Winter 2018 Intersections

Intersections

Winter 2018

People

Associate Professor Carol Tilley and students (see Comics Studies Society, page 10)

I

Information

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Te c h n o l o g y

Winter 2018 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, iStock.com/luza studios for editorial use only Design: Pat Mayer

Intersections

Contents

Centennial Scholar

7

Experience trailers

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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.

Apprenticeship program

Elsessers’ $1M gift

14-15

18-19

News iSchool partnerships: A letter from the dean

2

McDowell named interim associate dean for academic affairs

3

iSchool Promotions

4

Pintar joins the iSchool

4

Koh and Wickett join the faculty

5

Professor Les Gasser passes away

6

Bashir named 2018-2019 Centennial Scholar

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New orientation model provides engaging, high-touch experience

8-9

MS/IM student team’s fleet fuel management project wins first place at hackathon

8-9

Research iSchool hosts inaugural Comics Studies Society conference

10

Reading Corner

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Research Showcase

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Experience trailers offer a flavor of the user experience

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Diesner and Mishra publish paper on NER tool for social media research

13

HathiTrust Research Center extends non-consumptive research tools to copyrighted materials

13

Features iSchool partners with The Urbana Free Library for new apprenticeship program

14-15

Batchelder brings music and movement to the library

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Internship Spotlight: Facebook

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Giving Cloonan and Berger partnership benefits iSchool, “With Illinois” campaign

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Campaign Highlight

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Elsessers invest $1 million in the School of Information Sciences

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Alumni 2018 ISAA award recipients

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iSchool alumni selected for Minnesota Institute

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Wine classification analogy leads to librarianship

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Class Notes Grants iSchool dedicates plaque to Yingbo Zhou

22-23 24-25 Back Cover

News

Intersections Winter 2018

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iSchool partnerships: A letter from the dean

“We believe that every one of you is a partner with the iSchool, advancing our mission of social benefit.”

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ur story starts with you—with Illinois, we can change the world. These words illustrate the importance of our School’s partnerships with alumni, students, faculty, staff, and others in promoting positive change in the world.

Last year the University launched the “With Illinois” campaign, an ambitious fundraising effort to ensure continued success in fulfilling our land-grant mission. For the iSchool, this means offering an accessible education, enriching the student experience, and providing faculty support for innovative teaching and research by raising $19 million. To date, our alumni and donors have invested an impressive $13.9 million. Through these campaign partnerships, the iSchool will continue to shape the future of libraries and information in the field and beyond.

I am pleased to mention one very special partnership, which is highlighted in this issue of Intersections. Alumna Lionelle Elsesser and her husband James are longtime advocates for our School, generously sharing their time and resources. The Elsessers recently gave a $1 million gift that will provide annual income to support new programs, including the MS in information management as well as the MS in library and information science. We are grateful for their ongoing support and this tremendous gift, the largest of its kind in our School’s history.

Our partnership with Michèle Cloonan and Sid Berger is also featured in this issue. These two alumni, educators, and scholars provide valuable financial support for the School, and Michèle is the chair of our School’s campaign committee. They give back in appreciation for their education and experiences, which changed their lives, and to benefit the next generation of students.

In the following pages, you will read more about a variety of partnerships that contribute to the success of our teaching, research, and community engagement. From partnerships with organizations that provide internship and practicum sites for our students to partnerships that recognize and advance the research of our faculty, our School is a dynamic, interconnected place to learn, teach, explore, and engage.

We believe that every one of you is a partner with the iSchool, advancing our mission of social benefit. Together, we make a difference in the lives of others and change the world for the better.

Sincerely,

Allen H. Renear, Dean

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McDowell named interim associate dean for academic affairs

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ssociate Professor Kate McDowell (PhD ’07, MS ’99) has been named interim associate dean for academic affairs, effective immediately. In this new role, she provides leadership and oversight for academic programs, including program development, curriculum coordination, and continuous improvement of educational experiences.

The new position enhances the iSchool’s organizational structure, providing an additional level of administration as student enrollment continues to grow. It facilitates communication and collaboration through the coordination of program directors, student affairs, and all School resources related to academic affairs.

“It is a great honor to coordinate academic programs across the iSchool. For the next two years, I plan to work on stabilizing and improving our current offerings while continuing to grow our academic impact.” said McDowell.

McDowell’s administrative background includes two years of service as the School’s Assistant Dean for Student Affairs (20142016). During this time, she led a process of

change management to revise key elements of student services, including the redesign of staffing roles and responsibilities as well as improvement in practices and communications.

Her contributions to the iSchool also include planning and evaluation in multiple roles, from enhancing the Leep online master’s program and implementing the new MS in information management to collaboratively leading planning for the School’s name change. Her experience includes membership in several committees at the iSchool and across campus, including leadership as the iSchool Admissions Committee chair and extensive involvement in the ALA accreditation process.

“We are fortunate indeed to have such an experienced iSchool academic leader ready to help guide us through this challenging period of rapid growth and innovation in curriculum and administration,” said Dean Allen Renear. “There could not be a better person for this role, and I am looking forward to the exciting changes ahead.”

A member of the faculty since 2007, McDowell is the 2018 recipient of the

“It is a great honor to coordinate academic programs across the iSchool.

For the next two years, I plan to work on stabilizing and improving our current offerings while continuing to grow our academic impact.”

University’s Excellence in Online and Distance Teaching Award and is consistently included on the University’s List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent. She is an expert in the area of storytelling practices and applications in higher education, nonprofits, and business, and serves as storytelling consultant to the campus. She also researches and publishes in the areas of youth services librarianship, children’s print culture history, and public libraries as cultural spaces.

McDowell holds both an MS and PhD in library and information science from the iSchool at Illinois.

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News

iSchool Promotions The iSchool is proud to announce the following promotions.

Maria Bonn Associate Professor Bonn’s research focuses on understanding the needs of scholars in a contemporary publishing environment; comparing the collaborative practices of scientists and humanists and how they might inform each other; and examining the best strategies for libraries to benefit from economies of scale while remaining embedded in local communities.

Nicole A. Cooke Associate Professor and MS/LIS Program Director Cooke’s research interests include human information behavior, particularly in the online context; critical cultural information studies; and diversity and social justice in librarianship with an emphasis on infusing them into LIS education and pedagogy.

Jana Diesner Associate Professor and PhD Program Director Diesner’s research in human-centered data science and computational social sciences combines methods from network science, natural language processing, and machine learning with theories from the social sciences, humanities, and linguistics to advance knowledge and discovery about interaction-based and information-based systems.

Emily Knox Associate Professor Knox’s research interests include intellectual freedom and censorship, the intersection of print culture and reading practices, and information ethics and policy.

Pintar joins the iSchool

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udith Pintar joined the iSchool in August 2018 as a senior lecturer. She previously served as a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and as a visiting assistant professor in Sociology, where she earned her PhD. According to Pintar, her doctoral work at Illinois was shaped by an “eclectic intellectual community of sociologists, historians, and information scientists” pursuing interdisciplinary studies of science, technology, information, and medicine.

Pintar will teach courses in the areas of social and global informatics and particularly in the area of archiving cultural heritage. Her experience includes recent work with Illinois Informatics initiatives to develop a game studies curriculum and to shape the Global Informatics program, which will pair the informatics minor with majors in the Russian, EastEuropean & Eurasian Center and the School of Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics.

Her research interests include digital storytelling, game studies, digital literacy, and the development of interactive and AI interfaces.

She serves as director of the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities (IPRH) research cluster, Playful by Design: Interdisciplinary Game Studies @ Illinois.

“I’m looking forward to helping to include the iSchool in new and exciting interdisciplinary ventures,” she said. “I am currently coteaching a course with Rachel Switzky, the director of the Siebel Center for Design— one of many potentially fruitful collaborations between the iSchool and the Design Center that may emerge before the center is even built.”

Pintar looks forward to working more closely with her iSchool colleagues in her new role as senior lecturer. “As a sociologist of information, science, and technology, there is nowhere on this campus that I could possibly feel more at home than the iSchool.”

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Koh and Wickett join the faculty

Kyungwon Koh

T

he iSchool welcomed two new faculty members in August 2018, Associate Professor Kyungwon Koh and Assistant Professor Karen Wickett.

Koh’s areas of expertise include digital youth, the maker movement, learning and community engagement through libraries, human information behavior, and competencies for information professionals. She is the recipient of several research grants and awards, including a 2016 IMLS National Leadership Grant, 2016 ALA Midwinter YALSA Paper Presentation Winner, and 2014 IMLS Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program Early Career Development Grant. Her work appears in leading journals in library and information science, and she is currently a co-chair of the ALISE Youth Services SIG. Koh comes to Illinois from the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Oklahoma, where she served as an associate professor. She holds an MS and PhD in library and information studies from Florida State University and a BS in library and information science from Yonsei University in South Korea.

“I am looking forward to further developing my scholarship and contributing to the field of digital youth in this intellectually

Karen Wickett stimulating and prestigious academic environment,” Koh said.

“Kyungwon is working in areas of vital significance to the well-being of our youth and our communities, analyzing critical trends and exploring the effectiveness of new strategies for shaping services,” said Professor and Dean Allen Renear. “Most exciting for me is that she is also helping us see that digital youth is the best lens we have for viewing and understanding the future. Our School has always had very strong faculty in youth services and digital youth, and we are delighted that Kyungwon is joining us and making it stronger still.”

Wickett’s research areas include the conceptual and logical foundations of information organization systems and artifacts. She is most interested in the analysis of common concepts in information systems, and her work recognizes the pressing need for logically consistent definitions and descriptions in digital environments. She most recently served as an assistant professor in the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin. Wickett is a graduate of the iSchool at Illinois (MS ’07, PhD ’12) and holds a bachelor’s degree in math from Ohio State University. While pursuing her graduate de-

grees, she worked as a postdoctoral research associate for the iSchool’s Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship after completing her PhD and as a research assistant before that.

“I am delighted to be returning to the University of Illinois to join the faculty at the iSchool,” Wickett said. “I look forward to collaborating with top-tier researchers and practitioners in metadata, information organization, and data curation. The academic programs, research centers, and faculty at the iSchool are poised to help students become leaders in the information field in librarianship, data stewardship, analytics, and beyond.”

“It is terrific to have Karen back with us as a faculty member. She works in areas such as metadata and curation that are now absolutely critical to the successful management and use of information in a wide variety of institutions and communities— and, especially exciting, her work in the conceptual foundations of information systems is advancing our fundamental understanding of information systems and services,” said Renear.

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News

Professor Les Gasser passes away

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rofessor Leslie “Les” Gasser passed away at his home on Tuesday, October 16, surrounded by family and close friends. He is survived by his wife of 21 years, Terry von Thaden; his daughter Lisette and son Liam; and extended family and many beloved friends and colleagues.

Born on December 31, 1949, Gasser’s childhood was characterized by an enthusiasm for life and zeal for discovery. These traits served him well in college and graduate school. He graduated magna cum laude with a BA in English literature from the University of Massachusetts in 1976. He earned his MS and PhD degrees in computer science from the University of California, Irvine, in 1978 and 1984, respectively. During these years and throughout his lifetime, he was a talented musician who played

trumpet and guitar. He also was an avid ham radio operator.

After completing his education, Gasser taught and conducted research at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. He joined the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, now the School of Information Sciences, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as an associate professor in 1998. He was promoted to full professor in 2006. His research focused on social informatics, information systems, conceptual foundations of information, extreme-scale distributed simulation, and the origins and use of information in biological systems.

“At a critical time in the School’s development, Les significantly contributed to broadening both teaching and research in social

informatics,” said Leigh Estabrook, iSchool dean emerita, who recruited Gasser. “Les was unique in the way he thought about our field and his ability to cross disciplinary boundaries.”

At Illinois, Gasser held a joint appointment in the Department of Computer Science and faculty affiliate appointments in the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), the Beckman Institute, and the Computational Science and Engineering Program. He also was a faculty affiliate at the Institute for Software Research in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California-Irvine.

Gasser’s innovative work secured grants from funders including the National Science Foundation, National Center for Manufacturing Sciences, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett Packard, and Intel. In 2009, he received the IFAAMAS Influential Publication Prize for coediting a series of books about distributed artificial intelligence. He also was selected to serve as a prestigious NCSA Faculty Fellow for the 2016-2017 academic year. Gasser accepted numerous national and international invitations to serve as an invited keynote speaker and invited professor, sharing his knowledge and expertise.

“Les Gasser’s impact on our School’s identity and culture has been enormous and permanent. Academically, he was noted for startlingly ambitious research agendas and creative thinking and surprise in his classroom—and for always treating all students, at every level, as colleagues in a great intellectual adventure. In his leadership roles here, both formal and informal, he was deeply innovative and yet at the same time measured and balanced, often changing the conversation in interesting ways, and always reaching out to include new voices. He was a very good friend to me and to so many of us. The School he helped create will carry on the marks of his insights and commitments into the future,” said Dean Allen Renear.

Bashir named 2018-2019 Centennial Scholar

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ssistant Professor Masooda Bashir has been named the iSchool’s Centennial Scholar for 2018-2019. Endowed by alumni and friends of the School, the Centennial Scholar award recognizes outstanding accomplishments and/or professional promise in the field of library and information science.

“I am humbled and immensely grateful to the iSchool faculty and alumni to be a recipient of this award,” said Bashir, whose research explores how privacy, security, and trust intersect with information systems from a psychological point of view.

Innovations in computing and the advance of electronic communication technologies have led to the exponential growth of digital data. The privacy, security, and trust of such data have become a top national and global priority. Bashir explores these critical concerns from a humancentered perspective, investigating users’ attitudes, knowledge, behavior, and preferences related to digital privacy, cybersecurity, and automation.

Bashir is the director of Social Sciences in Engineering Research in the College of Engineering and holds appointments in the Information Trust Institute (ITI), Coordinated Science Laboratory, Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering, and Beckman Institute. She has led and served as co-principal investigator on several multidisciplinary projects, such as the Illinois Cyber Security Scholars Program (ICSSP); ITI Program in Digital Forensics curriculum development; and most recently, Ethical Thinking in Cyber Space (EthiCS), an interdisciplinary initiative funded by the National Security Agency with the primary aim of developing and teaching a curriculum designed to develop the critical and ethical reasoning skills vital for cybersecurity professionals. At the iSchool, she teaches courses in privacy in the internet

“It is an honor to be part of an excellent community of scholars at the iSchool who consistently provide me with a strong intellectual climate and support to pursue my interdisciplinary research topics”

age, information assurance, ethics of cybersecurity, and digital forensics.

“It is an honor to be part of an excellent community of scholars at the iSchool who consistently provide me with a strong intellectual climate and support to pursue my interdisciplinary research topics,” said Bashir. “I look forward to working with them as well as my colleagues across campus to continue my research towards building a human-centered information science that lays the foundational principles for designing technologies that respect the privacy, security, and trust of users as well as adhere to established social and ethical guidelines.”

Bashir joined the iSchool faculty in 2013. She previously served as assistant director for social trust initiatives at ITI, where she led multiple educational initiatives, including the Summer Research Experience for Undergraduates program and ICSSP. Before coming to Illinois, she worked for several years as a systems analyst, technical

trainer, manager, and global manager for a number of corporations in Silicon Valley, including Lotus and IBM. She has earned degrees in mathematics, computer science, and psychology and received her PhD in psychology from Purdue University.

“It is of great societal importance that we develop successful responses to the rapidly evolving opportunities and threats that networked digital systems present. In the coming decades, we expect to see more pervasive computing and integration of daily living with digital systems, the ever-increasing connectivity of the ‘Internet of Things,’ and a growing number of humanmachine interactions of all sorts in our lives,” said Dean Allen Renear. “Masooda’s integration of pioneering interdisciplinary research themes with novel educational endeavors will help ensure the effective training of tomorrow’s workforce and future leaders who can address the challenges that will face us in the decades to come.”

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News

Intersections Winter 2018

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New orientation model provides engaging, high-touch experience

D

ue to record enrollment this fall, the iSchool’s new student orientation was held in the Illini Union's Illini Rooms for the first time. According to Meg Edwards, assistant dean for student affairs, the new venue provided a welcoming experience for students and a wonderful opportunity to engage.

“Moving our orientation to the Illini Union provided an opportunity to pilot a new model in which student-to-student conversations and high-touch faculty engagement were cornerstones of the sessions. This level of interaction would not have been possible in our current building due to space constraints,” she said.

To prepare for the orientation, which was held on August 24, students were assigned homework prior to the event that included reading a current event article and viewing a TED Talk. The purpose of the assignment was to provide an introduction to the

breadth and relevancy of the information sciences, facilitate interaction and communication among students across degree programs, and demonstrate the foundation of information sciences as a field.

After completing their registration, 204 new on-campus MS/LIS and MS/IM students were assigned to tables of eight. The tables served not only as their required seating for orientation but also as locations for an icebreaker activity and a facilitated conversation around their homework assignment.

Students discussed “Digital access isn't a luxury for refugees: it’s a necessity” (Slate, June 2018) and “How to train employees to have difficult conversations” (Tamekia MizLadi Smith | TED2018) with their peers and the 31 faculty and staff facilitators.

“Since they were randomly assigned to a table with a faculty/staff facilitator, this allowed the students to listen and learn from their new peers. Our goal was to help them

recognize the foundation of information sciences in spite of the degree programs in which they were enrolled,” Edwards explained. “Of the 71% of students who responded to the orientation survey, 88% of them either strongly agreed or agreed that this activity was useful. “ Orientation also included a lightning information session, cultural competence session, information fair, and an all-School dinner at Papa Del’s on Friday night.

New students were invited to participate in optional pre-orientation activities, including talks focused on special topics, library and building tours, and a welcome breakfast that featured an egg drop competition/ team-building exercise.

“I enjoyed the ‘Birds of a Feather’ series, especially the session on Data Analysis with Professor Turk because of how he was able to explain things by visualizing and connecting them with his knowledge of astronomy.

MS/IM student team’s fleet fuel management project wins first

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Jianzhang Chen, Siran “Terry” Dai, Yinan “Lynn” Ni, Zhaoqin Wang, and Joshua Wu (photo by Veronica Mullen)

hree iSchool students were on the winning team at PygHack 2018, a 24-hour hackathon that brought together coders, designers, engineers, and dreamers to collaboratively create something that can benefit the community or an organization in Champaign-Urbana. This year’s event was held on September 29-30 at the University of Illinois Research Park. PygHack projects were judged based on community benefit, collaboration, design, functioning prototype, and innovation.

MS/IM students Siran “Terry” Dai, Jianzhang Chen, and Yinan “Lynn” Ni teamed up with Joshua Wu, an undergraduate in Computer Science, and Zhaoqin Wang, a PhD student in Agricultural and Biological Engineering, on a fleet fuel management project. Their team placed first out of sixteen

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However, the most awesome activity was the social held at the Ice Arena. Everyone was literally falling, but by the end, we had learned how to ice skate a bit,” said MS/IM student Mohit Gupta.

MS/LIS student Jenna Jordan also found the optional orientation events to be extremely valuable.

“I’m definitely considering taking Professor Song’s knowledge management class after going to his “Birds of a Feather” session; the class wasn’t even on my radar before.

In addition, it was good to have students start thinking about careers early, and Career Services offered some excellent advice. Besides all of the useful information, orientation week was also a great chance to start making friends and connections within the iSchool.

I went to every event I could, and I’m glad I did,” she said.

The “Informaniacs” team won the egg drop competition. Team members included (L-R): Hsu-Feng Lee, Devansh Ghandi, Priyanshu Madan, Vibhor Khetan, and Pranali Mane. Not pictured: Allison Kilberg, Annabel Pinkney, Claressa Slaughter, and Xinrong Li.

Professor Michael Twidale facilitates the small group discussion at one of the tables during the iSchool orientation.

place at hackathon teams—winning $1,500 cash, Huawei tablets, dinner with the Granular Engineering Leadership Team, and one month of office space at Lodgic Everyday Community in Champaign.

Their winning project tackles the Urbana Fleet Fuel Management problem, which tries to find trends in gas station prices and vehicle fueling behaviors based on the fleet credit card transactions data regarding the fuel station, amount of fuel, vehicle ID, vehicle mileage, etc. In addition to answering questions about price and behavior, the project included a dynamic route recommendation system that calculates the route between a start point and a destination, looks at all of the gas stations that are reachable along the route, and then recommends a gas station.

“The gas station recommendation can be optimized for the cost (i.e., it will recommend the gas station with the cheapest prices while taking into account the fuel lost by making a detour to the station) or for time (i.e., it will recommend the gas station that is fastest and cheapest to get to),” Dai explained. “Our team also built reusable, interactive dashboards for fleet manager monitoring the gas station prices and vehicle fueling behaviors in real time, which can save more time to make the best use of the data.”

Dai expressed his gratitude to the iSchool for giving him the opportunity to learn new skills in information sciences and meet talented students with different backgrounds and skillsets.

“I really enjoyed the collaboration with our teammates during the whole process,” he said. “Every one of us has an expertise in problem solving (coding, data analysis, business research, web development, etc.). It was really exciting to work together and make this great project!”

10 Intersections Winter 2018

N R ee w s es a r c h

iSchool hosts inaugural Comics Studies Society conference

Cartoonist and plenary speaker Hazel Newlevant (photo by Samantha Langsdale)

T

he first Annual Conference of the Comics Studies Society, “Mind the Gaps!

The Futures of the Field,” was held August 9-11 at the iSchool. This inaugural conference, cosponsored by the iSchool and The Center for Children’s Books, brought together scholars, librarians, and practitioners from a dozen countries for inclusive, diverse, rigorous, and collegial conversations about comics.

The plenary speakers for the conference were well-known independent cartoonists, editors, and comic writers Hazel Newlevant and Whit Taylor. In addition to panels and the plenary talk, there were library exhibits, cartoonists sharing their comics, workshops, and more.

Conference sessions invited participants to consider topics such as representations of disability in comics, classroom approaches to long-running serialized narratives, avantgarde manga, libraries and archives in support of comics scholarship, intellectual property and character licensing, readership and fandom practices, materiality and valuation, and Black women comics creators.

“Those sessions and conversations gave me rich ideas to draw on for both my own scholarship as well as for the iSchool class I teach each spring, Comics: Advising Child and Adult Readers,” said Associate Professor Carol Tilley, president of the Comics Studies Society and host of the conference.

The opening day of the conference, Community Day, was free to the public and encouraged greater interest in comics and comics studies by inviting members of the community to participate in some of the Society’s activities.

“Most people who know better will tell you that putting together a conference takes a couple of years of planning and work. I insisted, however, that our threeyear-old society could do it in little more than a year. Thanks to the support of my iSchool and campus colleagues and students as well as my fellow Comics Studies Society executive board members, not only did the conference happen but it was a success by every measure,” said Tilley.

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Fake News and Alternative Facts: Information Literacy in a Post-Truth Era American Library Association (ALA) Editions Special Report In this thought-provoking report, Associate Professor and MS/LIS Program Director Nicole A. Cooke addresses the issue of fake news and the need for the public to become more information savvy by acquiring research and evaluation skills. She covers the rise of fake news and information behaviors that have perpetuated its spread; techniques to identify fake news, especially online; and methods to help others think critically about information and separate fact from fiction.

Intersections Winter 2018

Reading Corner

Representing the Rainbow in Young Adult Literature: LGBTQ+ Content Since 1969 Rowman & Littlefield Associate Professor Emerita Christine A. Jenkins and Michael Cart’s insightful book serves as a guide to help young adults find positive role models in fiction featuring LGBTQ+ themes. It identifies titles that are notable either for their excellence or deficiencies and features an annotated bibliography. The book is an expanded version of their earlier work, The Heart Has Its Reasons (2006), which was included on VOYA’s FiveFoot Bookshelf of Essential Reading for Professionals Who Serve Teens.

New Philadelphia Path Press This new book coauthored by Professor Emeritus Gerald McWorter (also known as Abdul Alkalimat) and Associate Professor Kate Williams-McWorter tells the story of an integrated Illinois town founded by McWorter’s great-great-grandfather, Frank McWorter, who bought his way out of slavery. Available through the New Philadelphia Association, New Philadelphia includes the interconnected stories of people from different backgrounds and places, sharing the diversity of the freedom struggle.

Research Showcase The 2018 Research Showcase was held on October 31 at the Illini Union. The showcase highlights the School’s human-centered, interdisciplinary research that connects people with technology to achieve their goals. It focuses on socially relevant topics through a keynote speech and series of short presentations and posters. Donna Cox, director of the NCSA Advanced Visualization Lab, was this year’s keynote speaker.

Assistant Professor Jodi Schneider’s research group members presented their work at the poster session. Group members (L-R): Xiaokai "Victor" Cui (MS/IM), Jodi Schneider, Benjamin Weller (MS/LIS), Yogeshwar Kansara (MS/IM), Linh Hoang (PhD), and Di Ye (BS, Statistics)

Research

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Experience trailers offer a flavor of the user experience

W

hen Nintendo introduced the Wii home video game console in 2006, the company needed to show the general public how the Wii was unlike other game consoles currently on the market. To do so, Nintendo created an experience trailer to help potential users understand how it would feel to use the Wii. Professor and MS/IM Program Director Michael Twidale and Stefan Rennick-Egglestone, a senior research fellow in the School of Health Sciences at the University of Nottingham, discuss this area of research in their article, “Experience Trailers,” which was recently published in the Association for Computing Machinery journal Interactions (July-August 2018).

Experience trailers are similar to film trailers but convey a sense of the user experience, which, according to the researchers, is especially important when the experience of an application is novel or not what a person might expect. In their article, Twidale and Rennick-Egglestone examine three types of experience trailers—in the gaming industry, for wearable medical de-

vices, and for novel interactive experiences.

Experience trailers can show users what a piece of technology will look like, where it might be used, and how it might fit into their lives. Rather than a complex video showing the mechanics of a medical device, an experience trailer can provide users with a general understanding of what it would be like to use the device.

The researchers’ interest in experience trailers started over a conversation four years ago about computerized therapy services such as MoodGYM, an online cognitive behavior therapy program for depression and anxiety.

“The computerized therapy services tend to be built around an assumption that someone stays engaged for two to three months,” said Rennick-Egglestone. “That’s a big ask, and the evidence is that dropout rates are high. Mike and I talked about how someone might go into such an engagement just a bit more informed about what they are getting themselves in for, and that if they are a bit more informed, dropout rates might not be so high. We wondered

about providing a trailer to showcase the types of interaction that might be found.”

The hypothesis is that the experience trailer could result in the user engaging with therapeutic technologies over a longer period of time. Of course, the biggest challenge for researchers developing novel computer systems, interfaces, and user experiences is how to persuade people to try something totally unfamiliar.

“An experience trailer can happen by accident, like when you are at a museum and there is some computer interactive activity, and you have to wait for someone else to finish using it before you can have a go,” said Twidale. “That waiting and watching is useful. It helps you decide you do want a go— even if you can’t see all the details of what they are doing while you wait a distance away.”

Furthermore, experience trailers can be used to facilitate research projects. “An especially important use is to provide better informed consent for volunteers taking part in research studies with novel software,” said Twidale.

Intersections Winter 2018

13 Diesner and Mishra publish paper on NER tool for social media research

T

he identification of proper names of people, organizations, and locations from raw texts, referred to as Named Entity Recognition (NER), can be highly accurate when researchers use NER tools on a large collection of text with proper syntax. However, using existing NER tools for analyzing social media text can lead to poor identification of named entities. In particular, Twitter text frequently includes inconsistent capitalization, spelling errors, and shortened versions of words.

TwitterNER, an open-source tool developed by doctoral student Shubhanshu Mishra, who is supervised by Associate Professor Jana Diesner, can help researchers interested in performing NER on social media text. TwitterNER has recently been shown

(in an independent evaluation by Humangeo) to perform better in terms of precision than some other publicly available systems for entity types of person, location, and organization, which are often of most interest to researchers.

“Our system relies on a combination of hand-engineered features,” explained Mishra. “It follows the paradigm of transductive semi-supervised learning where all the labeled and unlabeled data is utilized to make predictions about the unlabeled data.”

The original implementation of TwitterNER was created for the shared-task session at the 2016 Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING) Workshop on “Noisy User-generated Text” (WNUT). Workshop participants were asked to

build an NER system for Twitter data, which was evaluated using a common test dataset.

TwitterNER had a high level of precision among the various systems.

Diesner and Mishra then improved their approach and shared it with W-NUT by submitting the paper, “Semi-supervised Named Entity Recognition in noisy-text.”

“Our original submission ranked seventh in the task, but our final improved version surpassed the second-best performing system on the concluded task,” said Mishra.

“The winning system was based on deep learning, but its implementation is not publicly available.”

Find out more about TwitterNER: https://github.com/napsternxg/TwitterNER

HathiTrust Research Center extends non-consumptive research tools to copyrighted materials Adapted from a HTRC news release

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he HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC) has extended non-consumptive research tools to copyrighted materials, expanding research through fair use. HTRC is a collaboration between the University of Illinois, Indiana University, and the HathiTrust to enable advanced computational access to the HathiTrust Digital Library database.

Since 2011, HTRC has been developing services and tools to allow researchers to employ text and data mining methodologies using the HathiTrust collection. To date, this service has been available only on the portion of the collection that is out of copyright. With the development of a landmark HathiTrust policy and an updated release of HTRC Analytics, HTRC now provides access to the text of the complete 16.7-million-item HathiTrust corpus for non-consumptive research, such as data mining and computational analysis, including items protected by copyright.

This extraordinary opportunity to use copyrighted materials expands research access to the entire HathiTrust digital collection, which is sustained by HathiTrust’s 140+ member libraries. Researchers may access HTRC’s easy-to-use computational tools, which are ideal for beginners, as well as more complex tools designed to meet advanced data analysis needs.

A primary goal of HathiTrust is to enable the widest possible lawful research and educational uses of the HathiTrust collection.

In recent years, U.S. courts have recognized the solid legal basis for non-consumptive research on copyrighted materials. In 2016, HathiTrust established a working group to develop the Non-Consumptive Use Research Policy to ensure the responsible research use of copyrighted items.

The policy is now enacted in an updated release of HTRC Analytics, which allows researchers to conduct computational text

analysis on copyrighted items as permitted under U.S. copyright law. Non-consumptive research use does not change the legal status of items protected under copyright.

“Providing nonconsumptive access to all of HathiTrust’s nearly 17 million volumes will help scholars and students to uncover the secrets buried within to the benefit of us all,” said HTRC Codirector J. Stephen Downie, iSchool professor and associate dean for research.

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Features

iSchool partners with The Urbana Free Library for new apprenticeship program

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he iSchool launched a new apprenticeship program this fall with The Urbana Free Library. The program, which is modeled after an internship partnership between the Dominican University School of Information Studies and Skokie Public Library, will provide students with practical experience and additional exposure to all facets of library operations.

Through the iSchool’s practicum course, students can gain work experience and explore career options in a wide variety of professional settings. The course, which is not required but highly recommended, counts as two credits toward the master’s degree.

The course is typically taken for one semester and allows a student to spend 100 hours total at the practicum site.

“The apprenticeship program is like a practicum on steroids,” said Assistant Dean for Student Affairs Meg Edwards. “Each apprentice works 15 hours per week in the fall semester and earns two credits. If successful, they continue in the spring semester. The apprentice has both a faculty supervisor and library supervisor, who meet to discuss the student’s progress in the program. As part of the spring apprenticeship, students are required to complete an independent study for four credit hours. The students are awarded a fellowship to complete this academic work. This continuity creates value for the library. The program also provides value for students, since they obtain a full year of experience in a variety of areas in the library, along with financial support.”

The iSchool and The Urbana Free Library offered two apprenticeships for the 20182019 pilot program: one in the Champaign County Historical Archives and the other in Adult & Youth Services.

Master’s student Angela Solis, the Archives apprentice, worked in a public library after graduating with her bachelor’s in history in May 2017. She applied for the ap-

Angela Solis and Kelsey Pietens prenticeship program because, while she loved working in libraries, she knew her true passion was in archives.

“I volunteered at the University of Dayton Archives my senior year and left every day with a smile on my face, because I enjoyed what I was doing,” she said. “When I came across the apprenticeship program focusing on archives, I knew I had to apply and at least try to get the position.”

Solis enjoys the hands-on experience of being an apprentice and appreciates how what she is learning in her iSchool classes complements her work at the library.

“The week we talked about cataloging and metadata in Information Organization and Access (IS 501) was the same week one of my supervisors explained how one of the next steps for the special collections reappraisal project would involve cataloging and metadata. The opposite has also happened, when I am doing something in the archives and discuss it in class the next day.”

Anke Voss, The Urbana Free Library’s director of archives and special collections, serves as Solis’ library supervisor.

“Angela is working with our collections and also serving patrons, making valuable contributions in both areas,” Voss said. “She has updated inventory information for over three hundred special collections and is currently evaluating those collections for processing priorities and creating finding aids for them. This information will allow patrons to view preliminary finding aids for collections that previously had little or no intellectual access. Angela has been a wonderful addition to our staff!”

Master’s student Kelsey Pietens, the Adult & Youth Services apprentice, thought the apprenticeship seemed like a great way to get a lot of experience in a public library. She holds a bachelor’s degree in English education from Colorado State University, and her previous work experience was as a substitute teacher and campus minister.

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“The best part about being an apprentice is that I get to try a lot of things,” Pietens said. “My iSchool classes gave me the foundation I needed—an understanding of the reference, technology, and fundamental principles of librarianship. The apprenticeship lets me put what I’ve learned into practice.”

Pietens is supervised by Rachel Fuller, the Urbana Free Library’s director of adult and youth services.

“Kelsey has been trained to provide reference and technology support in the Flexn-Gate Computer Center, which primarily serves adult patrons, and has also started observing and providing support to multiple librarians for programs that serve community members of all ages,” said Fuller.

“Next month, she will work with Development & Promotion to learn about the process of creating promotional materials.

In the spring, she will be trained to work at

the Question Desk, which primarily serves children, and will complete projects in the Circulation and Acquisitions departments.

By the end of the year, we expect she will know nearly every library staff member.”

The iSchool hopes to grow the pilot program and expand it to other units within The Urbana Free Library, as well as in other public libraries, which will lead to more apprenticeships for students who are interested in gaining valuable professional experience.

Batchelder brings music and movement to the library

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shley Batchelder, a master’s student in the Leep online program, is utilizing her music background in her job as an assistant children’s librarian at the Mt. Zion (IL) District Library. When she started at the library in January 2016, Batchelder noticed there were no programs for children under 18 months old. She proposed a music- and movement-based program for the library, and her director loved the idea. The idea originated from a music and movement class for infants Batchelder observed while earning her BA in music at Millikin University.

The program, which meets once per week, is divided into three ten-minute periods.

“During the first period, we introduce ourselves using our ‘Hello’ song and then continue to sing interactive songs using movements and rhythm scarves,” Batchelder explained. “The next period is referred to as ‘Instrument Time,’ where I lay instruments such as shakers, drums, maracas, and tambourines on the floor and let babies investigate on their own. In the last period, we come back together for more songs that incorporate instruments, movements, and sign language. We always end the session with our ‘Goodbye’ song, which happens to be the same as our ‘Hello’ song!”

Since the program launched in 2016, it has been “wildly successful” and has filled a need in the community for an activity for infants.

Batchelder volunteered at the Barclay Public Library in Warrensburg, Illinois, in

middle school and worked there for two years in college. She considered going to graduate school in music therapy but decided her heart was in libraries. While applying to graduate programs in library and information science, Batchelder found out the Mt. Zion District Library had an opening in Youth Services. She got the job and put her MS/LIS degree on hold for two years, enrolling in the Leep program in fall 2018.

“The Leep program has allowed me to continue working without having to drive far away every week to go to school,” Batchelder said. “I am taking a Children’s Lit class, which has been great because I can apply what I’m learning to my work. Collection development is a part of my job right now, so learning more about children’s literature in general has helped me greatly.”

Features

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Internship Spotlight: Facebook

Doctoral candidate Kinyetta Nance discusses her summer internship at Facebook in California.

What is your research focus at the iSchool?

My research explores the intersection of technology, culture, and design.

Where did you work this summer, and what was your role?

I worked at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, California, as a UX research intern on the Accessibility and Core Experience teams.

How did you find out about the position?

As someone who is always browsing for opportunities, I knew internships in tech for PhD students are abundant. I worked at Adobe last year in the same role, so I wanted to try a different company. Companies tend to list their opportunities as early as September for the following summer, so I started applying in the fall semester for multiple internship opportunities. I searched Linkedin, Indeed, and also found which companies were coming to the Engineering Career Fair.

What new skills did you acquire during your time with the company?

The biggest skill I learned was how to “Move Fast!,” which is one of Facebook’s core values.

I learned how to do multiple things extremely well at the same time. The pace in industry is a lot faster than in academia, so it took some adjusting, but after a few weeks, I settled into the position and onboarded to do the work I needed to accomplish for the summer. Being a member of a cross-functional team allowed me to inter-

act with engineers, product managers, and researchers as well as data scientists. I learned how to communicate well with different stakeholders. This communication opened the door to delivering key findings each team member valued and felt could be used to push products forward.

What did you like best about working at the company?

Free food! Pay, amenities, and the meaningful work! Granted, you’re often working too hard to enjoy some of the amenities, so you have to be intentional about using them!

Additionally, there are billions of people using Facebook. As a researcher, I had access to a huge corpus of log data. Gaining a few SQL skills allowed me the ability to query that data to gain key insights for my project.

It was quite overwhelming at first to run experiments with participants in the millions!

It’s daunting stuff, but very exciting at the same time. Very few social media companies have that reach. Another awesome reality of working at Facebook is that there are brilliant people all around. I had to execute quasi-experimental surveys over the summer, and being able to poll senior researchers to talk about how to properly set up the experiments and best practices was awesome. There was an in-house expert for many things!

What would you advise current students who are interested in an internship opportunity?

I would say create a great resume, with keywords targeted for the job or jobs you are interested in. Also, create a website to showcase your projects and skills. This is cru-

cial. This step helped me land last year’s job with Adobe. Provide lots of visuals, and videos where necessary; recruiters often have very little time to skim your material.

Utilize the Engineering Career Fairs to gain face time with your favorite employers. You can practice talking to recruiters from companies you’re interested in and you can learn more about what they are looking for in the interns they hire. I talked to many recruiters as well as previous interns during my search.

Also, start applying now. Don’t wait until it’s too late. I started applying in the early to middle part of the fall semester for internships the following summer. Typically UX applications for Google are released the first week of January, so I always marked my calendar so that I could be one of the first people to submit an application! I also received an offer from Google, but that job was in Seattle, and I wanted to be in California. Applying early gives you more opportunities.

Be prepared to work hard! Facebook and many of the tech companies pay extremely well and some provide housing. They do require you to spend long hours as needed to plan, execute, and deliver your projects.

Be prepared for an unsteady work-life balance for part to almost all of your internship so that it does not surprise you when you arrive!

What are your plans after you complete your degree?

My internship at Facebook was successful, and they have offered me a full-time job upon graduating with my PhD in the spring.

I plan to start my postdoctoral journey in industry with Facebook next year as a full time UX researcher on their Accessibility team.

Cloonan and Berger partnership benefits iSchool, “With Illinois” campaign

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ichèle Cloonan (MS ’84, PhD ’88) and Sid Berger (MS ’87) have a special connection to the iSchool, one that is professional and personal.

“When I was in the doctoral program, I edited an issue of Library Trends, ‘Recent Trends in Rare Book Librarianship,’” said Cloonan. “My advisor, Don Krummel, suggested Sid Berger as a possible contributor. Sid and I have been collaborators ever since, as husband and wife and as scholars.”

Cloonan, a research associate professor at the iSchool, is a professor in the School of Library and Information Science at Simmons University and was the School’s dean from 2002 to 2012. Previously, she was chair and associate professor in the Department of Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has worked at the Newberry Library, Brown University, and Smith College as a conservator, preservation librarian, and rare books curator, respectively.

Berger is director emeritus of the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum and an adjunct professor in the iSchool, where he teaches courses on rare books and special collections. He is also a faculty member at Simmons University, where he has taught in library and information science, English,

and e-communications. He holds a PhD in Medieval English literature and bibliography from the University of Iowa.

“I got a superb education at the iSchool,” Berger said. “I met Michèle there, and it has turned into a fabulous marriage—of minds and in other ways. I love teaching there because of the great students and staff, fine facilities, imaginative curricula, and flexibility for faculty and students. It is an all-around superior program.”

The couple have provided generous financial support for the School. In addition, Cloonan is chair of the iSchool’s campaign

committee for “With Illinois,” the Urbana campus’ most ambitious fundraising campaign to date. The School’s priorities for the campaign are to offer an accessible education, enrich the student experience, and provide faculty support. The goal is to raise $19M with the support of alumni and friends. Cloonan received financial support as a student thanks to the kindness of donors and wants to see that tradition continue.

“The iSchool has a lot to offer and can increase its offerings only by having the resources that it needs to do so,” Cloonan said. “My time at Illinois changed the course of my professional and personal life. I have had a wonderful career, and I have a fabulous spouse. The iSchool was the source for both.”

Alumni and friends are encouraged to join the couple in giving back to the School during the “With Illinois” Campaign. For more information or to contribute, visit the iSchool’s online giving page at https://go.ischool.illinois.edu/give or contact Diana Stroud, Office of Advancement, at (217) 244-9577 or ischool-advancement@illinois.edu.

“With Illinois” Campaign iSchool’s campaign goal: $19 million Amount raised (as of fall 2018): almost $14 million (74% of goal)

Breakdown of Gifts: Student Support/Scholarships/Fellowships Faculty Research Unrestricted Support Faculty Professorships/Awards/Support Facilities Lectureships

$2,118,243 $6,697,340 $4,303,138 $744, 448 $22,145 $28,170

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Giving

Elsessers invest $1 million in the School of Information Sciences

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$1-million dollar gift from Lionelle (BA, LAS ’66; MS, LIS ’67) and James (BS, Business ’66; MS, Business ’67) Elsesser will both expand the iSchool’s academic programs and support the recruitment of promising students. The gift will be invested in the School’s new programs, and that investment will generate $50,000 annually for the Katharine L. Sharp Scholarships, which will be available to students in all iSchool programs.

“We are extremely grateful for this significant gift from the Elsessers, who have given so generously of their time and resources to benefit our teaching and research mission,” said Dean Allen Renear. “This is a unique time in the history of our School, as we advance our leadership role in educating students for a wide range of career opportunities that incorporate our values of social benefit and service.”

The gift from the Elsessers will enhance the education of students by supporting the infrastructure of the academic programs.

This infrastructure includes offering addi-

“The Katharine Sharp Scholarship has lightened my financial burden, which allows me to focus more on the most important aspects of school—learning. The Elsessers’ generosity has inspired me to help others and give back to the community.”

—Dykee Gorrell James and Lionelle Elsesser

“I am so humbled and honored to receive the Katharine Sharp Scholarship. I feel immensely motivated to study hard and achieve my professional goals in the future.”

—Shamini Hilda Samuvel Mani tional, innovative courses taught by experienced, talented faculty and making classes available both on campus and online.

“We are gratified that, with the guidance of Dean Allen Renear, a way has been established to help the iSchool accelerate new programs and provide financial assistance to such interesting and deserving students.

We are delighted to help,” said Lionelle.

The Katharine L. Sharp Scholarships will provide $50,000 annually for applicants and/or current students who show extraordinary potential for leadership in the profession and society. The first two recipients are MS/LIS student Dykee Gorrell and MS/IM student Shamini Hilda Samuvel Mani.

Gorrell received her bachelor’s degree in history from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her areas of concentration include data science and usability engineering. After earning her master’s degree from the iSchool, she would like to work in the technology sector as a user interface designer/researcher or data scientist or to perhaps pursue a PhD in social data science, in particular at the Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University. She is interested in creating new methods of data collection through partnerships focused on developing more equitable and ethical technologies, especially for racialized Black online users.

“The Katharine Sharp Scholarship has lightened my financial burden, which allows me to focus more on the most important aspects of school—learning,” said Gorrell. “The Elsessers’ generosity has inspired me to help others and give back to the community. I hope one day I will be able to help students achieve their goals as they have helped me.”

Samuvel Mani earned her bachelor’s degree in engineering from Anna University in Tamil Nadu, India. Prior to enrolling in the iSchool, she worked for the Bank of New

MS/IM student Shamini Hilda Samuvel Mani and MS/LIS student Dykee Gorrell are the inaugural recipients of the Katharine Sharp Scholarship.

York Mellon, developing and deploying business intelligence solutions to Fortune 500 clients in the investment banking domain. The MS/IM degree was a perfect fit, given her background and interests in data science and analytics. Following graduation, Samuvel Mani would like to work for a multinational corporation and ultimately become a leading woman entrepreneur in the IT industry, empowering other women.

“I am so humbled and honored to receive the Katharine Sharp Scholarship,” said Samuvel Mani. “I feel immensely motivated to study hard and achieve my professional goals in the future.”

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Alumni

2018 ISAA award recipients

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he iSchool Alumni Association (ISAA) honored its 2018 award recipients at the ISAA Annual Meeting and reception, which was held during the annual meeting of the American Library Association.

Distinguished Alumnus Award Anne Gilliland (MS ’84, CAS ’85), Professor and Director of the Archival Studies specialization in the Department of Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Director of the Center for Information as Evidence For her work in recordkeeping and archival studies, which includes promoting scholarship and innovation in education as well as practices in support of human rights and daily life in post-conflict settings.

Leadership Award Chera Kowalski (MS ’09), Adult/Teen Librarian at the Free Library of Philadelphia’s McPherson Square Branch For addressing the problem of opioid addiction in her community, through facilitating overdose training for library staff and saving lives.

Distinguished Service Award Diana Stroud, iSchool Assistant Dean for Advancement and Alumni Affairs (2005-2017) For her service to the iSchool, which focused on connecting donor interests with needs, coordinating the School’s involvement in the Brilliant Futures campaign, and laying the groundwork for the current campaign, “With Illinois.”

Student Award Eva Anne Johnson (MS ’18) For “catching the spirit” of the library and information science profession, by pursuing her MS degree while working at the Wilmette Public Library and receiving training in genealogy and public librarianship.

iSchool alumni selected for Minnesota Institute

(L-R) Alonso Avila (MS ’15), William Langston (MS ’14), Nisha Mody (MS ’17), Erik Ponder (MS ’17), Monique Lassere (MS ’17), Jesus Espinoza (MS ’17), Regina Carter (MS ’14), and Katrina Spencer (MS ’16) were selected to participate in the Minnesota Institute for Early Career Librarians from Traditionally Underrepresented Groups, which was held from July 16-20 in Minneapolis. The institute is a week-long program housed at and sponsored by the University of Minnesota Libraries, focusing on the development of library leaders from diverse backgrounds.

Wine classification analogy leads to librarianship

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orking on his application for graduate study at the iSchool at Illinois, Michael DeNotto (MS ’12) wanted to make his personal statement stand out. DeNotto worked at an upscale wine shop after receiving his master’s in English studies and communication from Valparaiso University. There he discovered a “fascinating wine classification system that determined whether a wine was a vin de pays or premier cru or grand cru.” He used the wine classification analogy in his personal statement to demonstrate his interest in librarianship, both on a practical as well as a conceptual level.

“When you think about the fact that humans and societies have been producing wine since at least 5,000 B.C., and you consider that humans have been writing since at least 3,000 B.C., it becomes obvious that these near ubiquitous expressions of humans are important in the grand scheme of things,” DeNotto said. “And, I think that wine and books (recorded information) are both human expressions that can be intoxicating methods of communicating time and place.

They are both the products of multiple millennia of accumulated knowledge.”

DeNotto addressed the topics of wine and librarianship in the paper, “Wine, viticulture, and enology,” which was recently published in C&RL News (July/August 2018). In the paper, he broached the subject of his iSchool application—“If it weren’t for wine, I might not be a librarian.”

“As someone who has since then been on multiple search committees, I now know firsthand just how monotonous it can be to

read letters of application; a unique analogy or juxtaposition can really catch the eye and make a difference,” DeNotto explained of his personal statement.

He decided to apply to the iSchool because he wasn’t quite sure what to do with an English degree, and he wanted a career in which he could help people and make a positive impact in their lives. During his childhood, he was a frequent visitor to the Lincoln Library in Springfield, Illinois, and he remains a voracious reader today. According to DeNotto, “bearing all that in mind, librarianship and an LIS degree made perfect sense.”

DeNotto is now the humanities librarian at Hope College, a small, private, liberal arts college in Holland, Michigan, where he works in the Research and Instruction Department, supporting the humanities departments with instruction, collection management/development, research consultations, and more.

“The best part of my job is working with and helping students,” he said. “Beyond that, I very much enjoy the opportunities I have to research, write, and make connections across the globe through librarianship. Additionally, I have wonderful colleagues throughout the library and Hope College who are intelligent, collegial, and inspiring. Getting to work in such an environment, while helping students grow, is very rewarding.”

DeNotto credits the flexibility of the iSchool’s graduate program, real-world experience he gained through practicums and internships, and guidance from faculty and staff with helping him get to where he is today. His advice to students is to get involved, gain experience, ask questions, be social, learn to adapt, find a good mentor . . . and of course, “consider what will make you stand out amongst the crowd.”

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Class Notes

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Decade: 2010s Alessandra Affinito (MS ’18) credits earning an MS degree with her promotion from a library information assistant to a librarian at the New York Public Library.

Jeanie Austin (PhD ’17) joined the newly formed Jail & Reentry Services program with San Francisco Public Library. In this capacity, they will provide direct library services within San Francisco jails as well as link recently released patrons to library resources.

Will LaChance (MS ’16) moved to St. Louis and accepted a position as assistant branch manager at the Cliff Cave Branch of the St. Louis County Library.

Carl Lehnen (MS ’13) was elected secretary of the Illinois Association of College & Research Libraries Forum (IACRL).

Joshua Lynch (MS ’17) started a position as a visiting metadata services specialist for the Illinois DPLA Hub as part of the Content Access Management department of the University Library.

Quetzalli Barrientos (MS’15) moved to Medford, Massachusetts, and accepted the position of arts and humanities research and instruction librarian at Tisch Library at Tufts University. Before Tufts, she worked for three years at American University in Washington D.C., where she served as the first resident librarian for reference and instruction.

Casey (Marks-McCoy) McCoy-Simmons (MS ’14) has been elected as director-at-large for the ALA Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round Table for 2018-2020. She currently works as the program specialist at KidsTek, a nonprofit teaching tech-literacy skills to K-12 grade students in the Denver Metro Area.

Emily Bayci (MS ‘14) married Marek Mroczek on April 28, 2018, and has changed her name to Emily Mroczek.

Benjamin Mead-Harvey (MS ’11) recently accepted an adjunct lecturer position at the iSchool to teach financial management.

A new book by Zachariah Claybaugh (MS ’15), Research Guide to Southeastern Europe: Print and Electronic Sources, is scheduled to be published in March 2019 by Rowman & Littlefield.

Scott F. Migaldi (MS ’11) has recently been issued a U.S. Patent on Pre-Steering Traffic in a Telecommunication Network. This patent takes into account user behaviors and previous informationseeking actions to predict the type of data services that a person will require to be successful in their request for information and/or services.

James Conley (MS ’13) opened the “Gay is Good” exhibit for the Gerber/Hart Library and Archives in Chicago, for which he acted as lead curator. The exhibit has been mentioned in various press and in a USA Today piece about activism in the 60s.

Suzanna Conrad (MS ’11) has been appointed associate dean for Digital Technologies and Resource Management at the University Library of California State University, Sacramento.

Jarrett Dapier (MS ’15) recently sold his first picture book, which will be published by Chronicle Books in 2020.

In June 2018, Mandi Goodsett (MS ’13) was named a member of the ALA Organizational Effectiveness/Governance Review: Steering Committee, a broadly representative committee that will work to align ALA’s organizational structure, policies and rules with the association’s twentyfirst century values, key action areas, and strategic directions.

Grete Graf (MS ’17) has accepted the position of digital preservation librarian at Yale University.

Katie Chamberlain Kritikos (MS ’10) recently relocated to Champaign-Urbana and is a new adjunct lecturer at the iSchool.

Jhani Miller (MS ’15) was promoted to library and information supervisor at the Ulmer Park Library Branch of the Brooklyn (NY) Public Library.

Thomas Padilla (MS ’13), visiting digital research services librarian at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, recently received a $750,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the first awarded in the state of Nevada. The grant will fund his work as principal investigator on Collections as Data: Part to Whole, a three-year project.

Kristen Reno (MS ’16) was recently promoted to the position of youth services librarian at Edwardsville (IL) Public Library and is enjoying creating fun and educational programming for youth of all ages.

Sarah T. Roberts (PhD ’14) is the recipient of a 2018 Pioneer Award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) for her groundbreaking content moderation research. She also has been named a 2018 Andrew Carnegie Fellow, which includes a $200,000 stipend in support of her work from the Carnegie Corporation.

Holly Soboroff (MS ’17) has accepted a position as instructional services librarian at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa.

Anna Trammell (MS ‘15) has accepted a position as university archivist/special collections librarian at Pacific Lutheran University located in Tacoma, Washington.

Michelle Urberg (MS ’16) finished a ten-month contract working in audio and visual cataloging at the University of Washington, which she used to enhance knowledge for her current position as a metadata librarian. She also is the principal investigator on an OLAC research grant, which focuses on improving streaming video cataloging for content providers and for libraries.

Emilie Vrbancic (MS ’14) has been appointed to senior assistant librarian at the University of Washington Libraries. She became the undergraduate experience librarian for Odegaard Undergraduate Library in 2016.

Jamie Wittenberg (MS ’15) recently received an $850,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS LG-70-18-0202) to fund the Shared BigData-Gateway project, an effort to develop, seed, and maintain a cloud-based, extensible infrastructure for sharing large academic library data resources.

Decade: 2000s Tara (Yoder) Caldara (MS ’05) joined Lake Villa (IL) District Library as head of Adult Services, bringing twenty-one years of library experience specializing in technology and developing innovative services.

Angela Carstensen (MS ’00), an independent school librarian for eighteen years, published The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Teen Literature with ALA Editions in June. An active book reviewer, she has served YALSA as chair of the Michael L. Printz Award, Alex Award, and Nonfiction Award committees. She is also the author of Outstanding Books for the College Bound: Titles and Programs for a New Generation (2011).

Tamela (James) Chambers (MS ’05) has recently returned to the Chicago Public Library as the head of Children’s Services at Woodson Regional Library. She has 17 years of experience working with children and their families as a children’s paraprofessional, school, and public librarian.

Audrey Chapuis (MS ’06) has been named director of the American Library in Paris. The Library is

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an independent, nonprofit institution that will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2020. It is the largest English-language lending library on the European continent.

Decade: 2000s

Sarah Park Dahlen (MS ’09, PhD ’09) co-founded a peer reviewed, open-access journal titled Research on Diversity in Youth Literature (RDYL). RDYL 1.1 was published June 1, 2018.

Jason Kuhl (MS ’99) began his new role as director and CEO of Saint Charles City-County (MO) Library District in January 2018.

Eric Edwards (MS ’06) recently completed a year as co-chair of the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI) Resource Sharing Committee. He is continuing as co-chair of the Illinois Library Association (ILA) Reporter Advisory Committee. In October, he will start a one-year term as Illinois Association of College and Research Libraries (IACRL) President.

Elizabeth (Beth) German (MS ’09) was elected vice president/president-elect of the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA), a division of the American Library Association, in April 2018.

Christopher Hamb (MS ’04) passed away on June 14, 2018. One of his many accomplishments was serving as assistant professor of the Engineering Library at Illinois.

Nancy S. Kirkpatrick (MS ’07) has been selected as the next executive director/CEO of OhioNET. She is currently the associate director of the Midwest Collaborative for Library Services.

Matthew Murrey’s (MS ’03) first-book poetry manuscript, Bulletproof, was selected by Marylin Nelson as the winner of the 2018 Jacar Press Full-length Book Contest.

Adria P. Olmi (MS ’01) works as the chief for the Research and Instruction branch of the U.S. Army War College Library.

Elizabeth Pierre-Louis (MS ’03) was the 20152016 president of the Association of Caribbean University, Research and Institution Libraries (ACURIL).

Hallie Pritchett (MS ’06) is now the associate dean of libraries for Research and Learning at North Dakota State University in Fargo.

Emily Frieda Shaw (MS ’08, CAS ’10) recently started a position as digitization manager for the Obama Foundation in Chicago.

In January 2018, Sarah Shreeves (MS ’02) became the vice dean of university libraries at the University of Arizona and is enjoying the transition from the tropics of Miami to the desert.

Liza Hickey (MS ’99) accepted the position of manager of Technical Services and Digitization at the Peoria (IL) Public Library.

In September 2017, Angie Fegenbush Rachels (MS ’94) began a new position as public services librarian at Newberry College in Newberry, South Carolina.

Pamela M. Salela (MS ’99) has been the coordinator of the Central Illinois Nonprofit Resource Center, which is part of the Brookens Library at the University of Illinois Springfield. Additionally, she is the government documents librarian and liaison to numerous departments including Women & Gender Studies, where she frequently teaches credit courses of her own design.

In June 2018, Karen Schneider (MS ’92) was named a member of the ALA Organizational Effectiveness/Governance Review: Steering Committee.

Lynne M. Thomas (MS ’99), head of The Rare Book & Manuscript Library, has received two Hugo Awards—science fiction’s most prestigious award.

Decade: 1980s Beverly Allen (MS ’87) is the author of the new book Practicing Oral History to Connect University to Community, published by Routledge.

Mary K. Johnson (MS ’81) retired in December 2017 from Sno-Isle Libraries, Washington, after 15 years of service as a reference librarian at

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various branches. She now lives in Medford, Oregon, and volunteers at the library of the (Pacific) Northwest Bird Club.

Cheryl L. Niemeier (MS ’86) started a new position as firm-wide director of Knowledge & Research Services for the Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP law firm’s Indianapolis office. Taft is a full service law firm of over 430 attorneys with offices in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, and Illinois.

Sara Tompson (MS ’87), Fellow of the Special Libraries Association, is leaving the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and southern California and moving to Lawrence, Kansas.

Decade: 1970s Lori Osmus Kappmeyer (MS ’78) retired from the Iowa State University Library in Ames on August 3, 2018, after a 40-year career there. Her most recent position was head of the Metadata Services Department.

In June 2017, David Pilachowski (MS ’73) retired after nineteen years as director of libraries at Williams College. He recently contributed a chapter on space planning in Leading in the New Academic Library and continues to consult on library buildings, an area of interest first developed in Walter Allen’s Library Buildings course.

Decade: 1960s Charles Churchwell (PhD ’66) passed away September 19, 2018. He was the first African-American male to earn a doctorate in library science from Illinois and enjoyed an illustrious career.

Marianne W. Stowers (MS ’65) has worked as a volunteer school librarian at Fairview Elementary School in Springfield, Illinois, one day each week since retiring from the public library.

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/engage/alumni

Intersections Winter 2018

24

Grants

Investigator

PI/Co-PI

Sponsor

iSchool Funded Project Amount

Collaborative Project Total Award

NEW GRANTS (funding began between July 1, 2017, and June 30, 2018) Catherine Blake

PI

Department of Veterans Affairs

$

15,476

Maria Bonn

PI

North Carolina State University (IMLS)

$

12,993

Ian Brooks

PI

Homecare Education Advocacy & Resource Team Support

$

15,000

Ian Brooks

PI

Illinois Department of Public Health

$

75,000

Nicole A. Cooke

PI

American Library Association

$

2,500

Jana Diesner

Co-PI

Army Research Lab

$

407,365

Jana Diesner

PI

Critical Infrastructure Resilience Institute (DHS)

$

100,000

Bertram Ludäscher

PI

Institute of Museum and Library Services

$

99,536

Matthew Turk

Co-PI

Large Synoptic Survey Telescope

$

15,000

Matthew Turk

PI

National Science Foundation

$ 1,061,721

Matthew Turk

Co-PI

University of Arizona (NSF)

$

$25,600,000

262,579

ACTIVE GRANTS (funding began prior to July 1, 2017) Masooda Bashir

Co-PI

National Science Foundation

$ 6,299,269

Masooda Bashir

Co-PI

National Security Agency

$

400,501

Catherine Blake

Co-PI

National Science Foundation

$

899,996

Catherine Blake

PI

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs

$

24,241

Ian Brooks

Co-PI

National Science Foundation

$ 1,005,692

Nicole A. Cooke

PI

American Library Association

$

5,000

Peter Darch

PI

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

$

149,000

Jana Diesner

Co-PI

Institute of German Language (German Federal Ministry of Education and Research)

$

109,936

Jana Diesner

PI

Intelligent Medical Objects

$

300,000

Jana Diesner

PI

Korean Institute of Science and Technology Information

$

25,000

J. Stephen Downie

PI

HathiTrust

$

562,177

J. Stephen Downie

PI

Institute of Museum and Library Services

$

398,844

J. Stephen Downie

PI

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

$

32,500

J. Stephen Downie

PI

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

$

15,800

J. Stephen Downie

PI

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

$

13,800

J. Stephen Downie

PI

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

$

38,950

J. Stephen Downie

PI

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

$ 1,170,000

Bertram Ludäscher

PI

National Science Foundation

$

Bertram Ludäscher

PI*

National Science Foundation

$ 4,986,951

Bertram Ludäscher

PI

National Science Foundation

$

748,931

Bertram Ludäscher

PI

National Science Foundation (subaward through University of New Mexico)

$

416,570

Bertram Ludäscher

PI

National Science Foundation

$

884,627

Jerome McDonough

PI

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

$

25,500

Allen Renear

Co-PI

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

$

413,353

$ 1,000,000

Jodi Schneider

Co-PI

National Library of Medicine

$

228,006

$ 1,799,937

Deborah Stevenson

PI

Institute of Museum and Library Services

$

248,203

Victoria Stodden

PI

National Science Foundation

$

59,991

Vetle Torvik

PI

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

$

484,942

Matthew Turk

PI

Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation

$ 1,500,000

Matthew Turk

PI

National Science Foundation

$

171,469

Matthew Turk

Co-PI

National Science Foundation

$

267,664

Matthew Turk

PI

National Science Foundation

$

511,989

Matthew Turk

Co-PI

National Science Foundation

$

450,000

Michael Twidale

PI

International Informatics Group

$

13,007

Michael Twidale

Co-PI

National Science Foundation

$

292,305

Ted Underwood

PI

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

$

88,762

*Victoria Stodden and Matthew Turk are Co-PIs

$ 1,000,000

336,646

$

388,444

Grant Title

Information Forum Requirements to Promote Knowledge Capture, Knowledge Sharing, and Community Interaction on the VHA Data Portal Designing OERs to Prepare the Next Generation of Scholarly Communication Librarians

Intersections Winter 2018

25

Improving Patient Outcomes by Listening to Their Social Media Communications Developing Tools for Implementation of Illinois Project for Local Assessment of Needs (IPLAN) for Local Health Departments Minority Student Experience with Racial Microaggressions in the Academic Library Alliance for Internet of Battlefield Things (IoBT) Research on Evolving Intelligent Goal-driven Networks (REIGN) Review and Assessment of the Usage of Computational Methods for Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) Eorts, and Scalable Measurement of Emergency Response from Text Data National Forum Data Mining Research Using in Copyright and Limited Access Text Datasets Shaping a Research and Implementation Agenda for Researchers Libraries and Content Providers Data Visualization and Exploration in the LSST Era Collaborative Research: S12-SSI: Inquiry-Focused Volumetric Data Analysis Across Scientific Domains: Sustaining and Expanding the yt Community PIRE: Black Hole Astrophysics in the Era of Distributed Resources and Expertise

Renewal of Illinois Cyber Security Scholars Program Cybersecurity Workforce Education A Big Data-Theoretic Approach to Quantify Organizational Failure Mechanisms in Probabilistic Risk Assessment Information Forum Requirements to Promote Knowledge Capture, Knowledge Sharing, and Community Interaction on the VHA Data Portal PFI:BIC - Pathtracker: A Smartphone-based System for Mobile Infectious Disease Detection and Epidemiology The Interracial Books for Children Bulletin: A Bibliography of Diverse Books If Data Sharing is the Answer, What is the Question?

Text Transfer: Corpus Based Detection of Secondary Practical Usage of Scientific Publications Improving the Detection and Classification of Medical Entities Analysis of Academic Activity Patterns in Academic Literature HathiTrust Research Center: New Opportunities through Computational Analysis of HathiTrust Digital Library 2014-2018 Digging Deeper, Reaching Further: Libraries Empowering Users to Mine the HathiTrust Digital Library Resources Data Capsule Appliance for Research Analysis of Restricted and Sensitive Data in Academic Libraries Textual Geographies Single Interface for Music Score Searching and Analysis Text Mining the Novel: Establishing the Foundations of a New Discipline 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 BCSP: Collaborative Research: ABI Development: Exploring Taxon Concepts (ETC) through Analyzing Fine Grained Semantic Markup of Descriptive Literature CC*DNI DIBBS: Merging Science and Cyberinfrastructure Pathways: The Whole Tale Collaborative Research: ABI Development: Kurator: A Provenance-enabled Workflow Platform and Toolkit to Curate Biodiversity Data DataONE (Observation Network for Earth) RIDIR: Collaborative Research: Developing and Deploying SKOPE - A Resource for Synthesizing Knowledge of Past Environments Preserving Intangible Cultural Heritage Understanding the Needs of Scholars in a Contemporary Publishing Environment Text Mining Pipeline to Accelerate Systematic Reviews in Evidence Based Medicine App Authors: Closing the App Gap II EAGER: Collaborative Research: Supporting Public Access to Supplemental Scholarly Products Generated from Grant Funded Research Innovation in an Aging Society Changing How We Conduct Inquiry Collaborative Research: CDS&E: Renaissance Simulations Laboratory to Model and Explore the First Galaxies in the Universe Collaborative Research: Changes in Molecular Gas and Galaxy Properties Over Time in the Era of Integral Field Unit Surveys SI2-SSE: yt: Reusable Components for Simulating Analyzing and Visualization Astrophysical Systems SI2-SSI: Collaborative Research: Einstein Toolkit Community Integration and Data Exploration K-MIREX Collaboration Project, Phase II Collaborative Research: ABI Innovation: Rapid Prototyping of Semantic Enhancements to Biodiversity Informatics Platforms Text-Mining the Novel: Establishing the Foundations of a New Discipline

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

iSchool dedicates plaque to Yingbo Zhou On September 24, the iSchool dedicated a memorial plaque to Yingbo Zhou, an MS/LIS student whose life was tragically cut short in 2009 when she died from injuries sustained in a hit-and-run car accident. The plaque, inscribed in both English and Chinese, is the first bilingual marker on campus and is located next to a tree that was planted in her honor following the accident. Above: Lian Ruan (MS ’90, PhD ’11), head librarian and director of international programs at the Illinois Fire Service Institute, gives remarks at the dedication while Associate Professor Kate Williams looks on.

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