4th Reflection
We had an informative discussion about the report of Ryan Cordell which was about the evolution of ML and its implementations in libraries, addressing the opportunities and threats of “Bios”. Furthermore, an online session through zoom was given by Lisa Janicke Hin
The Grainger Engineering Library was a great library, we had a tour, and a session was given by William Mischo about AI and Algorithmic processing in discovery and delivery systems. Besides, a session was presented by Elisandro Cabada about ML and AI projects, and 3-D Printing objects were presented, as well as the VR technology.
A session was given by George Gottschalk and Wendy Shelburne about acquisition & E-resource management:
- They pay invoices and make purchase orders.
- They have a big budget which is spent on purchasing E-journals and E-Books with different publishers and vendors.
Merinda Hensley presented a session about their role in undergraduate research data:
- Teacher workshops about presentation skills.
- How to give a poster session and citation manager.
- Preparing questions for the surveys & analyze data.
- Helping undergraduate students to publish their own articles, they run all matters such as copyright, editing, and other stuff, and then she uploads them through Open Journal System (OJS).
A session presented by Clara about:
- Research activities are done by faculty members of the Bio-Engineering Department.
- Discussion about ML & identify the racist language.
- Discussion Internet of Things (IoT) and examples were given.
- A recorded video was presented to be watched by all audiences. The title was “Reclaim Your Time: Upgrade Your Research with Smart Data Management”.
- Collecting thesis & capstone of the students.
Thursday was a special day for me because we had many extraordinary activities:

- Visited the Amish house in Arthur County:
- A tour in an Amish house: a simple house with no electricity, batteries are used instead to function the refrigerator and washing machine.
- No A/C, but one central heater.

- Visited Arthur Public Library:
- The building was built in 1991.
- 45% of the collections are for adults & 55% are for kids.
- A number of books were ordered for the Amish community.

- Had lunch at the Amish community home.
- Shopping at Tuscola Outlet Mall.
We traveled to Springfields and we visited Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum:
- Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the USA.

- The main achievement is to end slavery; thus, he was the most popular president in the community.
- They own the largest collections and manuscripts of Abraham Lincoln & his wife.
- The collections included Lincoln’s history, Illinois history, and the American civil war.
- The patrons are researchers, politicians, Hollywood stars, and sports stars from all overseas.
- The collections are not allowed to be checked out, everything stays in the library.
We also visited The State Library of Illinois:
- The library was established in 1839.
- The library was funded by the Secretary of State’s budget as well as the Federal Library Services and Technology (ACT) funds.
- The library includes the State Federal Documents, reference services, and extensive map collections.
- The library provides Talking books and Braille service.
The most influential event was visiting the house of Abraham Lincoln; the house was humble and simple, and the original furniture still there.
