the end of the semester, I got to know my mentee and her career aspirations, and we are keeping in touch,” Siegel said.

She encourages students to find mentors in their fields of interest to get a better sense of the day-to-day responsibilities. In addition to helping students determine whether they have made the right career choice, the mentor program allows students to explore options they hadn’t considered and interact with the iSchool’s alumni network.

“Additionally, it’s always good to have another person to call on for a job reference,” Siegel said.

Ross brings University history to life at Illinois

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s coordinator of history and traditions programs for the University of Illinois Alumni Alliance (UIAA), Ryan Ross (MS ’10) is a curator, educator, and storyteller. His position was created in 2015 to curate exhibits for a campus welcome center that was under development at the Alice Campbell Alumni Center, develop public programming related to the history of the University, and serve as an advocate for University history. After nearly three years of work, the completed welcome center—known as the Richmond Family Welcome Gallery— opened at the Alice Campbell Alumni Center in October 2018 during Homecoming Week. Since October, more than 13,000 people have visited the Center’s exhibits.

His job involves reading widely about University history and current news related to the University, with the goal of identifying topics that will appeal to a general audience.

Thereafter, he develops a plan for the best way to communicate those stories.

“I am naturally interested in just about everything, so having a job that is focused on telling stories about such a vast and impactful institution is perfect for me,” Ross said. “I get to do so many interesting things

from day to day, like pretending I’m Indiana Jones and exploring attics and basements and dirty storage rooms all over campus in search of artifacts. I get to interview alumni and students of all ages and backgrounds who have such infectious passion for this place and a legion of experiences that I am always excited to share with visitors.”

In addition to his work at the Richmond Family Welcome Gallery, Ross develops public programming related to University history. His activities include planning the annual Mt. Hope and Roselawn Cemetery Walk, a living history theater event in which costumed actors portray people from University and local history who are buried in the large cemetery on the south side of campus.

“Throughout the 90-minute walking tour, the audience meets six to eight characters along the route and learns about their lives from dramatic monologues. I select the characters, conduct the research, write the scripts, cast and direct the actors, choose the costumes, and manage the logistics of the event. Growing up, I wanted to be a film director, and though it’s not exactly the same, being the creative director of a live theater event that I make up from scratch is kind of a dream come true,” he said.

Ross has an ongoing lecture series about University history that he delivers to local groups and alumni clubs around the country, and he has also taught a course on University

history through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Illinois.

It was his love of reading and learning— along with his girlfriend’s (now wife’s) encouragement—that prompted Ross to enroll in the MS/LIS program after completing his bachelor’s degree in English at Illinois.

In his first semester of the master’s program, he found a graduate assistantship in the University Library’s Illinois History and Lincoln Collections, which set him on his future career path.

“My first day there I processed a collection of Civil War letters, and that was it for me,” he said. “I knew I was going to be an archivist, which I did not realize was an option until it sort of fell into my lap. I had always loved history, and with my meticulous nature and knack for describing things, I felt ideally suited for it. Taking a practicum with University Archivist Bill Maher and being a part of his shop for a semester further cemented my feeling that I was making the right choice.”

Ross is happy to be working for his alma mater in a job that is rewarding and “never boring.” His advice to iSchool students is to build and maintain relationships with classmates, faculty, and staff and to take as many different kinds of iSchool courses as possible.

“I have the opportunity to shine a light on people, events, and stories from University history that deserve to be better known,” he said. “I feel very lucky to do what I do, at a place that means so much to me.”

Crop scientist Cyril Hopkins in the Morrow Plots, 1904

The first University building, “The Elephant,” 1874

Altgeld Hall, 2016

Photo courtesy of University of Illinois Archives, RS 39/2/20, AGR-6-26.

Photo courtesy of University of Illinois Alumni Alliance.

Photo courtesy of University of Illinois Public Affairs.

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Class Notes

Decade: 2010s Emily Adams (MS ’17) is moving to the Bloomington, Illinois, area to begin work as the Tri-Valley Elementary School librarian. She will be with the K-3 students twice a week, teaching library and technology skills.

DoMonique Arnold (MS ’12), librarian at the University of Illinois Laboratory High School, has been awarded the J. Frederick Miller Award from the University YMCA for her volunteer work throughout the Champaign-Urbana community.

Tegan Beese (MS ’18) has been appointed to the 2020 Michael L. Printz Award Committee.

Lizzy Boden (MS ’18), head of adult services at North Riverside Library, is the recipient of the Illinois Library Association’s 2019 Robert P. Doyle Conference Grant for Support Staff.

Midori Clark (MS ’17) has started a new job as the director of Library and Cultural Services for the city of Aurora, Colorado.

Alyssa Denneler (MS ’18) accepted a position as the Scholars’ Commons librarian at Indiana University, where she will create programming for graduate students, while also serving at the reference desk and as part of the library’s social media team.

Tracy Drake (MS ’15), archivist/librarian for the Chicago Public Library, has received a scholarship from EBSCO Information Services and the American Library Association (ALA) to attend the ALA Annual Conference.

Brian Flota’s (MS ’13) essay titled,“How I Left My PhD in English Behind and Learned to Love the Stacks,” was recently published as part of a collection of essays in Succeeding Outside the Academy: Career Paths beyond the Humanities, Social Sciences, and STEM (2018, Joseph Fruscione and Kelly J. Baker, eds.).

Mandi Goodsett (MS ’13), performing arts & humanities librarian at Cleveland State University, was recently elected vice president/presidentelect of the Academic Library Association of Ohio.

She is also serving on the ALA Steering Committee for Organizational Effectiveness and as an instructor for the Open Textbook Network’s OER Librarianship Certification program.

Sarah Hayes (MS ’18) started her first post-master’s position as a graduate research assistant in the Research Library at Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Nicole Helregel (MS ’13, CAS ’15) accepted the position of student success librarian at Purchase College (SUNY).

Since August 2018, Clair Irwin (MS ’16, CAS ’18) has led the Illinois chapter of #insulin4all. With the help of other volunteers, she has advocated for stronger oversight of the pharmaceutical industry in light of the insulin crisis.

Megan Jackson (MS ’17) began a new job as a full-time youth librarian with the Austin (TX) Public Library in January 2019.

Jennifer Jacobsen-Wood (MS ’13) became branch manager of Peoria Public Library’s North Branch in January 2019. Previously, she was head of technical services at Alpha Park Public Library in Bartonville, Illinois.

Jesse Lambertson (MS ’12) helped form the Special Libraries Association’s Diversity, Inclusion, Community, Equity Caucus (DICE) in 2018 and has helped lead the caucus since its formation.

Samip Mallick (MS ’11), co-founder of the South Asian American Digital Arcive (SAADA), spoke at Syracuse University as part of the celebration of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.

Cameron Riesenberger (MS ’16) has been selected to serve on the committee for the 2020 Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature.

Miguel Ruiz (MS ’13) has been elected a director at large of the Illinois Library Association (ILA). He serves as the information services supervisor at Skokie (IL) Public Library.

A new book edited by Jane Sandberg (MS ’13), Ethical Questions in Name Authority Control, was published by Library Juice Press in March.

Laura Sheets (MS ’12) accepted a tenure-track position as assistant professor/reference & instruction librarian at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

Yasmeen Shorish (MS ’11) was awarded $89,000 by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to convene a national forum to address key opportunities and challenges in building a collective collection-development system for open access content.

In March 2018, Harsh Mangal (MS ’18) started a full-time position as a data engineer at Denodo Technologies in Chicago.

Natalie (Bazan) Starosta (MS ’10) began as director of the North Riverside (IL) Public library in February 2018, married her husband James in May, and is expecting her first child in March 2019.

Matt Matkowski (MS ’18) has been appointed as a committee associate to the ALA Committee on Legislation for the 2019-2021 term.

Jon Sweitzer-Lamme (MS ’17) participated in the 2018 inaugural residency program at the Library of Congress.

Katie Noonan (MS ’10) is an elementary school librarian in Oak Park, Illinois, spending her days teaching about books, digital citizenship, robots, STEAM, informational literacy, and more.

Elise Tanner (MS ’15) started working as the director of digital projects and initiatives at the Center for Arkansas History and Culture, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, in October 2018.

Thomas Padilla (MS ’14), currently visiting digital research services librarian at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, will join OCLC Research as practitioner researcher-in-residence. In this sixmonth position, he will investigate and facilitate OCLC’s engagement with the library data science community and will help inform OCLC’s research agenda.

Amanda Todd (MS ’17) recently began a new position as director of the Dominy Memorial Library in Fairbury, Illinois. She is excited to serve her hometown community.

William Pooler (MS ’15) returned to his home state of Maine as a lecturer in the John Mitchell Center for Science, Technology, and Health at the University of Southern Maine.

Ted Quiballo (MS ’17), user support specialist associate and instructional technologies librarian at Northwestern University, was named the ACRL Member of the Week in mid-March.

Hilary Rains (MS ’14) is starting her third year as the youth services manager at the Lincoln Library in Springfield, Illinois.

Lisa Vallen (MS ’16) has accepted a position as the Southern Labor Archivist at Georgia State University.

Beth Vredenburg (MS ’11) is the new director of the Leonia Public Library in Leonia, New Jersey.

Decade: 2000s Melissa Cragin (PhD ’09) has been named chief strategist for the San Diego Supercomputer Center’s Research Data Services group at the University of California San Diego.

Adriana Cuervo (MS ’05) will become the inaugural head of Archival Collections and Services at Rutgers–Newark. In this position, she will be responsible for the day-to-day operations of the Institute of Jazz Studies as well as the newly established Dana Archives.

Lora Del Rio (MS ’08) began working at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) as humanities librarian in 2013. As of March 2019, she has been appointed as a tenured member of the SIUE faculty and promoted to associate professor.

In December 2018, Bethany Corbett (MS ’99) was named chief branch officer for the Orange County Library System in Orlando, Florida, where she will be responsible for administering seven of the fifteen branch locations.

Sarah Erekson (MS ’04) joined Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida as the new regional government documents librarian. She is the regional coordinator for the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) in Florida, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Elizabeth Dupuis (MS ’92) received the 2018 Distinguished Librarian Award from the Librarians’ Association of the University of California, Berkeley.

Heyworth CUSD #4 District Librarian Michelle Harris (MS ’07) received a 2019 Excellence Award from the Illinois Education Association Region 62.

She has been the district librarian, a solo librarian serving two libraries, for thirteen years.

A new book by Margaret Heller (MS ’08), Community Technology Projects: Making Them Work, was recently published by ALA Editions.

Robin Miller (MS ’09) and Kate Hinnant (MS ’02) coauthored the book, Making Surveys Work for Your Library: Guidance, Instructions, and Examples (Libraries Unlimited/ABC-CLIO).

A debut collection of poetry by Matthew Murrey (MS ’03) titled Bulletproof was published by Jacar Press in February 2019. It was selected by Marilyn Nelson as the winner of Jacar’s 2018 Full-Length Book Contest.

Safiya Noble (MS ’09, PhD ’12) was featured on “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee” for her work, Algorithms of Oppression.

Juliana Perry (MS ’09) began a new job as enterprise project manager in Information Technology at the University of the Sciences.

Catherine (Cathy) Ritchie (CAS ’00) will retire as adult materials selector for the Dallas (TX) Public Library in July 2019.

Megan (Finn) Senseney (MS ’08) joined the University of Arizona Libraries as the head of the Office of Digital Innovation and Stewardship in January 2019.

Bethany Thompson (MS ’05) achieved National Board Certification in Library Media.

Erica Voell (MS ’09) recently started as a youth services librarian at the Johnson County Library in Overland Park, Kansas.

Decade: 1990s Jennifer Beuche (MS ’94), director of KidSpace at the Gail Borden Public Library District, received the 2018 Davis Cup Award from the Illinois Library Association in recognition of her contribution to library services for youth.

Heather Jagman (MS ’96) has been elected secretary/treasurer of the Illinois Association of College & Research Libraries Forum (IACRL). She is the coordinator of reference, instruction, and academic engagement at DePaul University Library.

James L. McMillan (MS ’95) has transitioned from the Board of Trustees of the Disciples of Christ Historical Society (DCHS) to an archival associate position at DCHS. Allen Merry (MS ’92) received the 2018 AFSCME District Council 47 Union Member of the Year Award in December in recognition of his advocacy for Free Library of Philadelphia employees in his role as chief steward of Local 2186.

Pamela M. Salela (MS ’99) is currently the chair of the Women & Gender Studies Section of the ACRL. She continues to coordinate the Central Illinois Nonprofit Resource Center in Brookens Library at the University of Illinois Springfield and is co-teaching a course in the Capital Scholars Honors Program that she developed based on community informatics.

Amanda E. Standerfer (MS ’99) is now the director of development and promotion for The Urbana Free Library after working in the philanthropic sector since 2013. She also continues her library consulting work through Fast Forward Libraries, specializing in strategic planning, fundraising, and coaching.

director of the Lakeland Library Cooperative in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

A new book by Dee Michel (MS ’82), Friends of Dorothy: Why Gay Boys and Gay Men Love The Wizard of Oz, was recently published by Dark Ink Press.

Decade: 1970s Emily Batista (MS ’77) has been working at Penn Libraries for nearly 35 years. Her husband, David Batista (MS ’82), passed away on May 31, 2018, from complications from metastatic cancer.

Wanda Dole (MS ’75) passed away on November 23, 2018. She held library positions at several universities and was the dean of the Ottenheimer Library at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Joan Herron (MS ’75) is retired after 35 years at Eureka (IL) High School. She is currently working part time at Eureka Public Library.

In 2018, Don Kaiser (MS ’78) moved to Powell, Ohio, a Columbus suburb near OCLC. He is now retired and keeping busy with Rotary and being a volunteer with the Red Cross.

David Tyckoson (MS ’78) writes,“Forty years ago when I graduated, I knew that libraries were in for some changes, but never expected the amount and range of innovations that have happened since then. This is a great time to be a librarian— and it is just going to get better.”

Michael Widener (MS ’74) moderated a national Webinar in July 2018 for the American Bar Association on the New Localism and marijuana law. He is an adjunct professor of business law and ethics at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona.

Decade: 1960s

Decade: 1980s

Barbara Swain (MS ’66) passed away on November 24, 2018.

After twenty-plus years of serving public libraries in the Chicago area, Carol Dawe (MS ’84) is now

Don E. Wood (MS ’65) passed away at home in McMinnville, Tennessee, on January 9, 2019.

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Vera Vasileva and Tom Kuipers met in IS 501 (Information Organization and Access). Vasileva is from Russia, and Kuipers said his thick use of slang and jargon in his speech threw her off but “made conversation fun.”

After their class ended, they kept in touch, going out for tea and playing sports at the rec center. Their first date was a New Year’s Eve concert at the Canopy Club, and they have been together ever since. The couple graduated on May 12 and got married in Crown Point, Indiana, on May 18. They are looking for employment in the library field, preferably within an academic institution.

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