DC Meetup

If you are in the DC area, we’re having an informal Hack Library School meetup tomorrow evening.  Below are the details:

Tuesday, August 7, 2012
starting around 5:30pm
Aria Pizzeria & Bar
1300 Pennsylvania Avenue NW

The Federal Triangle metro stop (orange/blue lines)  is closest, but Metro Center (red/orange/blue lines) is just a few blocks away.

Please join us!  If you have any questions, feel free to contact me on Twitter (@roselovec) or by email (roselovechou at gmail dot com).

Pinning for the Patrons

Photo by Jude Doyland

A few months ago a co-worker introduced me to Pinterest with the disclaimer that I would waste massive amounts of time on the platform once engaged. And they were right. I’ve spent a great deal of time collecting recipes I’ll never cook, outfits I’ll never buy and ideas to repurpose an old door that I don’t have. While some may see it as a waste of time, I enjoy the time I spend on Pinterest and it has prepared me for one of my new library job tasks: managing my library’s presence on the site. Admittedly, I’m still perfecting our approach, but I do have some tips that I’d like to share. (Check out this Pinterest 101 if you need help with some of the jargon below).

Emerging Leaders and Professional Involvement

“G536 Zoom in, Sign up” by Brad Smith via Flickr under CC license

Editor’s Note: This is a Guest Post by Anita R. Dryden

This past year I had the pleasure of participating in the American Library Association’s Emerging Leaders program, which is designed to help new librarians get involved in ALA. Throughout the course of the program you attend leadership training, meet many of the current leaders in ALA, and are assigned to a small group to complete a project for a Division or Round Table. The EL program was a wonderful experience – I loved getting to know a group of really engaged, passionate young professionals while working on an exciting and beneficial project that helped me learn more about how the beast that is ALA works.

Is it Time to Reassess this Paradigm?

Image Credit: http://zapatopi.net/labs/

Last year, HLS’s founder Micah wrote a post about the “publish or perish” paradigm. He shares (or shared then, not sure if he still does) with me some apprehensions about the publishing model, in general, and how it relates to the library science world, in particular.

I entered library school wanting to be an academic librarian — an engineering academic librarian to be exact. But over time, as I’ve taken classes and had outside experiences, my desires have changed. I still want to work in an academic library setting (because I love the idea of working with such a diverse group of people), but not in the traditional academic librarian role (see my post on data curation; that’s what I want to do now). Regardless of my title, if I work in an academic library, one of things I’ll likely have to do is publish. I’ve been pondering over the last year about researching and publishing requirements of being an academic librarian. I want to build on Micah’s post by saying that I am not comfortable with academic librarians being considered faculty and having to publish as a requirement of tenure (another thing I’m not comfortable with for librarians).

Changing the Face of Librarianship

L-R: 2011 Spectrum Scholar Teresa Silva, 2011 Spectrum Scholar LaToya Devezin, 2009 Spectrum Scholar Stephen X. Flynn, 2011 Spectrum Scholar Ana Elisa de Campos Salles, 2011 Spectrum Scholar Jarrett Drake

Editor Note: This is a guest post by Jarrett Drake. 

“The Incunabula. I’d like to see them,” said a patron in a muffled tone. “Can you repeat that?” I responded unassumingly. “The Incunabula, the Incunabula!” she exclaimed, her voice rising with each repetition. After a brief hesitation of speech that left my mouth quite unable to repeat her enunciations, the patron interjects, “You’re not familiar with the Incunabula? Are you a librarian?”

And that’s where I’ll stop. For the record, I’m not a librarian (yet). But if there’s one takeaway from my attendance at the 2012 Spectrum Leadership Institute and the 2012 ALA Annual Conference in Anaheim, it’s that the future of libraries—and indeed, librarianship—is a changing face. As emerging professionals, we library and information students mustn’t simply notice that change, but champion it.