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 […]
Staying Sharp During the Summer
Editor’s note: This post was originally published on July 28, 2016 One of the most important aspects of library school and, in the future as we pursue work in the […]
Priorities: being mature and being a student
Editor’s note: this article was originally published on February 29, 2016. As I get started with my second semester, I thought it would be a good time to re-visit the […]
Archives for the People: Notes from a Visit to Archives+
My library experience so far has been a battle of two passions – I love archives, and I could see myself spending the rest of my life holed up in […]
Defending Your Library Degree
Those who are interested in this career path, have started on this career path, or are far into this career path already are familiar with some of the top responses to […]
Giving Credence to Experience in Library Science Education
A year ago I was finishing up my first year as a full-time English professor at a community college in a semi-rural town. After 7 years of teaching as an […]
Tales from the Basement
Chezlani Casar is currently the Program Leader for Earl’s Garage, a non-profit makerspace that encourages kids to become inventors and problem solvers. Nope, definitely not a library! As I mentioned in my farewell post last spring, my first professional position after finishing my MLISc was an unexpected contract role in […]
Trauma and Belonging in Library School [Introduction]
A few times a week, I take a bus across campus to the university pool, where I swim for about thirty minutes before my job at Special Collections. Usually these […]
LIS Mental Health Week 2018: a roundup of student support
In 2016, Christina did a round up of all of the resources brought on by the first LIS Mental Health Week. This year marks the third annual #LISMentalHealth week and […]
Government Internships: My Experience with the Virtual Student Federal Service Program
I have been completing an internship with the National Park Service (NPS) since the beginning of September. My internship is through the Virtual Student Federal Service (VSFS) program which connects […]
What are Our Dreams Made Of?
“I still do not know myself. Perhaps I never will.” — Sylvia Plath While indulging in dessert at Snow Meets Coffee, Kristina Williams, Hack Library School’s lovely and fabulous Managing […]
Ready, set – practicum!
Like some others this summer, I also completed a practicum experience for course credit in my program at Catholic University in Washington, DC. Having a vested interest in all things […]
A Farewell to School.
The thing about 2 years in graduate school is that there is an artificial ending built into the system, graduation. I graduated this May, passed the torch of Community Manager […]
An Internship Update
I got a lot of feedback that my last post on decision making was vague, which was completely intentional – things were tenuous! I didn’t know how everything was actually […]
Weeding vs. Censorship: A Personal Experience
On Wednesday April 27th, 2016, I went to a brown bag event sponsored by my program’s American Library Association group. The brown bag was with the Director of the ALA […]
Advice for Participating in Student Organizations
Whether you are a new or a returning student at your program, you should join at least one student group or organization. Similar to Kathy Kosinski’s post in August 2015, […]
3 Lessons I Learned from a Reference Librarian
Reference librarian: A librarian employed in a reference department who is responsible for providing helpful information in response to questions posed by users of the library. Reference librarianship is […]
Treat Yourself: Reflect On Your LIS Life
Here at HLS we love reflection pieces; we have plenty written after symposiums, conferences, and after our time in library school. To build off the incredible post in honor of […]
LIS Mental Health Week 2016: A roundup of student support
We’re a couple weeks out from LIS Mental Health Week (January 18-23) but in honor of the brave and supportive discussions that emerged online (see co-organizer Cecily Walker’s compendium of […]
Wikipedia had a birthday and invited librarians to the party
Happy birthday – 15 January 2016 marked fifteen years of Wikipedia. To mark it they asked “each librarian on earth” to take part in #1Lib1Ref – adding a citation to […]
Reflections on Work/Life Balance and Academic Librarianship
This is part of the ongoing ACRLog/HLS collaboration. Check out ACRLog for Victoria Henry on “Mentorship & LIS Students” Read more about the project here! Sveta Stoytcheva is a Humanities Librarian at the […]
Seeing the Job Hunt from the Other Side
This is part of the ongoing ACRLog/HLS collaboration. Check out ACRLog for Emily Minehart on “Professional Development as a Student” Read more about the project here! Quetzalli Barrientos is a reference/instruction resident […]
Tell Your Conference Anxiety to Shut Up, Already: Thoughts from CALCon15
As I was a recipient of a last-minute scholarship, I found out that I was attending the Colorado Association of Libraries Conference about a week before it started–that’s enough to […]
A New Chapter
During the last two years that I have been writing for Hack Library School, and serving as Managing Editor for most of that time, I have often thought about what […]
LIS Advice: the Greatest Hits
I’ve been thinking a lot about this post – how to sum up my time in library school, how to sum up my time with HLS, and what kind of […]
What’s Your Lib School Like? Part One
Welcome to What’s Your Lib School Like? Part One! In this series, we’ll be asking our contributing writers questions about their library school. Question 1: What has been your favorite […]
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 […]
Surviving the Mid-Semester Burnout
It’s that time again. Midterms are well underway, and it’s becoming apparent that we should all start seriously thinking about those final papers and projects that are due […]
On Responsibility
Every year for Black History Month, I make a special reading list—Harlem Renaissance poetry, African American children’s books, etc. But last year, I spent the whole month on one book: In […]
Countdown to Your Library School Application Deadline
Tis the season to be applying to library school! For those of you applying to library programs, you might be feeling like you won’t be able to fully embrace 2015 until after you’ve conquered the […]
A Librarian’s Approach to Self-Care
Being a graduate student is hard. We’re older and we have lives and families and jobs. Most of us have responsibilities that far exceed those we had when we were […]
Adventures in Rare Book School: The Value of Supplemental Coursework Opportunities
Many of us have spent countless hours drooling over the Rare Book School course descriptions, and dreaming of the day when we find a job that will fund us in our […]
The Know-Nothing, or: How to be a Library Novice
The Reference Desk can be an intimidating place when you know nothing.
Librarianship Unplugged
A few months ago at work, at approximately 10:30 a.m., the Internet went down and service was not restored until about 4 o’clock that afternoon. Considering that I work at a public library where many of the patrons are there specifically for using the Internet and that the Internet is […]
Finding Ways to Learn On The Cheap
With another fall semester looming, I wanted to take some time to advocate for a few easy-access, low-cost ways to do some self-directed learning. As exciting as our LIS classes, practicums, and internships can be it is easy to forget that our grad student status grants us access to a variety […]
Why We Decided on the PhD
I have a lot of MLS students ask me why I decided to go on to a PhD, so I rounded up some of my PhD buddies to give you some answers! Everyone has different reasons for doing the PhD, and while it may not be the right choice for […]
Committee Work: Not So Scary After All
Here at Hack Library School we talk a lot about ways to further our LIS educations outside of the classroom, including pursuing part-time work, completing internships and practicums, joining student and professional organizations, and attending conferences. These kinds of experience are essential for shaping professional interests and developing skills. Throughout […]
Top 8 Reasons to go to an International Library Conference
I recently traveled to Barcelona, Spain for BOBCATSSS, a library conference organized by European library science students. Upon returning I realized that many of my peers were unaware of the variety of international library conference opportunities that students can take advantage of. As LIS students, we are frequently encouraged to […]
Hack Your First Professional Conference
I have never met a conference I did not like. In the last four years, I have attended twelve academic conferences ranging in size from under 150 to over 5,000 participants. I have presented papers, sat on panels, moderated debate, lead workshops, and worked logistics. In my experience, all conferences […]
Service Learning: Friend or Foe?
One of my courses this semester (Community Informatics) required a sizable amount of “service learning” (for those who don’t know, service learning is basically community service/volunteering activities that are incorporated into a course). When I mentioned the extensive, unpaid time commitment that the service learning represented to a friend of […]
Poster Sessions – A Beginner’s Guide
It’s hard to believe, but the end of the fall semester is a good time to start thinking about next summer’s professional conferences. Though June, July and August might seem like ages away, many conferences use January as their deadline for submissions from students. So today is as good a […]
Too Much Structure or Not Enough?
I confused some people when I said that I was going to library school, but that I wanted to be an archivist. I developed my passion for archives when I was an undergrad, and that was the specialization I was going to the pursue in library school. I’ll just come […]
Goodbye Library School, Hello High School
Well, this is it, kids: my time in library school is over, and so too ends my time writing for Hack Library School. This is so long, this is farewell, this is auf wiedersehen and adieu. This is also when I’m supposed to write a nice post summing up my time […]
Student Leadership: Time to get on Board!
I’m a joiner. There, I said it. Being a part of one organization or another has been as natural as breathing for me since I was a kid. So it was only fitting that I joined the Student Archivists at Maryland (our chapter of the Society of American Archivists) when I […]
Obstacles & How to Deal with Them
As I finish up my MLIS (August graduation!) and start my certificate program, I find myself wanting to share a little library school wisdom. So things might get a little feelings-heavy, but bear with me; also, this advice goes to both new and returning library students: Library school is a […]
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 […]
Start reading job ads now
One piece of advice that multiple people gave me around the time I started library school is: it is never too early to start reading library job ads (especially if you’ve already started library school). Of course the library hiring process is not so lengthy that you need to start actually […]
Getting Political
I’m always on the lookout for articles, blog posts, and anything else with some variant of “things they don’t teach in library school,” as I’m sure many of you are […]
[Series] So What Do You Do? My Practicum Experience at a Small Academic Archive
This post is part of a new series called “So What Do You Do?” in which LIS students talk about their experiences as interns. We want to showcase the wide range of things people are doing in the world of library and information science. Tell us a bit about yourself. […]
[Series] So What Do You Do? Interning for Government Website Usability
This post is part of a new series called “So What Do You Do?” in which LIS students talk about their experiences as interns. We want to showcase the wide range of things people are doing in the world of library and information science. Tell us a bit about yourself. […]
Digitizing Our Stories: Why Narrative Matters Most in Libraries
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Kelly Minta. The concept of librarians creating content and using grassroots promotional techniques to present libraries to the public isn’t a new idea, but it is happening in more innovative ways today. The creation of content, whether on interactive user-generated sites or […]
The Undercover Library Student
Your task is to develop a persona, and make up a research question that persona might ask. It can be anything you want. Once you have a question, take it to a reference desk at a library/archive/historical society of your choosing. Then write a paper about the experience. Sound familiar? […]
Pinning for the Patrons
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 […]
Lessons in Ethnography
This semester at the University of North Texas I am taking SLIS 5445, History and Culture of Youth Services. A good portion of the class has focused on ethnography and its application in youth services. I won’t pretend to be an expert on this type of study and fieldwork. However, […]
Beginner Status
Greetings from New York, This is my first official post as a new contributing writer for Hack Library School and I’m psyched to share a bit of my experience from the past week (08/20/11 to 08/27/11) both as a new library school student at Pratt Institute School of Information and […]
Hack Library School: Fall 2011 Kickoff!
I don’t know about you, but for me New Year’s is just one more night of food and fun in the season. The real new year starts in the fall, when classes begin. If you’re starting or continuing your library school journey this autumn, you’ve had many years to perfect […]
[Series] Library School Starter Kit – The First Term
Below is a timeline that roughly follows my own experience in library school and what I have noticed other successful library students doing. Most of the activities are simple non-time intensive ways […]
Subsidized Loans: A Relic of Our Past?
The other day, when I found out that graduate student aid had been heavily hit by the budget deal struck by Congress, the only thing I could think to tweet as I shared a link on the topic was “you’ve let students down.” The tweet came somewhat out of fear […]
[Series] Experiencing LIS – Information Literacy & Instruction
Carolyn Caffrey is in her last semester of the MLS program at Indiana University Bloomington. Originally from Southern California she relocated to the land of corn where she works in instruction and reference. She is an aspiring instruction librarian, who loves roller derby, office supplies, spring, and critical information literacy. […]
[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. […]
[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 […]
[Series] Experiencing LIS
You can sit in an LIS class and soak up everything the instructor has to say, but when it comes down to it, you’ve got to have some experience in the field if you’re going to become an innovator, a diva director, a YES! youth-services librarian, an intelligent instructor, a […]
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