Making the Most of your MLIS
Editor’s note: This is a guest article from Morgan Adle, MLS I finished my MLS in 2015 and managed the MLIS Program at UMD for 4 years until the Summer […]
Prepping for Post-Conference Opportunities
Editor’s note: This post was originally published on June 25, 20164 Conferences, big or small, tend to be overwhelming, especially as a student. There is tons of information to absorb, there […]
What the heck are Special Libraries anyways?
Like many of you, I had no idea what special libraries were when I started my MLIS program in the fall of 2019. I knew there were corporate libraries and […]
Board Games in the Library
Sometimes, you just need a game night. Last week, my boyfriend and I had a game night with a friend (who just finished her MLIS!!) and her husband. My friend […]
ALA’s Library History Round Table
When I went back to college to finish my bachelor’s degree as a prelude to going to library school, I had to pick a major. The first time around in […]
Libraries Should Take Sides: Breaking Down the Neutrality Myth
This month, the Vanderbilt University Library began an advertising campaign which features a sign that reads, “Libraries don’t take sides.” It’s bright yellow with black block text floating on the […]
Library Leaders: Pura Belpré
In library school, you learn about many important leaders, trailblazers, researchers, and more who have shaped the field of librarianship. Your area of specialization can often determine who you learn […]
ALA Bill of Rights Amendment: What Happened? What Can We Do?
If you’ve opened Twitter in the last couple weeks – and follow as many librarians as I do – I’m sure you’ve heard of the ALA Bill of Rights Amendment […]
Information for Our Survival: LIS and Climate Change
Here at Hack Library School, we consistently highlight the ways in which the LIS field innovates. We declare over and over again: libraries are not simply warehouses of books, and […]
A Tale of Two Outlooks
Like many of the Hack Library School writers and readers of our blog, I had the good fortune to attend the annual American Library Association (ALA) conference Chicago a week […]
2018-19 ALA Presidential Candidate Interview: Terri Grief [Series]
Editor’s Note: In order to learn more about the candidates for President of the American Library Association, HLS asked the candidates a few questions about topics relevant to students and early […]
2018-19 ALA Presidential Candidate Interview: Scott Walter [Series]
Scott Walter is University Librarian at DePaul University, and an adjunct member of the faculty of the San Jose State University School of Information and the Dominican University School of Information Studies.
2018-19 ALA Presidential Candidate Interview: Loida Garcia-Febo [Series]
Loida Garcia-Febo is an international library consultant, researcher and expert on topics such as human rights, advocacy and services to multicultural populations.
Against Accreditation
I attend a school of library and information science that has not been accredited by the American Library Association. Sources tend to agree: this fact makes me at best naïve, at worst unhirable—and a sucker either way. Maybe…
Grounding Academic Librarianship and Elitism
Less than four months into my MLIS, I have already become immersed in the library world within academia. Not only do I wish to be an academic librarian after I […]
ALA Presidential Candidate Interview: Christine Lind Hage [Series]
Editor’s Note: In order to learn more about the candidates for President of the American Library Association, HLS asked the candidates a few questions about topics relevant to students and early […]
ALA Presidential Candidate Interview: Jim Neal [Series]
Editor’s Note: In order to learn more about the candidates for President of the American Library Association, HLS asked the candidates a few questions about topics relevant to students and early […]
ALA Presidential Candidate Interview: Lisa Hinchliffe [Series]
Editor’s Note: In order to learn more about the candidates for President of the American Library Association, HLS asked the candidates a few questions about topics relevant to students and early […]
HLS Holiday Gift Guide 2015
We haven’t featured a librarian gift guide since 2013, so I figured it was high time to give some updated ideas for great gifts for your friends, coworkers, and of […]
Banned Books Week – Still a Big Deal?
Last week was Banned Books Week in the library world, celebrating titles such as Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, and J.K. Rowling’s Harry […]
ALA Annual Meetup!
Hey there Hackers! Are you attending ALA this year? If so, join HLS writers and alumni for a drink! Where? Tempest, 431 Natoma St., San Francisco. When? Saturday, June 27 from […]
Reaching out to politicians about LIS issues
I’m sure many of you saw the distressing news last week: the budget resolution for 2016 released by the U.S. House Budget Committee and then passed by the House of […]
Top Mistakes I Made at my First Conference
Last month I had the opportunity to attend ALA Midwinter, my first multi-day conference. I was stoked, but totally unprepared. Here are some of the things I did wrong and […]
What’s a Librarian Doing Here? Or Attending Conferences Out of Discipline.
On Hack Library School, there have been a lot of articles about conferences. These have mainly focused on the advantages of attending local library or archives conferences or the big ‘un, ALA, over the summer. My goal here isn’t to rehash what has already been written but to talk about […]
Best Practices for Student Organizations
Many past Hack Library School posts have highlighted the importance of getting involved in student chapters of professional organizations. And I couldn’t agree more! My time spent in my school’s […]
What are You Doing After Graduation?
With the start of the fall semester about three weeks ago, I soon added, “And this is my last semester of library school!” to my conversations about library school with classmates, professors, work colleagues, and friends. It wasn’t long before people started responding, “So, what are you doing after graduation?” […]
Discussion Starter: Codes of Conduct
I used to love the first day of school! One of the things I remember about those “first days” was going over the class rules. As my classmates and I got older, and then headed off the college, the wording of the rules changed, but the message stayed pretty much […]
Your Very First Library Student Business Cards
At the beginning of this summer I was faced with a pretty lengthy list of long-range-to-do’s, one of which was “business cards(?)” (yes, I put question marks on my to-do lists…). After seeing business cards encouraged in many Hack Library School posts, and after realizing I’d probably want some for ALA, I decided […]
[Hack ALA] What to Bring to ALA and What to Do
Are you ready for ALA Annual? Check out last year’s post on preparing for the conference, “Hack ALA: Professional Preparations.” For some extra advice, I asked some of my friends who have gone to ALA what attendees should bring and what they should do while at the conference. Here are […]
ALA Student to Staff Program
This weekend I’ll be travelling to Chicago and attending ALA Annual as part of the Student to Staff (S2S) program. S2S is an opportunity provided by ALA wherein individual student representatives from 40 of the ALA-accredited library schools are selected by their institutions and then sent to ALA Annual. S2S provides […]
HLS and LibraryLab Meetup at ALA!
Are you going to ALA later this month? We’re teaming up with LibraryLab to host a meetup on Sunday, June 30th from 8:00-10:00 at the Green Door. The meetup is a fun and informal way to hang out with us, network, and make some new friends while having a cocktail! […]
Questionable Promotion/Advocacy
I recently received an ALA Store catalog in the mail and was happily flipping through the pages, considering whether or not I should order my own supply of Love My Library buttons, when I stumbled across this t-shirt: It has pictures of endangered animals (a giant panda, a mountain gorilla, a […]
The Importance of Professionalism
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Katie Clausen. In one of my courses we are analyzing ALA’s “Core Values of Librarianship.” We take on one core value every week, reading articles and discussing how these values define us as librarians. It is important to understand the policy that […]
Emerging Leaders and Professional Involvement
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 […]
Hack ALA Annual: Recovery
We are slowly getting reacclimatized to real life after an absolutely fantastic and overwhelming time at ALA Annual over the weekend. We learned, we networked, we were inspired, we picked up tons of great freebies in the exhibit hall, we partied hard and we generally geeked out on all things […]
HackLibSchool Conversation Starter
I am pleased to say that HackLibSchool will be holding two events at this years ALA Annual conference. Awhile back, I wrote about trying to bring HLS and the issues we care about to the conference level. Well, I’m happy to say that our Conversation Starter was accepted! To be […]
ALA Midwinter – Quick Preview
In case you haven’t yet had the opportunity to be introduced to the idea of professional networking, here’s a quick intro: librarians near and far, from all varieties of the field, twice a year attend gigantic conferences hosted by our preeminent organization, the American Library Association. There are constant debates […]
Real-Life Strategies for Successful Library Job Hunting
The job market is lurking in the minds of many of us who are about to finish up our degrees. It’s a tough market out there and getting a library job is not an easy feat. Fortunately, ALA has great webinars that help prepare job seekers for the library job […]
Banned Books Week: A Discussion on Intellectual Freedom for Kids
In honor of Banned and Challenged Books Week, Britt and Rebecca want to discuss the assumptions, implications, and consequences of challenging and banning books in public and school libraries, particularly for youth. We think that library school is the best time to explore these topics so you can develop intellectual […]
To-Read Tuesday [Banned Books edition]
In honor of Banned and Challenged Books Week (Sept 24-Oct 1), we’d like to share some of our new and old banned favorites with you! Join in the conversation in the comments below or on Facebook, Twitter or Google+ and spread the word during this fantastic week to celebrate the […]
The Color of Knowledge: Diversity and Librarianship
Stacie Mari Williams will complete her M.S. in Library Science and Archives Management at Simmons College?s Graduate School of Library and Information Studies in August 2011. She currently works in Access and Reference Services at Harvard Medical School’s Countway Library and sits on the board of directors of SLA-Boston as […]
[Series] Hack ALA: What’s a professional organization to do?
The debate over the current role MLIS programs can play in the library industry keeps popping up. For a recent example, check out Will Manley’s blog, Will Unwound, which asks some important questions: Are too many graduates being spit out into the shrinking job pool? Are graduate programs, in their […]
[Series] Hack ALA: Library History Round Table (LHRT)
LHRT is an awesome organization for students to join because it’s fun, vibrant, and a great way to explore libraries of the past and see how they intersect with issues faced by libraries today. Best of all, there are so many ways for students to get involved that include running for […]
[Series] Hack ALA: Attending ALA Annual Without Attending ALA Annual
UPDATE: John Chrastka, Director of Membership Development at ALA, commented and alerted us to The Conference Tracker from American Libraries Magazine. This is another great way to track the conference, and pulls in a lot of the avenues Nicole mentioned in her post. Thanks John and AmLib Magazine! * […]
[Series] Hack ALA: Get Your Network On!
ALA is the largest library conference in the nation. It brings together different librarians from across the country, all in one place. It gives everyone the opportunity to meet new people and network. This is pretty fantastic if you think about it, but for a newbie student or librarian who […]
[Series] Hack ALA: Our ALA ’11 Recommended Sessions
Editors Note: Welcome to Hack ALA Week! We’ve been planning this for quite some time now, and although we’re titling this a “Week” you can bet your bottom dollar we’ll continue writing about ALA generally beyond this week. As the preeminent professional organization in our profession, whose mandates and bylaws […]
Opportunity: Collaboration with Colleagues – Drexel iSchool blog
Lindsay Cummings – @lindsaysc shared this with us last week. Add it to your to-read list. There really is nothing better than collaboration with your colleagues – and this is a great example of it. -Heidi I wanted to let you and the rest of the HLS team know about […]
The Road to ALA ’11: LIS Student Tips and Tricks
{This post is largely derived from these posts on my blog — for more detail on my ALA ’10 experiences, check them out!} Last year, I attended my first ALA conference as a library school student, and it was an eye-opening experience. Of all the local and national librarian conferences […]
Diversity in LIS – From My Perspective
Dear Reader, Please take one moment to scroll down the page a little and look at the fancy little avatar photos we have below, exhibiting the contributing writers to this here blog. Go ahead. I’ll wait. Have any first impressions? Thoughts? I know I did. When bringing this group together […]
The Road to ALA ’11: Our Experiences Thus Far
In preparation for ALA 2011 in New Orleans, we wanted to share some experiences we’ve had at previous conferences. The whole professional development factor is an important one to be involved in early in one’s career, and we all believe that should start in school. To that end, we have […]
HLS 