GSLIS Event Feed.

Dissertation Proposal Defense: Xiao Hu

Xiao Hu will defend her dissertation proposal, "Text Mining in Music Mood Classification".

A copy of the dissertation is available online.

A paper copy is available at the LIS front desk, room 112.

All those interested are welcome to attend.

The members of the committee are Linda Smith (Chair), Stephen Downie (Director of Dissertation Research), Bryan Heidorn, and Chengxiang Zhai.

How to get the most out of ALA's Midwinter Meeting

Planning on going to ALA's Midwinter Meeting in Denver? Interested in hearing more about what happens at Midwinter? Come to our informal brown bag lunch discussion and learn how to prepare for the meeting and how to maximize your networking once there.

Feel free to bring your lunch. Dessert will be provided.

Please contact "Jenny Hodges"-hodges4, at illinois.edu- for more information.

Dissertation Proposal Defense: Oksana Zavalina

Oksana Zavalina will defend her dissertation proposal, "Collection-Level Subject Access: Metadata Application and Users".

A copy of the dissertation is available online.

A paper copy is available at the LIS front desk, room 112.

All those interested are welcome to attend.

The committee members are Carole Palmer (Chair), Allen Renear, Kathryn La Barre, and Dietmar Wolfram from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

SAA Student Chapter General Meeting

At this meeting, we will be recapping this semester's events and planning the upcoming Spring semester. Some food and refreshment will accompany us during the meeting. If you have questions and ideas for next year, please contact "Paolo Gujilde"-pgujilde, at illinois.edu-.

Come and join SAA!

GSLIS Food Drive

GSLIS is partnering with the Eastern Illinois Foodbank to help provide food for those in our community facing hunger.

Our food drive will help the Eastern Illinois Foodbank supply agencies and organizations that collectively provide food assistance to more than 34,000 men, women, and children each month.

As we considered this project, we learned several facts about hunger in our area:

The majority of those served through the Foodbank are the working poor. About 40% of Foodbank agency clients come from a household where at least one adult is working.

Almost half of those helped by the Foodbank are children.

Over the past several years, the number of individuals served by the Foodbank has increased by more than 40%.

Half of Foodbank agency clients report having to choose between paying for food and paying for utilities and 39% report having to choose between paying for food and paying their rent/mortgage.

We hope you will join us to support the great work of the Eastern Illinois Foodbank. Together we can provide food and hope to thousands of people in our community facing hunger.

Collection boxes are located in Room 112 (Administrative Office) and Room 228 (Help Desk).

Please email "Christine Hopper"-cmhopper, at illinois.edu- or "Meg Edwards"-mbedward, at illinois.edu- with questions.

GSLIS Holiday Party

Come and enjoy delicious food and mingle with fellow GSLIS'ers at our annual Holiday Party! Please bring a dessert, salad, or appetizer to share. Games will be available for your entertainment.

This event is organized by the ALA Social Committee and sponsored by ALA and several of our other student organizations.

ASIS&T National Meeting Debriefing

The ASIS&T national meeting in Columbus, Ohio wrapped up two weeks ago. This Friday, Professor John MacMullen will sit down to a roundtable discussion with other faculty and student conference attendees and let the rest of us in on everything that happened there. This is a great opportunity to learn more about ASIS&T and the cutting edge of information science research and practice.

Coffee will be served at the meeting. The discussion will be broadcast live from the ASIS&T Moodle space, and later archived.

ALA General Meeting

Catch up on what ALA is planning and learn about librarian/vendor relations with Maria Ziemer from ProQuest.

ProQuest creates and distributes information resources to more than 30,000 institutional customers worldwide, including public libraries, school libraries, universities and colleges, and special and corporate libraries such as hospitals, law firms, museums, and government and business organizations. Learn about how libraries and vendors interact, including information about the sales call, pricing models, and trade shows. In short, learn how to make vendors work for you!

Light refreshments will be provided. This event will be broadcast live in the ALA Moodle Live Session and Maria's talk will be archived for 90 days. Email "ALA Student Chapter"-alaatuiuc, at gmail.com- with questions.

Fun with File Storage: Exploring your Options

Explore the various ways you can make your H: and I: drives work for you. This workshop will cover using SFTP clients on both Windows and Mac, and discuss other available file storage options such as Netfiles and GoogleDocs.

Questions? Contact "Jeanne Vega Byrnes"-jvegab2, at illinois.edu-.

Deadline to apply for the ALA Student to Staff Program

Every year forty library students are chosen to assist ALA staff during the ALA Annual Conference. In exchange for working, students receive free conference registration, housing, and a per diem for meal expenses. During free time, students may attend programs and participate in other conference activities. This year's Annual Conference will be held in Chicago, IL from July 9-15, 2008.

To qualify for the ALA student to staff program, students must be enrolled in GSLIS at the time of the conference, a student chapter member and current ALA member, and cannot have previously participated in the program. If you are not a current ALA member, you can still apply but must join ALA if selected as the nominee.

GSLIS will reimburse the student nominee for the cost of round trip ground transportation from Champaign-Urbana to Chicago. If a LEEP student is selected, GSLIS will reimburse the nominee for the cost of round trip economy airfare (not to exceed $500) if ground transportation options are not reasonable.

If you qualify and would like to apply for the program, please complete the online application by December 1, 2008.

Submissions will be blind reviewed by the ALA Student Chapter Board at GSLIS and scored based on the statement, involvement, and professional goals.

Dissertation Defense: Timnah Gretencord

Timnah Gretencord will defend her dissertation, "In Translation: Attracting Spanish-Speaking Participants to Public Programming".

A copy of the dissertation is available online.

A paper copy is available at the LIS front desk, room 112.

All those interested are welcome to attend.

Oxygen XML Editor Workshop, Part II

Due to popular demand, ASIS&T will host a follow-up workshop on the Oxygen XML editor software. Now that we've been acquainted with the program, Dan Kirsanoff from ITD will be helping us along as we roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty building our own DTDs (Document Type Definitions) and XML pages.

This workshop will be broadcast live and archived on the ASIS&T Moodle page.

Previous XML or Oxyegn experience is not required.

Contact "Steve McCauley"-smccaul2, at illinois.edu- with questions.

Dissertation Proposal Defense: Lian Ruan

Lian Ruan will defend her dissertation proposal, "Information Seeking and Sharing Behaviors among Fire Service Staff Instructors: A Qualitative Study".

A copy of the dissertation is available online.

A paper copy is available at the LIS front desk, room 112.

All those interested are welcome to attend.

The committee members are Carole Palmer (chair), Caroline Haythornthwaite and Linda Smith, from GSLIS, and Scott Poole from the Department of Communication.

Lunch discussion with Dr. Daniel Headrick

Before his lecture and office hour, please join Dr. Daniel Headrick for a lunch discussion. Contact "Linda Smith"-lcsmith, at illinois.edu- if you have questions or to let her know you will attend. Lunch will be provided for the first 10 participants.

Dr. Daniel Headrick earned a Ph.D. in History from Princeton University in 1971. He is an international telecommunications historian and Professor Emeritus at Roosevelt University. He is the author of several publications, including The Tentacles of Progress: Technology Transfer in the Age of Imperialism, 1850-1940 (1991), When Information Came of Age: Technologies of Knowledge in the Age of Reason and Revolution, 1700-1850 (2000), and the forthcoming Power Over Peoples: Technology, Environments, and Western Imperialism, 1400 to the Present.

Katherine Dunham Archives Outreach Weekend

Students from GSLIS will travel to the Katherine Dunham Museum in East St. Louis to work on their archival collection while learning more about the volunteer opportunities there and elsewhere in East St. Louis.

All food, transportation, and lodging costs will be paid for by ESLARP on this overnight visit. Please email "Noah Lenstra"-nlenstr2, at illinois.edu- to RSVP.

See the full schedule for details.

"Summer 2008 in Sao Tome" Presentation

All are welcome to attend and join in a free discussion with refreshments.

This past summer, three teens from the East St. Louis area went to S?o Tom? with staff and students from the Community Informatics Initiative. (S?o Tom? is the main island of the West African nation of S?o Tom?/Principe.) These teens--Keena-Rhee Fli? of Centreville, IL, Joseph Hines of Edwardsville, IL, and Evan L. Johnson of East St. Louis, IL--have been part of Teen Tech Team in East St. Louis and they joined ongoing efforts by Community Networking Director Paul Adams to install computers in schools, libraries, and other facilities in S?o Tom?. The three teens will join Paul Adams in a session about their experiences, including a screening of a video by Evan Johnson. Evan made a documentary about their collaboration with 10 S?o Tom?an teens from the English Language Club to install a 16-computer lab at S?o Tom?'s national high school.

For more information contact "Sharon Irish"-slirish, at illinois.edu-.

ISLMA - Chicago - Northwest Alumni Reception

Broadband Access for Illinois

Lecturer: Ryan Croke, Policy Advisor, Office of the Lt. Governor

This lecture is one in a series of lectures called Illinois Conversations about the Digital Divide. This series is offered as part of Dr. Abdul Alkalimat's course, "Community Schools, Libraries, and Public Policy in 2008." These lectures are open to the public.

Faculty Meeting

CII Speaker Series: Community Gardens

Associate Professor Michelle Wander will discuss her participatory action research project,"Using information technology to address soil quality in Chicago community gardens".

Biography
Professor Wander is a 2008-2009 CII fellow having received CII seed funds for this research project.

Project Details
Chicago has more than fifty urban agricultural projects, many of which provide food for city-dwellers. Field research and e-learning efforts will focus on service to underserved communities and lead pollution. Educators and gardeners will participate in actual and virtual trainings designed to improve gardener's science literacy and access to technical resources.
Michelle Wander, Associate Professor, and Laura Witzling, MS student, Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences

This CII Speaker Series will be recorded and archived on the GSLIS website.

Please join us! The speaker series is free and open to the public. Questions can be directed to "Sharon Irish"-slirish, at illinois.edu-.

CII Speaker Series: Claiming Space! Black Girls Creating and Critiquing Community

Professor Ruth Nicole Brown from the Gender and Women's Studies and Educational Policy departments at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will present her research on the public education experience of African American girls and how they can create a space for their discourse.

Abstract

While the United States public education system is typically characterized as a site for academic achievement and citizenship development, schooling has also served as a site of oppression and resistance for young people from marginalized communities, particularly African American girls. Teachers, parents, and community workers are quick to offer anecdotes about black girls as problems, not because of what they say, but how they say it. As a result, a critical concern among those who work with black girls in educational spaces is that their contested behavior, although typically non-violent, is perceived as threatening and disruptive. Consequently, this kind of popular thinking about black girlhood reifies deficit-oriented discourse, thereby divorcing the choices and actions of black girls from the ways racism, sexism, patriarchy, and heterosexism structure their lives. The goal of this project is to systematically observe and analyze the everyday and educational choices of African American girls for the purpose of creating spaces that privilege black girls' narratives in the public sphere.

Biography

Ruth Nicole Brown is an Assistant Professor with the Gender and Women's Studies Program and Educational Policy Studies. Her areas of interest include American politics with focus on race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and inequality; cultural politics and theories of social construction; and critical race and feminist theories and practices. Her current research project focuses on the political socialization of African American girls.

Dr. Daniel Headrick: Telecommunications and Imperialism: Double-Edged Sword

Lecture Abstract: When the colonial powers introduced telegraphs to and within their colonial empires, they did so in large part to tighten the control of the metropoles over their colonies and that of the colonial governments over their subjects. Telecommunications had another effect, however, namely it spread the news from distant places, thereby stimulating new ideas that threatened to undermine the colonial status quo. The hopes that the imperialists placed in the controlling powers of telecommunication have so far proved to be misplaced.

Speaker Biography: Dr. Daniel Headrick is an international telecommunications historian and Professor Emeritus at Roosevelt University. He is the author of several publications, including The Tentacles of Progress: Technology Transfer in the Age of Imperialism, 1850-1940 (1991), When Information Came of Age: Technologies of Knowledge in the Age of Reason and Revolution, 1700-1850 (2000), and the forthcoming Power Over Peoples: Technology, Environments, and Western Imperialism, 1400 to the Present. He earned a Ph.D. in History from Princeton University in 1971.

Dr. Daniel Headrick is speaking as part of the "Information in Society" speaker series.

A lunch discussion and afternoon office hour are scheduled before the lecture.

Afternoon office hour with Dr. Daniel Headrick

Time for individual meetings are available between the lunch discussion and lecture. Contact "Caroline Nappo"-cnappo2, at illinois.edu- for details.

Dr. Laura DeNardis: Global Internet Standards and Developing Nations

Speaker Biography: Dr. Laura DeNardis is an Associate Research Scholar in Law and Executive Director of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. The author of Information Technology in Theory (2007 with Pelin Aksoy) and numerous book chapters and articles, she is an interdisciplinary law and technology scholar whose research addresses the legal and political implications of information technologies and new media. Her doctoral dissertation was entitled "IPv6: Politics of the Next Generation Internet" and she is currently working on a new book, Protocol Politics: The Globalization of Internet Governance, to be published by the MIT Press. She has previously taught at New York University and in the School of Information Technology and Engineering at George Mason University. DeNardis received a Ph.D. in Science and Technology Studies (STS) from Virginia Tech, a Master of Engineering degree from Cornell, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Engineering Science from Dartmouth.

Dr. Laura DeNardis is speaking as part of the "Information in Society" speaker series.

A lunch discussion and afternoon office hour are scheduled before the lecture.

Lunch discussion with Dr. Laura DeNardis

Before her lecture and office hour, please join Dr. Laura DeNardis for a lunch discussion. Contact "Linda Smith"-lcsmith, at illinois.edu- if you have questions or to let her know you will attend. Lunch will be provided for the first 10 participants.

Dr. Laura DeNardis is an Associate Research Scholar in Law and Executive Director of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. The author of Information Technology in Theory (2007 with Pelin Aksoy) and numerous book chapters and articles, she is an interdisciplinary law and technology scholar whose research addresses the legal and political implications of information technologies and new media. She received a Ph.D. in Science and Technology Studies (STS) from Virginia Tech, a Master of Engineering degree from Cornell, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Engineering Science from Dartmouth.

Afternoon office hour with Dr. Laura DeNardis

Time for individual meetings are available between the lunch discussion and lecture. Contact "Linda Smith"-lcsmith, at illinois.edu- for details.

Dr. Laura DeNardis is an Associate Research Scholar in Law and Executive Director of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. The author of Information Technology in Theory (2007 with Pelin Aksoy) and numerous book chapters and articles, she is an interdisciplinary law and technology scholar whose research addresses the legal and political implications of information technologies and new media. She has previously taught at New York University and in the School of Information Technology and Engineering at George Mason University. DeNardis received a Ph.D. in Science and Technology Studies (STS) from Virginia Tech, a Master of Engineering degree from Cornell, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Engineering Science from Dartmouth.