Hack Library School @ ALA ’13!

#HLSConvo ’12 (Credit: Steve Teeri)

Hello, Everybody! Guess what? HLS is super-excited to announce that we’ve been chosen to lead another Conversation Starter at ALA annual! Last year, our #HLSConvo in Anaheim drew a roomful of passionate, engaged librarians and library students together to share information across the pre- and post-graduation lines. This year, we’re focusing on skills: Transferrable skills that will help us as we get our first jobs and throughout our careers.

Conversation Starters are one hour long, and are designed to spark questions and get people talking long after the hour concludes. This year, here’s what we’ll be focusing on:

LIS education is preparing us, or claiming to prepare us, for many, many things beyond “working in a library”–how do we turn those skills into useful talents as we enter our chosen profession? This conversation starter hopes to bring together students and professionals to get them talking in a moderated forum about such questions as:

• HackLibrarySchool is all about self-determination, “hacking” our programs and approaches to make the degree be exactly what we want it to be. How can we apply the same attitude to our work (especially if we aren’t in positions that support shaking things up)?
• Is there a “gap” between perceptions of LIS recent graduates and veterans of the profession?
• How can we bridge it?
• What concrete actions can we take to make it easier on everyone when new graduates join established institutions?

We’ll be talking on Sunday, June 30th, at 1:30 pm, but there’s no harm in getting the conversation started early! If you’d like to weigh in, let us know in the comments, or on Twitter with the #HLSConvo hashtag. Be on the lookout for our annual Hack ALA series, too! June will be here before we know it.

Hope to see you all in Chicago!

What Should We Be Reading?

As it’s National Library Week, I’ve been thinking a great deal about the things that unite us. Library education is meant to launch all of us into successful careers in the information world, and to provide a foundation upon which we can build.

Certainly, we are not rubber-stamped automata with identical skill sets. Our interests and electives can and do vary a great deal from student to student, from librarian to librarian. Still, something I have noticed in conversations with librarians and library students is a lack of common readings. We do not seem to have a central “canon,” as such, and while our field may be constantly influenced by related disciplines, librarianship has a long history of thought that we could all benefit by reading. Rather than make up an “authoritative list” on my own, though, I wanted to bring in as many perspectives as possible. I hope that this post will prompt a conversation, and later perhaps prompt action as curricula are redesigned throughout the country.

Three nominations, to get you started:

Three Projects Librarians Should be Helping

Here in Syracuse, we’re in the midst of spring break, and I’m exulting in a bit of unprogrammed time to relax and refocus on the things that matter. I’ve been trying to remind myself about the projects that really excited me around libraryland–projects that sometimes get lost in the jumble of classwork and job-hunting. In the last few months, I’ve found a number of projects that have active communities, and exciting goals. There’s something about being surrounded by vibrant, dynamic people, whether in person or virtually, that re-energizes me and inspires me to make cool things happen, and I’m guessing I’m not the only one! Librarians are a natural fit for all of these projects–rally ’round the cause, folks!

Two weeks left to apply for the EveryLibrary / HLS Summer 2013 Internship!

Don’t forget, there are just two weeks left to apply for the paid Hack Library School/EveryLibrary advocacy internship! In case you missed our last post on the internship, here are the details again!

Without further ado:

EveryLibrary / Hack Library School Internship 

The EveryLibrary / Hack Library School internship will provide a current MLS/MLIS student with the opportunity to apply their specialized knowledge and skills to public policy and voter advocacy issues confronting independent library districts. One selected student will work over a 10 – 12 week period during summer 2013 to produce original research or a white-paper length policy brief for later publication. Work produced during this internship will be under a Creative Commons license and made available to the public via Hack Library School.

The intern will be supported with a $500.00 stipend and is encouraged to conduct self-guided, hands-on, research-oriented work at agencies, advocacy groups, corporations, and legislative and executive offices. The intern will work in close collaboration with EveryLibrary on the success of this project.  No provision is made for other support.

Finding Balance in a Final Push.

Rocketing toward the end of my LibrarySchool career is exhilarating, but the closer I get to graduation, the more I feel like my list of projects to accomplish is too long to finish. I’m excited to be involved in our student activities, my classes are challenging in all the best ways, and my work outside of the academic milieu is giving me valuable experience, but there’s always a voice saying “You should do more!”

Library students are constantly told that we need to get out there, to tackle exciting projects and take on responsibilities that will help us get jobs and make connections. As #libschool hackers, I think we have a greater understanding of the need to make our programs of study suit our interests, and I’ve seen a number of my colleagues do amazing things, at Syracuse and other universities, in order to follow their passions. I can’t picture a situation in which someone was disadvantaged because they took time outside of their graduate commitments to work on a project they really cared about. In some ways, I think library students should consider an extracurricular project or three as part of their coursework, even if it’s not possible to get “official” credit for it.