Intersections winter 2017

Intersections

Winter 2017

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

Winter 2017 School of Information Sciences University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Published by the iSchool Communications Office. For more information or to submit story ideas, please contact brya@illinois.edu.

Dean: Allen H. Renear Editor: Cindy Ashwill Managing Editor: Cindy Brya Contributing Writers: Cindy Ashwill, Cindy Brya Photography: Cindy Brya, L. Brian Stauffer, Thompson-McClellan Photography, University Library, Lisa Watkins Design: Pat Mayer

Intersections

Contents

Welcome Weekend

3

Data Science Day

10

Building relationships

12

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.

Academic Librarian of the Year

14

News Stepping down: A letter from the dean

2

Gengler brings knowledge, expertise to alumni affairs role

3

Welcome Weekend promotes community building for online students

3

Knox edits book on trigger warnings

4

Twidale named Outstanding Information Science Teacher by ASIS&T

5

Weech honored for contribution to IFLA and the library profession

5

Two new lecturers join the iSchool

6

Williams returns as student coordinator and advisor

6

McDowell honored for storytelling work with Prairie Rivers Network

7

iSchool offers professional development opportunity for school librarians

7

Research Inaugural Data Science Day on Urbana campus

8

Turk’s yt project receives NSF grant to expand to multiple science domains

8

iSchool faculty release white paper on preserving intangible cultural heritage

9

Features iSchool students receive diversity scholarships

10

Get to know our PhD students

10

Summer program lets student experience graduate study at iSchool

11

Leep student and library mentor Vivian Alvarez brings tabletop gaming to the library

11

Alumna builds relationships in India through global program

12

Students complete digital preservation, digital musicology projects in England

12

iSchool students discover community engagement in Russia

12

McCarthy enhances campus accessibility through new web app

13

Winning startup team at Campus 1871 includes iSchool student

13

Alumni Ruan receives ILA Academic Librarian of the Year Award

14

Smith celebrates 40 years at the iSchool

14

ISAA honors 2017 award recipients

15

iSchool alumna to head Rare Book and Manuscript Library

15

Class Notes Grants Giving Campus launches “With Illinois” campaign

16-17 18-19

20

In Memoriam: Mildred Luther

20

Travel fund to honor Dolan’s memory, support student discovery

21

Scholarship recipient balances coursework and military career

21

News

Intersections Winter 2017

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Stepping down: A letter from the dean

“ This is a uniquely exciting time for our School as we evolve our new programs and prepare for an expanded leadership role on campus and in the field.”

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n August 2018, the start of the next academic year, I will step down from my role as dean, completing a term of six and a half years, and return to the iSchool faculty.

I joined the iSchool as a faculty member in 2001 and became immediately dedicated to its mission in the world. So it has consequently been a great honor and privilege to have had the opportunity to serve my School. A very rewarding part of my role has been working with our alumni.

I have mixed feelings about this, needless to say. The time seems to me to have gone by very quickly, and it may seem that way to you as well. But I am already past the median tenure for college deans, and I am the longest in office of all 12 deans here at the University.

There are in fact a number of reasons why the 2018-2019 academic year will be a good time to make the transition to a new dean: • First, we have a very attractive situation to offer a potential new dean. We are a top-ranked school with exciting new programs, a solid financial foundation, terrific faculty and staff, a redesigned administrative organization, and many new opportunities for leadership both in the field and at the University.

• The best potential new deans will want to contribute to a school that is stable but still provides opportunities for continued evolution. This is where we are now. In not too long, though, we will complete our current agenda of growth and reach an appropriate size, with our new programs fully organized and a much expanded staff and faculty. After that, change will probably be more incremental.

• Given the rapid ongoing growth and transformation of our School, we will soon need a dean whose career is focused primarily on academic administration and leadership. While I’ve been devoted to the administration and evolution of our School these last few years, I am also looking forward to returning to my students and my research.

The University will be convening a national search for a new dean and we expect to have the person selected in place when I step down in August.

This is a uniquely exciting time for our School as we evolve our new programs and prepare for an expanded leadership role on campus and in the field. It is also a uniquely fulfilling time as we advance our mission and better support the communities we serve.

Thank you for the help you have given me and for your loyalty to and support for our School.

We’re looking forward to a great year and a great future.

Sincerely,

Allen H. Renear, Dean

Intersections Spring 2017

3 Gengler brings knowledge, expertise to alumni affairs role

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lumna and longtime staff member Jill Gengler (MS ’99) has been named director of alumni affairs for the iSchool. In her new role, she manages alumni engagement and programming, collaborating closely with other units in the iSchool and on campus.

Gengler, who began working at the iSchool after earning her MS degree in library and information science, has held positions of increasing responsibility, serving most recently as Help Desk manager. With nearly twenty years of experience in student support roles, she has developed strong connections with iSchool graduates as well as valuable institutional knowledge and administrative skills. She is passionate about the School, its mission, and the community of faculty, staff, students, and alumni who contribute to its ongoing success.

“I’ve always enjoyed building relationships with our students,” said Gengler. “I love to hear what’s brought people to the iSchool, what people are studying, and what kind of experiences they’re having while they’re a part of our community. I do my best to keep track of people as they graduate and move on— social media has been a great help.”

With a BA in teaching of social science from the University of Illinois, Gengler taught high school history in Danville, Illinois, before moving to the Chicago suburbs. She was working part time as a circulation assistant in the St. Charles Public Library when she enrolled in the Leep program. She served as a graduate assistant while earning her MS degree, and thereafter as the School’s computer assisted instruction specialist, manager of instructional technology, and for the past ten years, Help Desk manager.

In 2013, Gengler was honored by the iSchool’s alumni association with the Distinguished Service Award, which recognized her commitment to developing a strong sense of community both within the School and with alumni.

Gengler, who began her new position in August, looks forward to connecting with alumni and listening to their stories. “I have enjoyed the opportunity to work with so many people, and I’m excited to get to know more of the alumni who came before me.”

Leep Welcome Weekend replaces the initial seven-day residency for online MS/LIS students, affectionately known as Boot Camp. Students are now able to complete all degree requirements online, including IS 502 (Libraries, Information, and Society), which had previously been completed during the seven-day residency.

The weekend has been a hit with Leep students, who enjoy mingling with faculty, talking with their peers, and connecting with alumni. Students have commented that these experiences make them feel more connected to the School and the University.

“The success of this model lies not only in the hands of those faculty and staff who developed and participated in it, but more importantly, it lies in the energetic engagement the students themselves brought to the weekend. We look forward to working with students, faculty, and staff to continue to evolve the weekend to ensure Leep students are well prepared to be academically successful, to feel like a part of the iSchool community, and to begin to develop important professional relationships with their peers and colleagues,” said Meg Edwards, assistant dean for student affairs.

Welcome Weekend promotes community building for online students

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ighty Leep students traveled to campus from eleven states for the iSchool’s third Welcome Weekend on September 21-24. During the course of the weekend, Leep students interacted with faculty and fellow classmates over meals and social activities and attended workshops on a variety of topics as well as professional development sessions. On Saturday, students selected which workshops they wanted to attend—options included such topics as career strategies, creating a professional web presence, and technology in libraries.

4 Intersections Winter 2017

News

Knox edits book on trigger warnings “Controversies over trigger warnings have been percolating in academia for quite some time, but there has not been a comprehensive, scholarly overview of their history and use in the classroom.”

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n Assistant Professor Emily Knox’s information policy course (IS 590IP), one of the assignments involves reading about workers in developing countries whose job is to censor objectionable photos posted on social media. The article includes graphic descriptions of some of the photos. Is a trigger warning warranted before assigning the reading to the class?

The use of trigger warnings in college and university classrooms has been a subject of heated debate in recent years. The question of whether an instructor should alert his or her students to the fact that a piece of material they will be reading or viewing in class could be potentially distressing is complex.

Knox takes a comprehensive look at trigger warnings in her edited book, Trigger Warnings: History, Theory, Context, which was recently published by Rowman & Littlefield. The book provides the historical context and theory behind trigger warnings as well as case studies from instructors and students describing when trigger warnings were and were not used.

“Trigger Warnings is a nuanced look at the background and practice of the hot academic intellectual freedom topic of the day,” said James LaRue (MS ’81), director of the American Library Association Office for Intellectual Freedom. “The contributors don’t always agree with each other, but they do provide a thoughtful introduction to the concerns—and the classroom reality—of a shift to a more student-centered and consciously inclusive educational style.”

“Controversies over trigger warnings have been percolating in academia for quite some time, but there has not been a comprehensive, scholarly overview of their history and use in the classroom,” explained Knox. “My goal was to present a wide range of analyses and cases studies in the book, and my research in intellectual freedom and contemporary reading practices helped me approach the topic with a nuanced point of view. Ultimately I believe that trigger warn-

ings are about relationships, and I do give a ‘heads up’ before the Wired article mentioned above because I think it is a good practice and helps to maintain a caring and respectful classroom atmosphere with my students.”

Knox joined the iSchool faculty in 2012.

Her research interests include intellectual freedom and censorship, the intersection of print culture and reading practices, and information ethics and policy. Her book, Book Banning in 21st-Century America, which addresses challenges to materials in public libraries and schools, was published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2015. In 2016 she was elected to the Board of Directors of the National Coalition Against Censorship.

Knox received her PhD from the doctoral program at the Rutgers University School of Communication and Information, and she earned her master’s in library and information science from the iSchool at Illinois.

Knox elected ASIS&T director-at-large

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ssistant Professor Emily Knox has been elected to the Board of Directors of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T). Her three-year term as a director-at-large began on November 1, 2017.

ASIS&T is a professional organization that seeks to discover new theories, practices, and tools to improve information access. Founded in 1937, today the group boasts an international membership representing fifty countries. ASIS&T publishes the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology.

“I’m looking forward to serving on the ASIS&T board and working to strengthen the association’s mission to improve access to information for all,” said Knox on the occasion of her appointment.

Intersections Winter 2017

5 Twidale named Outstanding Information Science Teacher by ASIS&T

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rofessor Michael Twidale, program director for the MS in information management, is the 2017 recipient of the Outstanding Information Science Teacher Award from the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T). The award recognizes Twidale’s unique teaching contributions through his methods of explaining highly technical material to students in various learning environments.

According to nominator Linda C. Smith, professor and executive associate dean, Twidale “has been an outstanding information science teacher throughout his twenty years at Illinois, with his impact extending literally around the world. In courses such as Interfaces to Information Systems, Entrepreneurial IT Design, and Museum Informatics, whether face to face, online, or hybrid, he consistently performs as a master teacher with a strong commitment to students.”

Twidale regularly appears on the List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent issued by the campus each semester. In addition, for his accomplishments in teaching online, he was recognized in 2009 with the Campus Award for Excellence in Off-Campus Teaching.

“While mentored by him, I’ve seen Professor Twidale teach in various contexts—

instructing in class, leading workshops, and one-on-one advising,” said Peter Organisciak (PhD ’15), assistant professor in the Department of Research Methods and Information Science at the University of Denver.

“Throughout this time, he’s demonstrated creativity, engagement, and inclusiveness with remarkable consistency.”

Twidale is an expert in computer-supported cooperative work, collaborative technologies in digital libraries and museums, user interface design and evaluation, information visualization, and museum informatics. In her letter of nomination, Smith notes that Twidale considers his role as a teacher as designing learning experiences, an activity similar to the design of user experiences that he studies and undertakes in his own research.

“There is no better way to learn a new technology than through experimentation, and Mike has an amazing ability to provide his students with the kind of ‘sandbox’ they need to play around with new technologies safely, without the fear that something will go wrong. His students experience a kind of ‘learning by doing’ that provides them with the confidence to master new skills while also producing an end product or outcome that

they can proudly show off to their friends, family, and colleagues. I find myself using these same techniques in my own courses to help my own students develop new skills and engage with new concepts,” said Paul Marty (PhD ’02), professor in the School of Information at Florida State University.

Likewise, Andrea Thomer (PhD ’17), assistant professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan, confirmed the farreaching impact of Twidale’s efforts. “Mike is one of the finest educators I have ever had the honor of learning from and collaborating with. His teaching style informs my teaching, and my research, every single day. He has helped shape scores of library and information scientists into the creative information professionals they are today.”

Twidale received the award this fall at the 2017 ASIS&T Annual Meeting in Washington DC. “I am thrilled to receive this award from my professional association. It is an honor to be recognized for my efforts in developing innovative methods to engage and inspire students,” Twidale said.

Weech honored for contribution to IFLA and the library profession

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ssociate Professor Terry Weech has been awarded a Scroll of Appreciation by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) for “his distinguished contribution to IFLA and the library profession, especially in the internationalization of library and information science education.” Weech received the honor at the closing session of the IFLA World Library and Information Congress on August 25 in Wroclaw, Poland.

His record of service to IFLA includes chairing the Division on Research and Education and the Section on Education and Training, co-chairing the Satellite Meeting Planning Committee for IFLA 2016, and serving as an elected member of the Library Theory and Research Section Standing Committee.

Weech’s research interests include the areas of reference services and sources, government information, library administration, library cooperation and networks, library use instruction, and economics of information. His teaching experience includes appointments at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Emporia State University (Kansas); University of Iowa, Iowa City; and Mississippi University for Women in Columbus. At the iSchool, Weech teaches Economics of Information (IS 549); International Librarianship (IS 585); and Libraries, Information, and Society (IS 502). In addition to his service to IFLA, he has been active in the American Library Association (ALA), and he has been involved in the administration of the Robert B. Downs Intellectual Freedom Award reception at the ALA Midwinter meeting for nearly twenty years. Weech received his MS and PhD degrees in library and information science from the iSchool at Illinois.

6 Intersections Winter 2017

News

Williams returns as student coordinator and advisor John Weible

Elizabeth Wickes

Two new lecturers join the iSchool

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he iSchool welcomed two new lecturers this summer. Elizabeth Wickes (MS ’16) began her position as lecturer on June 16, and John Weible began his position as senior lecturer on July 16. They will contribute to the development and teaching of information technology-related courses for both the MS in library and information science (MS/LIS) and MS in information management (MS/IM) programs.

Wickes came to the iSchool from the University Library, where she worked for the past two years as a data curation specialist. Prior to starting her MS/LIS studies, she held positions as project coordinator, data curator, and curation manager with WolframAlpha in Champaign. As an iSchool student, Wickes served as a research assistant in the Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship (CIRSS).

This past year, she taught Foundations of Information Processing (IS 452) as an adjunct lecturer. Since 2013, she has served as co-organizer of the Champaign-Urbana Python User Group.

“I am very interested in understanding how programming is learned, particularly by students and researchers from the humanities and arts. So working with combinations of MS/LIS and MS/IM students is perfect,” said Wickes.

Wickes is a certified instructor for Software Carpentry, a volunteer organization whose goal is to teach scientists basic lab skills for research computing. “I was able to gain my certification during my MS/LIS coursework at the iSchool because of the

wonderful flexibility of our program. I look forward to continuing that instruction in our campus community,” she said.

Weible worked for the University Library from 1998-2010 as a network analyst, director of library systems, and manager of IT infrastructure and software development.

Beginning in 2010, he served as cofounder and president of Sharp Moon Inc., which developed and provides the Callisto service to assist research libraries with management of e-content. Since 2012, he also has been an iSchool adjunct lecturer, teaching Introduction to Databases (IS 490DB) on campus and online. Most recently, he taught Foundations of Information Processing (IS 452).

“This fall, I started a new course, Programming for Analytics and Data Processesing (IS 590PR), which is aimed at deepening students’ programming skills, especially the aspects that lead to higher quality code and better collaborative development,” Weible said. “Originally, we were targeting only students who had taken IS 452 or one or two other programming classes, but an interesting challenge is that many of our incoming MS/IM students already have a degree in computer science or some professional programming experience. I’m working on how to leverage their collective and varied experience, through group work to better simulate real-world team development situations.”

Wickes and Weible look forward to teaching full time and sharing their real-world experience and technical expertise with iSchool students.

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essica Williams (MS ’13) joined the School on August 16 as a graduate student coordinator and academic advisor. In this role, she will provide academic advising and program planning for MS/IM students as well as work with Michael Twidale, professor and MS/IM program director, and others to continue to evolve the program.

Williams holds a master’s degree in English from the University of Georgia and a bachelor’s degree in English from Auburn University. She decided to pursue her MS in library and information science following a recommendation from one of her professors about the collaborative nature of the field. Williams recently started her Certificate of Advanced Study at the iSchool with the goal of enhancing her expertise in the management of electronic records and digital archives.

Prior to joining the iSchool staff, Williams worked at the University’s Facilities and Services division as a records and information management coordinator, a job that evolved from the graduate assistantship she held there as an MS/LIS student.

“One of the things I really enjoyed in my previous position was talking to graduate students about their plans and what they needed to do to obtain their goals,” she said.

“When I saw this position open, I thought it would be interesting and fun to do that full time, with the added benefit of getting to share my experiences and what I’ve learned in the field with more students.”

Williams looks forward to expanding the programming available for MS/IM students and helping students be successful in their academic careers.

Intersections Winter 2017

7 McDowell honored for storytelling work with Prairie Rivers Network

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ccording to Associate Professor Kate McDowell, storytelling is one of the few ways you can help people quickly understand cause, effect, and what they can do. For that reason, storytelling is a valuable tool for nonprofits wishing to educate the public about their mission and attract more volunteers and donations.

McDowell was recently honored by the Prairie Rivers Network (PRN) as Volunteer of the Year for helping the organization tell the story of its fifty-year history. PRN, the Illinois affiliate of the National Wildlife Federation, is a member-supported nonprofit organization that champions clean, healthy rivers and lakes and safe drinking water to benefit the people and wildlife of Illinois.

McDowell was approached by PRN after giving several invited presentations on storytelling to local and statewide nonprofits

during the 2016-2017 academic year. She created two workshops for the organization and assisted with efforts to tell its story in preparation for videos and presentations at its 50th anniversary celebration.

“We’ve talked about storytelling as a dynamic exchange between the teller, the tale, and the audience, a model I’ve adapted slightly from Doug Lipman’s work,” McDowell said. “We’ve also looked carefully at story structure and construction. I’ve shared my research as well as my experience from working with campus fundraisers, in terms of what stories and forms of stories connect with donors, and I’ve shared ideas about how stories can effectively persuade people to take action.”

In the process, McDowell learned about the rich history of PRN, which started in 1967 when the group resisted and ulti-

mately overturned plans for a dam on the Sangamon River that would have flooded hundreds of acres of Allerton Park.

“I’ve learned about the high costs of river navigation, which is an untold story that more people need to understand; treating rivers as highways has major costs for water health. I’ve also learned that they are an incredibly talented group of people facing difficult odds but undaunted by the challenges before them. If anything, despite increasing threats to the health of our waterways, they are more energized and mobilized than ever before,” she said.

McDowell received the award at the PRN’s 50th Anniversary Dinner Gala on October 6.

iSchool offers professional development opportunity for school librarians

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(MS ’07), district librarian he K-12 LIS licensure in Heyworth, Illinois. “You program hosted its never think of reading third annual Summer programs for older readGetaway: Professional ers and worry that the Development for School kids will think they’re Librarians from June 12lame. But, the way this 14 at the School. Over one was presented, I forty Illinois school librarthought ‘I can totally do ians and iSchool MS stuthat.’ I’m going to tweak dents attended this it a little bit, but it’s going unique professional deto work. As soon as I get velopment opportunity. home, I’m going to call Led by school library Laura Nylen, instructional technology specialist for Indian Prairie School District #204, the English teachers and professionals, each day presents a session at the third annual Summer Getaway. tell them we need to get of the event offered an together.” and Graduate Studies Advisor Karla Lucht in-depth session focused on a single, highAnn Ohms, K-12 program coordinator facilitated closing sessions based on their demand topic. Participants learned how and conference organizer, explained that research areas. they can become advocates for their school the goal is to connect professionals and moParticipants enjoyed the opportunity to library programs; address the needs of tivate them to integrate new learning into receive training designed especially for twenty-first-century learners; and use social meaningful work with students. “We hope school librarians as well as to learn from and media for branding, digital outreach, and inthey walk away with a community of connetwork with their peers. struction. nected colleagues that will continually chal“On day two of the conference, I particiDuring the conference, Associate Profeslenge them to learn and grow as individuals, pated in a session on a reading program for sor Kate McDowell, Assistant Professor and educators, and information professionals.” high school libraries,” said Michelle Harris MS/LIS Program Director Nicole A. Cooke,

8 Intersections Winter 2017

Research

Turk’s yt project receives NSF grant to expand to multiple science domains Adapted from a National Center for Supercomputing Applications press release Bertram Ludäscher, professor and director of the iSchool’s Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship, discusses the finer points of reconciling conflicting taxonomic views with doctoral student Jessica Cheng and computer science undergraduate Qiwen Wang at Data Science Day.

Inaugural Data Science Day on Urbana campus

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he iSchool took a leading role in the first Data Science Day at the Urbana campus, which was held on October 10 and sponsored by the Illinois Data Science Initiative (iDSI). Over two hundred researchers, educators, and students attended sessions focused on the application of data science in research fields such as agriculture, health, finance, the humanities, and education, as well as the theoretical foundations. The inaugural event also included a poster session to highlight student-led work involving data science, which was organized by MS/IM students Yi Sun, Alice Bhopalwala, and Yiting Pan. Professor Robert Brunner, co-chair of the iDSI steering committee, and Provost John Wilkin, iSchool faculty affiliate, gave opening remarks and set the stage for the day’s activities.

Among those giving talks were Assistant Professor and PhD Program Director Jana Diesner, Professor and MS/IM Program Director Michael Twidale, and faculty affiliate Scott Althaus, who is the Charles J. and Ethel S. Merriam Professor of Political Science, professor of communication, and director of the Cline Center for Advanced Social Research.

Student presentations included “Assessing bias via correlation analysis between meta data and sentiment in benchmark twitter

corpora,” by doctoral student Shubhanshu Mishra and “The suicidal robot as cyborg” by master’s student Ashley Hetrick.

Professor and Associate Dean for Research J. Stephen Downie and faculty affiliate Harriett Green, English and digital humanities librarian at the University Library, served as panelists for the session, “Data Science in Humanities.”

Faculty affiliate Bruce Schatz, head of the Department of Medical Information Science, gave the talk, “Predictive Models of Chronic Disease using Phone Sensors,” during the session, “Data Science in Health & Medicine.”

Several iSchool students and faculty members participated in the poster session, including master’s students Linh Cao, Hui Lyu, Pratik Shrivastava, and Xiaoliang Jiang; doctoral students Paige D. Cunningham, Jessica (Yi-Yun) Cheng, Linh Hoang, and Shubhanshu Mishra; Assistant Professor Jodi Schneider, and Professor Bertram Ludäscher.

“The first-ever Data Science Day at the University of Illinois was a huge success that demonstrated a broad interest in data science across campus and vast new research opportunities that can be realized when we launch the Illinois Data Science Institute,” said Brunner.

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he yt project, an open science environment created to address astrophysical questions through analysis and visualization, has been awarded a $1.6 million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to continue developing their software project. This grant will enable yt to expand and begin to support other domains beyond astrophysics, including weather, geophysics and seismology, molecular dynamics, and observational astronomy. It will also support the development of curricula for Data Carpentry, to ease the onramp for scientists new to data from these domains. iSchool Assistant Professor Matthew Turk is leading the project with Nathan Goldbaum, Kacper Kowalik, and Meagan Lang of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and in collaboration with Ben Holtzman at Columbia University in the City of New York and Leigh Orf at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. yt is an open source, community-driven project working to produce an integrated science environment for collaboratively asking and answering questions about simulations of astrophysical phenomena, leading to the application of analysis and visualizations to many different problems within the field. It is built in an ecosystem of packages from the scientific software community and is committed to open science principles and emphasizes a helpful community of users and developers. Many theoretical astrophysics researchers use yt as a key component of all stages of their computational workflow, from debugging to data exploration, to the preparation of results for publication.

Intersections Winter 2017

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Maria Bonn

Lori Kendall

Jerome McDonough

iSchool faculty release white paper on preserving intangible cultural heritage

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yt has been used for projects within astrophysics as diverse as studying massaccretion onto the first stars in the Universe, to studying the outflows from compact objects and supernovae, to the star formation history of galaxies. It has been used to analyze and visualize some of the largest simulations ever conducted, and visualizations generated by yt have been featured in planetarium shows such as Solar Superstorms created by the Advanced Visualization Lab at NCSA. “I’m delighted and honored by this grant, and we hope it will enable us to build, sustain and grow the thriving open science community around yt, and share the increase in productivity and discovery made possible by yt in astrophysics with researchers across the physical sciences,” said Principal Investigator Matthew Turk.

he field of library and information science “Intangible heritage is an (LIS) has a long history of research on the essential part of people’s preservation of materials in libraries and archives.

However, that research has focused almost exclulives, and libraries and sively on tangible aspects of cultural heritage.

Senior Lecturer Maria Bonn, Associate archives possess a large Professor Lori Kendall, and Associate Professor amount of documentary Jerome McDonough have released a white paper, “Libraries and Archives and the Preservamaterial on endangered tion of Intangible Cultural Heritage: Defining a languages, ethnobotanical Research Agenda,” as part of their work on the Preserving Intangible Cultural Heritage project. and ethnopharmaceutical Funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the project has included collaboration among traditions, traditional craft scholars and practitioners involved in a variety of practices, and other forms forms of intangible heritage preservation within the United States—including performing arts, of at-risk intangible culture.” culinary arts, and paper conservation—to further this important research.

The white paper discusses a variety of issues that complicate efforts to sustain intangible heritage, including cultural ownership and intellectual property, problems with the concept of authenticity in relationship to changing cultural practice, and difficulties in identifying a community of practice that can address appropriate interventions. The paper identifies several major potential areas for LIS research on intangible heritage.

“Intangible heritage is an essential part of people’s lives,” said McDonough, “and libraries and archives possess a large amount of documentary material on endangered languages, ethnobotanical and ethnopharmaceutical traditions, traditional craft practices, and other forms of at-risk intangible culture. We hope that this white paper can spark both discussion and research among libraries, archives, museums, and the communities they serve to determine how libraries can best contribute to efforts to sustain intangible cultural heritage.”

Intersections Winter 2017

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Features

Get to Know our PhD students iSchool students receive diversity scholarships

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en master’s students have been named 2017-2018 Spectrum Scholars by the American Library Association (ALA) Office for Diversity, Literacy, and Outreach Services. The Spectrum Scholarship Program promotes diversity among graduate-level students pursuing degrees in library and information studies through ALA-accredited programs.

“Our School is very proud to be the lead recipient of ALA Spectrum Scholars. This is a collective effort, and I hope to build from this success for many years to come—in terms of recruiting as well as providing a supportive and affirming environment for students of color,” said Moises Orozco Villicana, director of enrollment management. “The most impressive aspect of ALA Spectrum recipients is their high persistence and degree completion rate.”

The 2017-2018 Spectrum Scholarship recipients at Illinois are Marcus A. Berry, Darnetta Bolton, Christina D. Bush, Sharon Han, Kristin Lansdown, Carli V. Lowe, Van McGary, Siobhan A. McKissic, Joan J. Parker, and Aldo Vasquez.

Each scholar receives $5,000 to assist with educational costs as well as more than $1,500 to attend the Spectrum Leadership Institute held during the ALA Annual Conference. In addition, the iSchool matches this diversity scholarship by providing each recipient with a tuition waiver. Illinois residents receive a grant from the Sylvia Murphy Williams Fund, given by the Illinois Library Association. Other benefits include continuing education and professional development opportunities, peer mentoring, and access to a large alumni network.

In addition, three iSchool master’s students were selected by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Committee on Diversity and Leadership to participate as ARL diversity scholars in the Initiative to Recruit a Diverse Workforce (IRDW). Underwritten by ARL member libraries, the IRDW offers numerous financial benefits to program participants as well as leadership development provided through the ARL Annual Leadership Symposium, a formal mentoring program, career placement assistance, and an ARL research library visit.

The 2017-2019 ARL diversity scholars at the iSchool are Aicha Azzaoui, Carli Lowe, and Teresa Helena Moreno.

“At the iSchool, we highly encourage, value, and foster diversity, which promotes interdisciplinary learning, collaboration, and scholarship. We offer a variety of courses and initiatives to strongly involve students in the research culture of our School and to prepare them for exciting careers in the field of library and information science.”

—Jana Diesner, Assistant Professor and PhD Program Director

Lettycia Terrones Advisor: Assistant Professor Elizabeth Hoiem Degrees: MLIS, University of California, Los Angeles; BA in English, University of California, Berkeley Research: My research investigates visual and narrative codes found in Chicanx picturebooks to see what these cultural productions reveal about strategies for political resistance and cultural resilience. I use interdisciplinary and decolonial methodologies, with particular attention to Chicana Feminist Theory, to interrogate these texts. I aim to use my investigations to foster conversations between approaches in LIS curriculum and children’s library services.

Jacob Jett Advisor: Professor Allen Renear Degrees: MS/LIS and CAS in digital libraries, University of Illinois; BS in electrical engineering, Northern Illinois University; AS, Elgin Community College Research: My research primarily focuses on the development of conceptual and data models, metadata schema, and ontologies for information systems that handle popular culture objects like video games and games and digitized objects like photographs. As a part of this, I investigate how we formalize concepts like aggregates and series. My dissertation work is examining and comparing the various ways that competing bibliographic standards like Bibframe 2.0 and FRBR/IFLA-LRM approach modeling these kinds of information objects and what kinds of implications their differences have for ontology, controlled vocabulary, and information system development.

Noah Lenstra (PhD ’16) Assistant Professor of Library and Information Studies at the University of North Carolina Greensboro (UNCG); affiliated faculty member in the UNCG Gerontology Program Advisor: Associate Professor Kate Williams Degrees: MS/LIS, CAS in community informatics, BA in English, University of Illinois Research: My research focuses on community-based information infrastructure, with a special emphasis on public libraries. In the past, I have studied how this infrastructure supports community memory and digital literacy. My current work focuses on health and wellness. With my colleague, Ellen L. Rubenstein (PhD ’11), I am studying how public libraries contribute to active communities: communities designed to support regular physical activity. I am also continuing my work on how local communities shape the digital literacy of older adults. In addition, I am working with a group of colleagues based in Tromsø, Norway, on a project that seeks to understand how archives, libraries, and museum institutions contribute to community development in the digital age.

Intersections Winter 2017

11 Summer program allows student to experience graduate study at the iSchool Nicole A. Cooke and Melanie Nernberg

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hanks to a summer program at the University of Illinois, Melanie Nernberg, an undergraduate student from California, was able to work with an iSchool faculty member and learn about the graduate school experience.

The Summer Research Opportunities Program (SROP) brings to campus talented undergraduate students from populations underrepresented in graduate education so they can experience graduate study and research. Students benefit from the opportunity to develop important relationships with faculty and learn from them as well as about the culture and expectations of graduate school.

Nernberg, a global studies and sociology major from Sonoma State University, applied

to SROP because of her interest in pursuing an MS in library and information science at the iSchool. Nicole A. Cooke, assistant professor and MS/LIS program director, serves as her faculty mentor for the program.

Nernberg is writing a literature review and proposal for a future project on the competency of sci-tech librarians without science or technical backgrounds. She came up with her proposal after spending time at the Mathematics Library and Grainger Engineering Library at Illinois.

“At my school in California, we have subject librarians but not specialized libraries like Illinois, so the concept fascinated me,” Nernberg explained. “I was especially interested in science and technical libraries,

because I wondered what tasks differentiated librarians who work at these libraries compared to general and other specialized academic libraries.”

In the future, Nernberg would like to work as an academic librarian, specializing in data librarianship and social sciences research.

“My experience at SROP has brought clarity on my future career goals and helped me develop lasting connections with my peers and the faculty at Illinois,” she said.

“I will carry the valuable lessons I have learned from this experience with me as I move forward in my academic career as a graduate student and beyond. I am forever grateful for this program and the SROP family I have found through it.”

Leep student and library mentor Vivian Alvarez brings tabletop gaming to the library

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aster’s student Vivian Alvarez works with tweens and teens at the Rudy Lozano Branch of the Chicago Public Library, which is located in the Mexican-American community of Pilsen. As part of her job, she develops programming for youth that nurtures learning and strengthens communities.

A tabletop gaming enthusiast, Alvarez started a tabletop gaming program for students at the Lozano Branch. A paper she wrote on the subject, “Engaging Students in the Library through Tabletop Gaming,” was featured in the March-April issue of

Knowledge Quest, the journal of the American Association of School Librarians. In her paper, Alvarez discusses how tabletop games serve as educational tools, teaching students important personal and interpersonal skills they need for college and career success.

“The community I work with has an appreciation for college degrees, and parents and students are interested in the skills required to set academic and career goals,” she explained. “Many students have expressed ‘relying on luck’ to land the right job. I first introduced card games that were roughly 30 minutes long, such as Exploding Kittens and Dix It, to teach new concepts. Then I introduced games that rely on strategy and collaboration as well as some element of luck.

Ultimately, the overarching goal was to stress that luck is only a fraction of the overall factors that define success in games and in life.”

Over the course of her thirteen years in the nonprofit sector, Alvarez has worked with youth from diverse age groups and socioeconomic backgrounds as well as young

adults with mental disabilities. Early in her career, she worked on community leadership initiatives with faculty and staff at DePaul University.

“DePaul initiated a unique project in 2012 involving creative programming for Chicago youth at public libraries. That is how I was introduced to libraries and their love for strengthening communities from within,” she said.

After earning her master’s degree in art education from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Alvarez was contracted by the Chicago Public Library to teach digital media lessons to tweens and teens at the Lozano Branch. She found that her Spanishspeaking community members relied on their local public library for information because of the scarcity of available bilingual resources. It is the library’s unique position to empower communities that prompted her to pursue a master’s in library and information science at the iSchool. For Alvarez, “As an employee and a new mom, the Leep program at Illinois was the perfect fit.”

12 Intersections Winter 2017

Features

Jessica Cheng

Anna Oates

Alumna builds relationships in India through global program

Students complete digital preservation, digital musicology projects in England

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n interest in global education took Tracy Hubbard (MS ’05) to India this summer. Hubbard, a library media specialist at the Dr. Bessie Rhodes School of Global Studies in Evanston Skokie (IL) District 65, spent July in India as a fellow with Teachers for a Global Classroom.

The goal of the program, which is funded by the U.S. Department of State and administered by the nonprofit organization IREX, is to build global perspectives and understanding that can be applied in teaching while also building positive relationships with other countries. Over four hundred teachers applied for the program, and Hubbard was one of about eighty teachers who were accepted. During her time in India, she primarily worked with schools in Parthadi, Maharastra but toured other parts of the country as well.

“Every time we visited a school, we were treated as very special guests. There would be speeches, songs, and dancing. The beauty of the people and the culture really stood out.

We were so incredibly honored and overwhelmed with how beautiful the students

were and how generous they were in their welcoming and sharing,” said Hubbard.

She saw two formal libraries during her trip to India, one in a K-5 school in Bangalore and the other at St. Mary’s in Delhi. According to Hubbard, the Bangalore school’s resources were very sparse, and a teacher was working with retired veterans from the army to piece together technology via a couple of computers. St. Mary’s, on the other hand, had a beautiful library and a huge section for test preparation.

Hubbard has completed a report for Teachers for a Global Classroom that addresses her research findings on how the literature of India has shaped its people. She hopes to continue working with the new friends she met in India, and she is starting a long-distance book club to discuss Chitra Bannerjee Divakaruni’s Palace of Illusions.

Hubbard, who is also the library department chair for the fifteen libraries in her district, would highly recommend the program to her fellow educators. “It was a truly wonderful experience.”

aster’s student Anna Oates and doctoral student Jessica (Yi-Yun) Cheng spent six weeks on placements at the Oxford e-Research Centre and the Bodleian Libraries at Oxford University in England.

The placement program is a collaboration between the iSchool, Centre, and Bodleian Libraries, now in its fourth year.

Oates’ project focused on student theses in Oxford’s Institutional Repository, and the challenges faced in meeting the ISO 19005 Standard. During her placement, she worked with the Oxford University Research Archive (ORA), which hosts rich collections created by student and faculty researchers at the University of Oxford. She plans to extend her research project by completing a master’s thesis at Illinois.

Cheng’s area of work at the Centre was in digital musicology. She explored the feasibility of feature shape-based filtering and querying within the Internet Live Music Archive, a large collection of audio recordings. She further investigated the applicability of such an approach within the domain of textual information.

iSchool students discover community engagement in Russia

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n May five iSchool students traveled to Moscow with their instructor, Ellen Knutson, to learn about community engagement in Russian libraries and to experience Russian culture. They completed the trip as part of the Community Engagement course (IS 418), which explores the multiple ways that information professionals in libraries and other settings learn about, collaborate with, and provide service and outreach to community members.

The group visited five libraries: the All-Russia State Library for Foreign Literature, Russian State Library, Turgenev Municipal Library, Russian State Library for Young Adults, and Bogolyubovo Village Library. They also completed a new certificate in International Library Practices at the All-Russia State Library for Foreign Literature. On the

cultural side, the group visited the Kremlin Museums and Red Square and toured historical sites in the Vladimir Region, including Suzdal— one of Russia’s oldest towns.

Knutson has been collaborating with Russian librarians through regular trips to Russia since the early 2000s.

“Seeing Moscow and Russian libraries through the eyes of my students was a real treat. Their enthusiasm was infectious and renewed my belief in the importance of cultural exchange as a way to deepen global understanding and create international professional relationships,” said Knutson (PhD ’08, MS ’02), an adjunct assistant professor who works as a researcher, trainer, and facilitator for the Kettering Foundation.

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13 McCarthy enhances campus accessibility through new web app

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he University of Illinois has long been a leader in accessibility for persons with disabilities. This tradition continues with a new web app called “Access Illinois” created by master’s student Mark McCarthy and his team members Matt Arensdorf (undergraduate student, computer science) and Emily Chen (PhD student, computational linguistics). The app earned the team first place in HackCulture, a humanities-focusedhackathon held at the University Library.

While the University provides accessibility maps, these maps require additional steps for successful use when a person is operating with one hand, such as when using a wheelchair or cane. Access Illinois integrates existing accessibility maps with Google Maps, allowing individuals to discover walking directions to a destination and the locations of accessible entrances, classrooms, and restrooms.

Matt Arensdorf, Emily Chen, and iSchool student Mark McCarthy

The app has a personal connection for team members McCarthy and Arensdorf.

“Matt and I, having physical disabilities requiring the use of a wheelchair, use the accessibility maps often,” McCarthy said.

“There is currently not a way to get walking directions at the same time as looking at those maps, and for those who have even less mobility than us, it can be a challenge to navigate between the two tabs on the phone or desktop.”

McCarthy, an MS/IM student who is studying information architecture, was the lead web designer and debugger for the team. He also took care of the accessible programming. Arensdorf served as lead web developer, inputting GPS coordinates for the images by hand for each of the

accessibility map overlays. Chen created the tour and pin functionality of the maps and led the research and testing.

At the moment, only the first floor of buildings appear in Access Illinois, due to programming constraints. Future versions of the web app will address the issue of multiple floors and include accommodations for a wider range of disability types, such as those requiring the use of screen readers.

“Once we have the first floor maps sorted, our aim is to give the tool to Disability Resources & Educational Services on campus to utilize for new and current students. We are also in talks to integrate it with the University Library’s resource guides,” said McCarthy.

Winning startup team at Campus 1871 includes iSchool student

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S/IM student Saajan Dehury was part of the winning team at Campus 1871, a startup pitch competition held on March 31-April 2 at 1871, Chicago’s Center for Technology and Entrepreneurship.

The objective of the competition was to design a potential startup company and create a viable business model that would solve a meaningful problem, all within one weekend. Teams, limited to ten members, were composed of students from various backgrounds and universities. Members accepted different responsibilities for their startup, including design, business model, revenue model, marketing, and user experience/interface.

Dehury’s team, which included ten students from seven universities, decided to pitch a startup to tackle the problem of asthma and design a technology to improve inhalers. Dehury worked on the revenue

model for the company, although his background is not in business.

“Thirteen percent of the U.S. population suffers from asthma, and ten Americans die every day from the condition. Uncontrolled asthmatics contribute to growing medical costs, resulting in higher insurance claims. In addition, the dosage released from the nozzle of a conventional inhaler is sometimes inaccurate, and the nozzle can become clogged,” he explained.

His team designed a universal smart technology, an inhaler cap, which would fit into almost all traditional inhalers. The device, Respirare, is made up of a durable, reusable, antimicrobial plastic. A touch sensor controls the dose and communicates with a mobile application that helps keep track of the user’s condition.

“We presented the idea to a panel of five judges and eventually secured the first position among fourteen teams. The reward

includes an office space for six months in 1871, with access to resources needed for building a successful startup,” Dehury said.

He credits his Campus 1871 experience with providing him the opportunity to “explore the entire product lifecycle” as well as helping him better appreciate the value of teamwork.

14 Intersections Winter 2017

Alumni

Ruan receives ILA Academic Librarian of the Year Award

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ian Ruan (MS ’90, PhD ’11) is the 2017 recipient of the Illinois Library Association (ILA) Illinois Academic Librarian of the Year Award. The award, presented by the ILA Illinois Association of College and Research Libraries (IACRL) Forum, recognizes an Illinois librarian who is making an outstanding statewide contribution to academic or research librarianship and to library development. The award is sponsored by the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois.

Ruan’s service record is impressive. Of particular note are her contributions as past president (2015-2016) and current executive director of the Chinese American Librarians Association (CALA). She has also recently served on the Illinois State Library Advisory Committee, Special Libraries Association’s Emergency Preparedness and Recovery Council, and ACRL 75th Anniversary Celebration Task as well as a member

of the Joint Council of Librarians of Color Steering Committee.

Ruan has been an academic librarian for twenty-seven years and head of the Illinois Fire Service Institute Library (IFSI) since 1999, earning the directorship of IFSI’s international programs in 2006. Under her leadership, the IFSI Library has been a finalist for a National Medal for Museum and Library Service award for the last two years. The IFSI is considered one of the top three fire services libraries in the nation. This past year, the Institute of Museum and Library Services recognized her Firefighter Line of Duty Death Digital Image Collection, which was awarded funding through the Illinois State Library.

Since 2002, Ruan has been an adjunct lecturer in the iSchool, supporting and mentoring the work of library and information science students. Ruan has also organized and coordinated training programs at IFSI with partners in the area of emergency manage-

ment, including training for emergency responders from China and Korea.

Ruan has done extensive work as a researcher. Most notable is her recently coedited book, Academic Library Development and Administration in China (2016), which is the first major work on Chinese academic libraries written in English.

Her exemplary service to librarianship and learning demonstrates the application of each of these qualities to the work that makes her worthy of this honor. The Illinois Academic Librarian of the Year Award was presented to Ruan during the 2017 ILA Annual Conference in Tinley Park.

Smith celebrates 40 years at the iSchool

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n 2017 Linda C. Smith (MS ’72), professor and executive associate dean, marked forty years at the University of Illinois.

Smith teaches courses in information organization and access, reference, and science reference. She is a past president of both the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) and the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T). She also is the recipient of several awards, including the 2010 ASIS&T Award of Merit and the 2012 ALISE Service Award as well as the 2000 Isadore Gilbert Mudge Award from the Reference and User Services Association for distinguished contributions to reference librarianship. At Illinois, Smith has devoted her career to the LIS program and, in the process, has mentored, taught, and cared for hundreds of students, faculty members, and staff. Alumni and friends celebrated her 40th year anniversary on June 25 at the iSchool alumni reception during the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference in Chicago.

ISAA honors 2017 award recipients

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The iSchool Alumni Association (ISAA), formerly the Library School Alumni Association, recognized the 2017 recipients of its annual awards on June 25 at the ISAA annual meeting and reception held at the ALA Annual Conference.

Beth Woodard (MS ’79) is the recipient of the Distinguished Alumnus Award. Each year this award is given to an alum who has made an outstanding contribution to the field of library and information science.

Woodard, who recently retired, served as the staff development and training coordinator for the University of Illinois Library. She made significant contributions to the field through her mentoring of graduate assistants and new professionals; extensive service in ACRL and ALA’s Reference and User Services Association; and numerous publications, invited workshops, and professional development programs. At the iSchool, Woodard served for many years on the Admissions Committee and taught or co-taught graduate courses in user education, reference services, and management. In addition to supervising hundreds of graduate assistants in the University Library, she directed multiple independent studies and practicum experiences.

Martin Wolske (PhD ’93, Rutgers) is the recipient of the Distinguished Service Award.

Each year this award is given to an individual who has served ISAA or the School in an exceptional way.

Wolske is a senior research scientist, lecturer, and the interim director of the Center for Digital Inclusion (CDI) at the iSchool. Since he joined the School in 1995, he has served in many key roles, including director of Prairienet, Champaign-Urbana’s first community information network and the predecessor to the CDI. For nearly twenty years, Wolske has taught networking and information systems courses, for which he received the 2011 Library Journal Teaching Award. He has served on several campus advisory and review panels related to engagement and, in 2013, he was honored with the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Public Engagement.

His accomplishments also include service as president of the Champaign Public Library Board of Trustees.

Trevor Muñoz (MS ’11) is the recipient of the Leadership Award, which is given to an alum who has graduated in the past ten years and shown leadership in the field.

Muñoz is the assistant dean for digital humanities research for the University of Maryland Libraries and associate director of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities. He works to foster digital projects that involve close collaboration between librarians, archivists, and other digital humanities researchers. He has written, spoken, and consulted about the strategic opportunities and challenges of doing digital humanities work within the institutional and cultural structures of academic research libraries.

He has served as principal investigator on numerous grants and is founding co-editor of DH Curation: A Community Guide to Best Practices for Data Curation in the Humanities.

Kyle Huizenga (MS ’17) is the recipient of the Student Award, which recognizes a student who “caught the spirit” of the library and information science profession while employed in a library setting and so chose to enter the master’s program. This student must have a strong commitment to return to a professional position in a library setting and help others “catch the spirit.”

Huizenga was hired as a graduate hourly employee to work in the reference department of the Illinois Fire Service Institute Library in fall of 2015. In that position, as well as in providing reference service, he learned how to handle the library’s budget; create quarterly budget, acquisitions, and statistical reports; log receipts from national and international library-related travel; and interact with the Institute’s business department as a representative of the library. He was promoted to graduate assistant the following year and took over the budget, receipt reporting, and report-creation responsibilities for which he had been trained. This past spring, Huizenga trained two iSchool graduate hourly employees in his areas of responsibility and acted as their mentor.

iSchool alumna to head Rare Book and Manuscript Library

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ynne M. Thomas (MS ’99) has been appointed head of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Illinois. She previously served as head of distinctive collections and curator of rare books and special collections at Northern Illinois University. “One of the things I learned [as a student] at the U of I is the importance of the concept that rare books are for everyone,” she said. “These are important parts of our cultural heritage, and we make history available for everyone in a hands-on fashion that balances protection of the materials with making them accessible to the public.” Thomas is the winner of four Hugo Awards and coeditor and publisher of Uncanny Magazine with her husband Michael Damian Thomas.

Adapted from a U of I News Bureau announcement

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Class Notes

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Decade: 2010s Ben Aldred (MS ’14) started as a reference librarian and assistant professor at the University of Illinois Chicago, working with government information, urban planning, and social work.

Joseph Askins (MS ’12) has accepted a position as head of instructional services for University Libraries at the University of Missouri in Columbia. He previously served as information literacy programs librarian at the University of South Carolina in Columbia.

Emily Bayci (MLIS ’14) received a 2017 Penguin Random House Young Readers grant to attend the ALA Annual Conference and the NewberyCaldecott-Wilder banquet.

Anne Booker (MS ’13) accepted a position as a public services associate for adult programs and collection marketing at the Burlington (WA) Public Library.

Dan Brackmann (MS ’14) began a position as a reference librarian at the University of South Carolina School of Law. Ann Matsushima Chiu (MS ’15) is an electronic services and instruction librarian at Warner Pacific College in Portland, Oregon. She is also the organizer of the Portland Zine Symposium.

In June 2017, Kellye (Hallmark) Cohn (MS ’13) accepted the position of assistant professor and librarian at Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria, California.

David E. Cox (MS ’13) has been appointed to serve as the director of the Office for Student Learning at New Mexico Tech, combining library, tutorial, and research services together at the university.

Michael DeNotto (MS ’12) began his new job as the humanities librarian at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, in July.

Holly Eberle (MS ’15) is the youth library technical assistant III/page supervisor for the Crystal Lake (IL) Public Library, which has been her home library since childhood.

David Forero (MS ’15) contributed a chapter to the book Migrating Library Data: A Practical Manual, which was recently published by ALA Neal-Schuman.

Kate Grabon (MS ’16) has accepted a position as a branch services librarian for the WinnetkaNorthfield (IL) Public Library District.

year (2017-2018) as vice-president/presidentelect, one year (2018-19) as president, and one year (2019-20) as past president.

Linda Kupferschmid (MS ’15) began her position as a children’s librarian at the Champaign Public Library in May.

Julie Edwards (MS ’05) received the 2017 Frank B. Sessa Scholarship for Continuing Professional Education from Beta Phi Mu Honor Society.

She is an associate professor and the ethnic studies librarian and diversity coordinator at the Mansfield Library at the University of Montana in Missoula.

Corrine (Vogel) Latham (MS ’14) recently began working as a knowledge services analyst at Vinson & Elkins LLP in Dallas, Texas. Additionally, she got married in Colorado in June.

Samantha (Pernicka) LeGrand (MS ’15) is a librarian at Central New Mexico Community College in Albuquerque.

Sarah Lindenbaum (MS ’13) has started a position as visiting assistant professor and outreach librarian at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington.

In May, Marcela Peres Evans (MS ’10) became the library director for the Lewiston (ME) Public Library.

Rebecca (Becky) Ransberger (MS ’15) accepted the assistant manager position at the King Road Branch of the Toledo Lucas County Public Library in Toledo, Ohio.

Ruth Slagle (MS ’17) recently started a position as the public services librarian at the Baptist College of Florida in Graceville.

Maura Stutzman (MS ’16) began her career as the youth services and programming librarian at the Mahomet (IL) Public Library in July.

Laura Wilson (MS ’16) accepted a position as a youth services librarian with a story time focus at the Fremont Public Library in Mundelein, Illinois.

Decade: 2000s Bryan Baldus (MS ’00) began his position as a consulting database specialist for WorldCat metadata quality, global product management, at OCLC in Dublin, Ohio, in October.

Michelle Chronister (MS ’09) has accepted a position as associate dean of University Libraries at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio.

Eric Edwards (MS ’06) was elected vice-president/ president-elect of IACRL. He will serve one

Wendy Edwards (MS ’09) was selected for the NASA Datanauts program, where people can get exposure to NASA and learn about data science.

In April, she participated in the NASA Space Apps Challenge in Chicago, and her team was a global nominee.

Nancy Falciani-White (MS ’07) became the director of the McGraw-Page Library at RandolphMacon College in Ashland, Virginia, in December 2016. Previously, she worked at Wheaton College in Illinois for fourteen years.

Joshua Finnell (MS ’07) has accepted the position of associate professor and head of research and instruction services at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York. He was recently appointed associate editor of Global Knowledge, Memory and Communication (Library Review).

Bill Ingram (MS ’09) started a new position as director for information technology services at Virginia Tech University Libraries in Blacksburg.

Lindsay King (MS ’08) and Peter Leonard gave two presentations at the Digital Humanities 2017 Conference in Montreal, Canada, one of which was the keynote for the computer vision workshop. She is the associate director for access and research services at the Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library at Yale University.

Diana (Thomson) Koppang (MS ’04) was recently elected vice-chair/chair-elect of the Private Law Librarians and Information Professionals section of the American Association of Law Libraries. Her three-year term on the board began in July.

Helen Linda (MS ’07) has transitioned into a new career as an IT business analyst with the State of Vermont Agency of Human Services as part of the IT Project Management Office.

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Annie (Dougherty) Miskewitch (MS ’05) recently accepted the deputy director position at Schaumburg Township District Library, the second largest public library in Illinois.

Miskewitch previously worked at Chicago Public Library as a division chief for business, history, and sciences.

Carol Perryman (MS ’04) was awarded tenure and a promotion in June. As an associate professor, she currently teaches all medical library courses and is involved in informatics research at the Texas Woman’s University in Denton.

Laura J. Poulosky (MS ’07) has been working as a senior library specialist at the University of Illinois Residence Hall Libraries since February 2014. Prior to that, she worked as a library specialist at the University of Illinois Art and Architecture Library.

Deborah Robertson (MS ’00) founded Gibson House Press, an independent press that publishes novels by musicians in the belief that songwriters and musicians of all kinds are connected to storytelling in a unique way.

Kim Christiansen Sigle (MS ’09) is one of the 2017 award recipients of the Ezra Jack Keats Mini-Grant for her library program, The “See Ya, Wouldn’t Wanna Be Ya” Museum of History, for students at Lake Anne Elementary School in Reston, Virginia.

Josh Sopiarz (MS ’09) has earned tenure and promotion to associate professor in the University Library at Governors State University in University Park, Illinois.

Sara Q. Thompson (MS ’09) accepted a position as an adult services manager at the Deschutes Public Library in Bend, Oregon. For the past five years, she was the solo librarian of a small academic library branch at the Oregon State University-Cascades in Bend.

Lisa C. Wallis (MS ’01) was named acting dean of libraries for Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU) in September. She has been with the NEIU Ronald Williams Library since January 2007.

Cherié L. Weible (MS ’00) was named interim associate university librarian for user services and associate dean of libraries at the University of Illinois Library in July. She has been employed with the Library since 1998.

Decade: 1990s Migrating Library Data: A Practical Manual, a book edited by Kyle Banerjee (MS ’96) and Bonnie Parks, has been published by ALA Neal-Schuman.

Kathryn (Kitty) Wrigley (MS ’80) retired after 38 years with Hospital Sisters Health System, where she was director of libraries.

Decade: 1970s Ann Campion Riley (MS ’77) is now the vice provost and university librarian for University Libraries at the University of Missouri in Columbia.

Neil Curtis LeMay (MS ’76) is the newly elected president of the Catholic Library Association.

Chad Kahl (MS ’98) was named associate dean for public services and technology at Illinois State University’s Milner Library.

Decade: 1960s

Allen Lanham (MS ’91), dean of library services at Eastern Illinois University, retired on June 30 after almost 26 years of service.

Gail Bardhan (MS ’69) retired in late September after 40 years as the reference and research librarian for the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York.

Decade: 1980s Martha Childers (MS ’81) is a 2017 American Small Business Champion, an award sponsored

by SCORE and Sam’s Club. She is a multicultural therapist specializing in couples, grief, caregiver stress, and ages 50+. She worked in libraries for 38 years at the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law, Harvard Law School, San Diego County Law Library, Spencer Art Reference Library, and Johnson County (KS) Library.

Mel DeSart (MS ’87) was featured in the April 14th current member spotlight of the ACRL Science & Technology Section e-news. He is head of the Engineering Library and director of Branch Libraries at the University of Washington.

Connect with us!

Mohamed El Hadi (MS ’60, PhD ’64) organized the 23rd Scientific Conference on “Big Data and Analytics for Business,” which was held in April at Sadat Academy for Management Sciences.

Stanley Hicks (MS ’69) is the world authority on the history of twentieth century Canadian pottery. He credits his library school training for helping him to categorize and organize information for his website, Canadian Pottery Identifier.

Correction: Alec Sonsteby (MS ’05) has been named to the editorial board of the Journal of Web Librarianship. This information was incorrectly listed in the summer 2017 issue of Intersections. We regret the error.

Send us your news!

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

Office of Advancement and Alumni Relations School of Information Sciences 501 East Daniel Street, Champaign, IL 61820 ischool-advancement@illinois.edu (217) 300-5746 ischool.illinois.edu/people/alumni/mail

Grants

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Investigator*

Funder

NEW GRANTS (funding awarded between July 1, 2016, and June 30, 2017) Nicole A. Cooke

American Library Association

Peter Darch

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (subaward through University of California, Los Angeles)

Jana Diesner

Institute for the German Language

J. Stephen Downie

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

J. Stephen Downie

National Endowment for the Humanities (subaward through University of Notre Dame)

Bertram Ludäscher

National Science Foundation

Victoria Stodden

National Science Foundation

ACTIVE GRANTS (funding began prior to July 1, 2016) Caryn Anderson

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs

Catherine Blake

National Science Foundation

Ian Brooks

National Science Foundation

Jana Diesner

Intelligent Medical Objects

Jana Diesner

Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information

J. Stephen Downie

HathiTrust

J. Stephen Downie

Institute of Museum and Library Services

J. Stephen Downie

National Endowment for the Humanities

J. Stephen Downie

National Science Foundation

J. Stephen Downie

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

J. Stephen Downie

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

J. Stephen Downie

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

J. Stephen Downie

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Michael Gryk

National Institutes of Health (subaward through University of Connecticut)

Bertram Ludäscher

National Science Foundation

Bertram Ludäscher

National Science Foundation

Bertram Ludäscher

National Science Foundation (subaward through University of New Mexico)

Bertram Ludäscher

National Science Foundation

Bertram Ludäscher

National Science Foundation

Jerome McDonough

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Kate McDowell

Institute of Museum and Library Services

Allen Renear

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Vetle Torvik

Abbott Nutrition

Vetle Torvik

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

Vetle Torvik

National Science Foundation

Michael Twidale

International Informatics Group

Michael Twidale

National Science Foundation

Martin Wolske

American Bottom Conservancy

*This list represents grant support received by iSchool researchers who serve as either principal investigator or co-principal investigator on projects.

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Grant Title

Award Amount

The Interracial Books for Children Bulletin: A Bibliography of Diverse Books

$

If Data Sharing is the Answer, What is the Question?

$ 149,000

5,000

Text Transfer: Corpus Based Detection of Secondary Practical Usage of Scientific Publications

$ 109,936

Data Capsule Appliance for Research Analysis of Restricted and Sensitive Data in Academic Libraries

$

32,500

Textual Geographies

$

15,800

Collaborative Research: Developing and Deploying SKOPE: Synthesizing Knowledge of Past Environments

$ 884,627

EAGER: Collaborative Research: Supporting Public Access to Supplemental Scholarly Products Generated from Grant Funded Research

$

59,991

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

$

24,241

A Big Data-Theoretic Approach to Quantify Organizational Failure Mechanisms in Probabilistic Risk Assessment

$ 569,962

PFI:BIC - Pathtracker: A Smartphone-based System for Mobile Infectious Disease Detection and Epidemiology

$ 1,005,692

Improving the Detection and Classification of Medical Entities

$ 299,998

Modeling of Nation-Scale Scientific Collaboration Networks and Impact of Entity Disambiguation on Big Network Data

$

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

$ 332,614

Digging Deeper, Reaching Further: Libraries Empowering Users to Mine the HathiTrust Digital Library Resources

$ 398,844

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

$ 324,841

Doctorial Consortium Support for JCDL (2015)

$

15,126

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

$

30,994

Single Interface for Music Score Searching and Analysis

$

5,000

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

$

32,122

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

$ 1,170,000

Center for Biomolecular NMR Data Processing and Analysis

$

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

$ 748,931

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

$ 133,874

DataONE (Observation Network for Earth)

$ 416,623

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

$ 336,645

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

$ 4,986,951

Preserving Intangible Cultural Heritage

$

App Authors: Closing the App Gap II

$ 248,203

Understanding the Needs of Scholars in a Contemporary Publishing Environment

$ 1,000,000

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

$

Innovation in an Aging Society

$ 456,838

Collaborative Research: STEM Workforce Development: A Quasi-Experimental Approach Using Administrative Data

$ 175,918

K-MIREX Collaboration Project, Phase II

$

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

$ 421,200

Community Engagement in the Greater St. Louis Metro East St. Louis Clear Air Campaign

$ 600,000

50,002

67,749

25,500

25,000

13,007

Giving

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20

Campus launches “With Illinois” campaign

I

n October, our campus launched its most ambitious fundraising campaign to date. “With Illinois” celebrates the achievements and endless opportunities for social good that are possible through partnerships with the University of Illinois. We hope you will partner with our School in furthering our teaching and research mission by making a gift to support our campaign priorities, which are outlined below. Together and with Illinois, we can make a positive difference in the lives of others.

Visit http://go.ischool.illinois.edu/campaign.

Accessible Education

Student Experience

Faculty Support

Our top priority is to offer more tuition scholarships to support students and improve our efforts to provide inclusive educational opportunities.

Donor support will allow us to provide funding for additional student enrichment activities, such as internships, conference travel, and study abroad.

Gifts in support of teaching and research make a lasting sustainable impact on future generations.

In Memoriam: Mildred Luther

i

School benefactor Mildred Luther died on September 25, 2017, at the age of 91. Her legacy will live on through the generous endowment fund she established at the School for graduate student fellowships. After graduating from Champaign Senior High, Luther enrolled in the University of Illinois in 1944. To help her parents finance her education, she accepted a quarter-time civil service position as a records clerk in the University Library. She graduated in 1948 and for two years continued to work full time in the University Library. In 1950, she joined the staff of the Office of the 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 to serve as its business manager. When she retired in 1993, Luther had completed 49 years of service to the University. She is survived by her sister, iSchool Professor Emerita Kathryn Luther Henderson, and her brother-in-law, William T Henderson of Urbana. Memorial donations may be made to the Mildred M. Luther and Kathryn Luther Henderson Endowment Fund at the iSchool. To make a contribution, visit the iSchool’s online giving page at ischool.illinois.edu/giving or contact the Advancement Office at (217) 300-5746 or ischool-advancement@illinois.edu.

Travel fund to honor Dolan’s memory, support student discovery

A

Dolan working with microfilm during her student days

“Molly was such an important part of the fabric of the School for so long that it felt important to find a way to memorialize the lasting impression she made on those who knew and loved her.”

lthough she lived in ten states and three foreign countries, Molly Dolan (MS ’04) considered Champaign-Urbana “the true home of her heart.” After earning her master’s degree in library and information science in 2004, she stayed at Illinois, working as project coordinator for the Digital Libraries Education Program. During her time at Illinois, she built a database for the U of I Alumni Association, worked in Digital Content Creation digitizing rare books and photos, and partnered on a grant to develop a humanities data curation curriculum. In 2010, Dolan left Illinois for West Virginia University, where she served as a digital initiatives and scholarly communications librarian. She passed away on January 7, 2017, at the age of 42.

“Molly collected wonderfully quirky people and delighted in nothing more than introducing them to each other,” recalled her friend Kate McDowell (MS ’99, PhD ’07), associate professor at the iSchool.

“Several of my close friendships grew from Molly saying, ‘Hey, I think you two might want to know each other.’”

Sarah Shreeves (MS ’02) who met Molly through friends in Champaign and at the iSchool, echoed McDowell’s sentiment and added “Molly was such an important part of the fabric of the School for so long that it felt important to find a way to memorialize the lasting impression she made on those who knew and loved her.”

The Molly Anne Dolan Travel Award Fund will provide travel support to students enrolled in the MS in library and information science program at Illinois. It is the wish of her circle of friends and colleagues that this fund will enable LIS students to go amazing places, learn new things, and make friends, just like Dolan did everywhere she went.

For more information or to contribute to the scholarship fund, visit the iSchool’s online giving page at ischool.illinois.edu/giving or contact the Advancement Office at (217) 300-5746 or ischool-advancement@illinois.edu.

Scholarship recipient balances coursework and military career

W

hen Rob Callahan isn’t participating in an online class, he is out flying helicopters. First Lieutenant Callahan flies H-60 Blackhawks as an aeromedical evacuation officer in the U.S. Army.

“I have been fortunate to have commanders and supervisors who support my off-duty education,” he said. “Since classes are held at the same time each week, I do my best to shape my schedule so I am available for the live sessions. When unavoidable conflicts arise, my professors are both understanding and accommodating, and Moodle recordings help me keep up to date.”

Callahan is currently working on his MS/IM degree. He is the recipient of a scholarship that focuses on recruiting exceptional students, which is made possible through contributions from alumni and friends to the iSchool’s Annual Fund.

“Receiving a recruitment scholarship helped make my decision to accept a spot in the MS/IM program.

Graduate school is an investment of both time and money; knowing that the iSchool thought I was worth their time and money is a big confidence booster,” Callahan explained.

Originally from New York City, Callahan earned his AB as a College Scholar at Cornell University, where his coursework focused on enlistment motivations and his senior thesis addressed civil-military relations at Cornell. He wanted to gain a better understanding of the information-driven systems he uses every day, so he decided to pursue an information science degree. He chose the iSchool for his graduate studies because of its excellent distance learning program.

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Non Profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Permit No. 75 Champaign, IL University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 501 East Daniel Street, MC-493 Champaign, IL 61820-6211

Banned Books Week The iSchool celebrated Banned Books Week (September 24-30) with students, faculty, and staff posing at a photo booth with their favorite banned books. The American Library Association Student Chapter ran the booth, and The Center for Children’s Books provided the books.

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