Hack Your Library School Application

Hi Hack Library Schoolers,

We’ve gotten contacted by a few people who have questions about applying to library schools. We can’t really answer those questions for you, everyone’s application process will be different. What we can do is tell you how we approached our applications. In addition to reading this post, check out our Hack Your Program series for a better idea about each program you’re thinking about applying to.

Student Organizations and LIS Education

There’s been some vibrant and intense conversations concerning LIS ed in the last few weeks, one right here in on HLS. And in the spirit of HLS, in which LIS students feel empowered to take action and agency in their own education, I believe that student organizations are one of the best tools we have.

Image: Amazon.com

Do we have any Baby-sitters’s Club fans out there? Remember how the second chapter was always the story of how the Club was founded out of one of Kristy’s Great Ideas (the chapter you always skipped after reading two or three of the books)? Well, I’m a Kristy. I always have some Great Idea (or ten or twelve) that I want to get going, and being an officer in a student organization was a great place to make that happen. Being an officer gave some legitimacy to my projects, provided a reality check when the Great Idea was a No-Way-in-Hell Idea, and, best of all, put me in the situation of being able to support and contribute to the Great Ideas of other officers and students.

[Series] Experiencing LIS – The Internship Edition

It is said over and over, across blogs, professional organizations and probably in your program: real, practical work experience is what will get you a job after school. For students what that means is that seeking out, securing and excelling in an internship is key to the library school experience. We wanted to take a brief moment to tell you all about some of our experiences in this area, and offer some tips and advice. Please do ask questions in the comments if you’d like to follow up with any of us on details about internships. If this is not already a requirement in your program, it’d be worth approaching someone about making it one.

[Series] Experiencing LIS: Route to School

One of the fascinating aspects of librarianship is the variety of backgrounds represented in the field. The paths that lead us from a childhood love of books, or a respect for sharing knowledge and supporting local communities, are from many disparate points of view, educational and political stances, and personal histories. Tracing those paths is a subject not unfamiliar to LIS folks on the web; in fact Ned Potter (@theREALwikiman) and Laura Woods’ Library Routes Project and the Library Origins Stories [found on @evagro 's blog] have already done much chronicling in this area. Inspired by such projects, the HackLibSchool teamsters decided to share our “Routes To School.” We encourage you to share your own in the comments, on our Facebook page, or on either of the linked projects above.

The stories that led us here are as integral to our professional growth as the stories we have yet to create.

Enjoy!

Twitter in Library School

Last semester I took the class, User Instruction, as an elective.  For our final assignment we had to create a 15 minute tutorial on anything library-related for any type of audience.  Since over the last 6 months or so I have had a love affair with Twitter, especially since it is where I learned about Hack Lib School Project, I figured I would try to share my experiences with my fellow students; they would be my audience for the tutorial.