Nope, Don’t Like That: On Making Course and Career Decisions
There’s a movie I like, Hell or High Water, and in it there’s a scene where two police officers stop at a diner for dinner. The waitress greets them by […]
Cover letter advice from a meme, really? Yes, really!
I’ve seen this meme a couple of times now and I love it, because it’s not wrong, this really is the basic structure of a cover letter and I love […]
Summer Practicum in the Repository & Digital Curation Department
It is required that students in the MLS program at Indiana University fulfill one internship. Since I am specializing in Art Librarianship, I am required to complete two internships. This […]
Welcome our New Writers!
Drum roll please! Here they are: HLS’s newest contributors. We can’t wait to hear how they will “hack” library school! Erika Whinihan Erika Whinihan is an online MLIS student at […]
My Summer at the Smithsonian
Did you know that not only is the Smithsonian made up of 19 museums it also has 21 libraries? I, for one, will readily admit that I had no idea […]
Seven Things I Learned in Library School
This is my last post with HLS! In honor of that – and my impending graduation (wow/yikes) – I’d like to present a list of seven things that I learned […]
The Benefits of a Dual Degree Program
I just finished my second year at Simmons University. Many full-time MLIS students are done with their degrees after two years; however, I’m in a dual degree program combining my […]
Being a Good Team Player in a Pandemic
Group projects – love them or hate them, you’ll probably find yourself doing a fair few of them during library school. I’m in an all-online program, so I knew going […]
How do you take notes? (or Markdown and Bullet Journals)
Perhaps it’s related to being perennially both inquisitive & distractible, but I’ve always enjoyed taking notes and almost always have paper with me. Here’s a few of my old pocket […]
Flexibility Versus Foci: It’s Course Registration Time
I’ve written before about my desire to tailor my time as an MLIS student to becoming a generalist with the skills and competencies to succeed in various contexts or careers. […]
Hack Your Program: University of Maryland (2021 Update)
The following post reflects my own experiences with the University of Maryland’s iSchool and the MLIS Program. These opinions do not reflect the opinions of all UMD iSchool students, the […]
So you want to be a medical librarian, perhaps? [Interview Edition]
Are you debating what type of library field you’d like to pursue after graduation? Has it been a challenge for you to sit down and decide your options? Would you […]
The Time Has Come for Reflection: Final Thoughts on my MLIS Journey (Farewell Post)
Over the past 16 months as a contributing writer and community manager, I found myself in a new world of librarianship that I didn’t know existed. From my very first […]
Parting Thoughts (and My Farewell)
It’s crazy to think that I’m finally writing my farewell post. It’s even crazier to think that I’ve written over two dozen posts for Hack Library School because I applied […]
One Chapter Ends, Another Begins: On Graduation, Job Applications, and Self-Care
Dear readers, when you may be reading this, I am currently two weeks away from graduating from my Master of Library and Information Science graduate program at San Jose State […]
How to decode job postings and customize your applications
There have been a fair number of posts on HLS about job searching including two incredible ones from the last week by Emily (Congratulations on the new job!) and Vince. […]
I Got a Job and You Can, Too!
Congratulate me, readers! I have achieved the pinnacle of library school success and secured an honest-to-goodness library job. My job search went so well, in fact, that I had three […]
Non-library Experience and Library Job Applications
Job searching is nerve-wracking, and one of the most daunting parts is putting together a resume or CV. It’s easy to get stuck on the treadmill of questions like “do […]
Three Things I Learned from Being on a Book Award Committee
This year, I had the privilege of being part of the Chinese American Librarians Association selection committee for the CALA Best Book Award. I’m aware that being part of book […]
Sustainability in the Library
I was stuck trying to come up with a topic for my April post, so I reached out to my library school friends to see if they had any topics […]
Creating Boundaries in Work, School, and Life
I’ve been fortunate enough to stay employed (at a library) during the pandemic, but even a quick glance through the posts at #protectlibraryworkers will reveal libraries who furloughed their staff […]
Graduating Before Crossing the Finish Line
To say that I’m excited about graduating this coming May is a massive understatement. I’ve been waiting for this moment since finding SJSU School of Information’s MLIS program in December […]
Doing “Enough” in a Difficult Year
I have high expectations for myself when in comes to school. I always have, sometimes to the point of unnecessary angst. Case in point, I have a vivid third-grade memory […]
So long, farewell (for now)
Believe it or not, it’s time for my farewell post! While this isn’t the last you’ll hear from me on the blog (updated UMD Hack Your Program post, anyone? 👀 […]
What is Flexibility? Building Ease Into My Grad School Life
We’ve been talking a lot on the blog lately about how the past year has impacted our lives, our education, our job searches, and everything in between. One of the […]
Bringing Soft Skills to the Table: Tips for Showing Off Your Qualifications in the LIS Job Market
Recently, I attended an information panel about LIS careers, where I heard one of the most helpful pieces of advice yet: technical skills will open the door and soft skills will […]
Across the Table: Interview Tips for Both Parties
During my short time in the LIS field, I’ve had the pleasure of being interviewed for various positions and interviewing others for positions within my own library. While related, they […]
The Final Countdown Continues: On Planning Your Culminating Project
So, all throughout my tenure here at Hack Library School, I have emphasized the importance of preparing for graduation throughout your time in graduate school. In November 2019, I […]
Some bumps along the way – back-up plans, flexibility, and expanding your horizons during your MLIS
It’s 2021, and we’re still over a year later dealing with COVID-19 and the physical and emotional and mental strain that this pandemic is putting on all of us. We’re […]
The Academic Library Interview: COVID-19 Edition
This week, I had my first all-day interview for an academic librarian position. I was not psychologically prepared for it. I would have been even worse off except that one […]
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 […]
Behind the Scenes: LIS Hiring at Academic Institutions
After having participated in five on-campus, academic librarianship interviews, I have learned a good deal through observation and immersion in the market’s ebbs and flows. As a follow-up to “Things […]
The Importance of Public Speaking
For the past few weeks in my Library Programs and Services for Young Adults course, we’ve started our class period with materials talks. Every student has spent five to seven […]
One Library’s COVID Experience: A Snapshot of a Community College Library During a Pandemic
We just passed the one-year anniversary of when I and all the rest of the staff at the community college library where I work started working from home, and I […]
Planning Post-COVID in a Junior High School Library
Last September, I wrote on how the elementary school library I worked in was providing services despite distance learning. Now, at a new school site and closer to the light […]
Call for New Writers!
Hey there readers! Here at Hack Library School, we pride ourselves on providing engaging, thoughtful, and useful resources for Library and Information Science students. Because we’re a blog by and for […]
Navigating Library School Assignments and Invisible Labor
This is a post that I’ve wanted to write for months, but I honestly struggled with figuring out what exactly I wanted to say. It’s no secret that invisible labor […]
Burnout and a Mid-Semester Check-in
I don’t know about you all, but I am in the midst of one of the busiest semesters I’ve ever had. Between taking classes, writing a thesis, contributing to this […]
History of the Book: Some Cool Things I’m Learning This Semester
Like most of us, I have spent a lot of time with books in my life. Books I owned, books I admired at bookstores, books I’ve checked in and out […]
Legal Information in Libraries: What’s That All About?
I’ve always enjoyed learning about history, politics, and the US Supreme Court. With that background, you would think I was interested in going the law school and becoming a lawyer. […]
LIS Mental Health Week 2021: A Summary
How has it already been a year of pandemic living? Readers, are you all doing okay? Personally, I’m doing better than before, but graduation right around the corner has brought […]
Creating The Career You Love: The Important of Finding Fulfillment in Your LIS Career
As I mentioned last month, it is important for you as a library school student to begin researching not only potential job and internship openings, but employers as well, as […]
Special Librarianship doesn’t just mean special libraries – more on non-traditional LIS career paths
My piece on non-traditional and alternative jobs for LIS professionals from May 2020 was really popular. The Introduction to the Library and Information Industry (the course that I shouted out […]
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 […]
Service in Quarantine
Last week, in a fit of oddly misplaced energy, I found myself making cheese tortellini by hand. It was not an easy process. I have very little upper body strength […]
Who Are Today’s Young Adults? And How Do We Serve Them?
Two of my classes this semester started by considering who today’s young adults are. In conversations relating to library services for young adults and contemporary and realistic young adult literature, […]
How to Keep Reading (for Fun!) in Grad School
My class this semester, as so many of our classes do, started with an assignment to introduce ourselves on an online discussion board. One popular topic of conversation ended up […]
To Take or Not To Take: Advice for Course Selection
One of the most incredible things that you, as a student, can do for yourself is to step out of your comfort zone in terms of course planning. Most of […]
Altogether Different: Questioning the Union of Librarianship and Information Science
More than five years beyond Andy Woodworth’s original call for big tent librarianship and Brit Foster’s echoing call for big tent librarian education, I begin to think that the theory may not serve us so well moving forward.
Asking Anonymously and Library Knowledge Expectations
One of the new responsibilities that I’ve undertook this semester is monitoring our library’s online chat reference service as an on-call librarian once a week. When talking with some friends, […]
The Inherent Ableism of Being “Productive”
I remember thinking at some point around the age of 17 or 18 that my days of having summer and winter vacations were over forever. My aunts, uncles and cousins […]
Writing and Library School: Why Do It?
My undergraduate degrees are in History and Political Science. I’ve written countless amounts of midterm and final papers (plus a thesis that hit triple-digit page length) and considered myself a […]
To Generalize or Not to Generalize
Registration for the Spring quarter is just around the corner for many students. With this comes the sometimes frustrating process of deciding which classes to take. Should you take classes […]
Feast or Freeze: Preparing for Post-MLIS Job Hunting During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Out of everything I know I will have to manage this semester in addition to my culminating project and my internship, job hunting is one task that, at times, has […]
Treat yo’ self…to a student membership in a professional association and reap the rewards
LIS is an industry absolutely rife with professional associations, and as Kate Tkacik pointed out, there’s a very large service component in our industry. We believe in service, so much […]
The Right Decision Is Harder Than You Think
Teresa Elberson, the director of the Lafayette, Louisiana public library system, abruptly retired this past Friday, January 22. She had been working for the Lafayette Public Library since 1982 and […]
Decentralizing Romance in YA Literature
This quarter, I am taking a class with the title “Resources for Digital Age Teens.” Among other things, this class has required me to read more young adult literature in […]
Why I Want to be a Rural Librarian
I grew up in a small town in Kansas that, according the Washington Post in 2018, is one of the 10 most middle of nowhere places in the country. I […]
Landing a Student Library Job
Working in a library, either on your campus or off of it, is a great way to get some practical experience while also making some (although, let’s be real, probably […]
Connect the Dots: Developing Professional Relationships with LIS Students and Faculty
Because many LIS programs are online-based, it can be difficult to meet people in your program. Yes, there may be required group assignments in certain classes, but that doesn’t guarantee […]
Choosing Librarianship: The Cure for my Career FOMO?
“The irregularity of our roles and the ever-changing nature of our profession can be a draw for those who crave variety and enjoy learning new things. Librarianship, thankfully, is rarely […]
Lessons Learned from my First Fully Online Semester
Almost exactly one year ago, I published my first post here on HLS all about the lessons I learned during my first semester of library school. Past me who wrote […]
Focus On Your Skills
We all know the quintessential librarian stereotype: meek, bookish, bespectacled folks who sit surrounded by stacks of books all day long, shushing children and wielding large inky stamps with which […]
Facing my stereotypes
I am a Californian by birth. I was raised in a city that included one of the many missions that dot coastal California, in my case the Mission San Jose. […]
Structural Racism, Actions, and Libraries
On January 6, 2021, I was getting some work done when I heard that the U.S. Capitol was being breached. For the rest of the night, I settled in to […]
Should You Work in a Public Library?
Sometimes, I leave work feeling like a million bucks. Other times, I almost run out the door to get home as soon as possible. Those instances are usually caused by […]
The Final Countdown Begins: How to Prepare for Your Last Semester in Library School
I will admit that writing this particular article was difficult for me as, after finishing my last class for the Fall semester, I went into my winter break feeling […]
Things every librarian should learning about: Copyright edition
Remember all the way back to 2020. I know, I know you don’t want to. It’s fine, I promise, we’re only going back to November when I wrote about how […]
Make 2021 the Year You Take Action
Friends, there’s a lot of work to be done in the field of librarianship, and in the world at large. Too many of us are squatting in our bunkers, watching […]
How Do We Talk About Structural Racism?
We talk a lot about equity, diversity, and inclusivity – or some other combination of those words – in our field a lot. It makes sense, given that librarianship is […]
Library School Without a Library
COVID-19 has changed how I think about school. Prior to switching to remote learning this spring, I’d never taken a fully online course and I had no desire to. I […]
What I Wish I’d Known Before My First Semester of Grad School
Ten units down, thirty-three more to go! I completed my first year of graduate school this month, and in the spirit of the new year, I thought I’d do a […]
The Importance of Being Earnest… as a Student Planner
With only two semesters left in my library school journey, I’d like to share what has worked well for me in terms of planning. While many graduate students employ the […]
Best Practices of Library Virtual Programming
Check out these 9 Best Practices for Library Virtual Programming!
The MLIS: Gatekeeper or Necessary Credential?
Recently, I have been thinking a lot about the fact that a master’s degree is required to be a librarian. For me, choosing to pursue a graduate degree in library […]
So, you want to apply to grad school?
With the fall semester wrapping up, many of us are looking ahead to the spring semester and what may lie beyond. And, for those graduating at the end of the […]
I Decided to Make a Mid-Career Transition to LIS and You Can Too
Coming from a working class background, career satisfaction was like the unicorn of life goals – nice to think about, but probably out of reach. Work life was something very […]
My Professional Goals for 2021
As 2020 finally draws to a close, I find myself just over halfway through my MLIS program. I am projected to graduate in the spring of 2022, which means I […]
COVID-19 and the Library School Experience: What Needs to be Changed?
Over nine months ago, I was sitting in my seminar on academic libraries in McKeldin Library at the University of Maryland. COVID-19 cases were on the rise and many universities […]
Capstone Conundrums
One of the best parts of being in library school while working in a library has been using my job to complete assignments. These real applications helped me be better […]
How Do You Archive an Email?: A Look Inside #HLS10
So, the holiday season is always time to reflect upon the year that is coming to a close and the year that lies ahead; which I feel is especially […]
LIS and podcasting
This is probably unsurprising to many of you reading this, but LIS as an industry seems pretty active in podcasting. I myself have never really listened to any podcasts other […]
Putting it into perspective.
So, I’m done?! I finished my last class in Children’s and Youth Programming a few weeks ago after presenting my final group project; which was a summer reading program designed […]
“There is a time for departure…”
In a little more than a week’s time, I will don my deliciously lemon yellow hood, (virtually) cross a stage, and know, with a heart full in equal measure of […]
Documenting the Chinese student experience at an American college during the pandemic
This past summer, I took part in an oral history project designed to collect stories of the University of Iowa (UI) community’s reactions to the continuing COVID-19 pandemic in textual […]
Patron Data and Internal Threats
Two weeks ago, an article was published accusing an IT worker at North Carolina State University of gathering personal information about political activists and LGBTQIA+ folks and distributing that information […]
What Even is Fun?
At the University of Washington, all MLIS students are required to complete a capstone project – some sort of large-scale, cumulative work that demonstrates information science skills relevant to our […]
Thankfulness in Troubling Times
I started writing my post for the month of November before I got the HLS schedule and realized that my post would fall on Thanksgiving. So, I decided to set […]
Saving Money on Textbooks in Library School
OER (open educational resources) and ZTC (zero textbook cost) courses and programs are big topics of conversation at the community college where I work. Not a single Professional Development Day […]
Make the Most of Winter Break: Submit to the SRJ
As the end of the semester looms on the horizon and a month of Winter break awaits us, we have endless possibilities for how to utilize our time. Many of […]
10 Tips for Getting a Library Job
When I began drafting ideas for this month’s blog, I was mostly thinking about library assessments and interviews. I knew I wanted to write about my experience, but I was […]
Hack Your Competencies and Sell Your Skills
My MLIS program at Wayne State University requires that one of the first classes a student takes in the program is Introduction to the Information Professions. Part of the course […]
Practicing Compassion
One of the things that drew me to librarianship in the first place was the helpful and non-judgemental environment that many librarians throughout my life have created for me. While […]
My Winter Break Reading List
I write this post in the midst of finals season, feverishly tying up the loose ends of another semester as it comes to a close. Once my last papers are […]
LIS Programs & the Need for Dialogue
I feel lucky to have grown up in Miami, a primarily Hispanic city, where I am not very different from any other Hispanic American. However, as I have grown and […]
Tear the Roof off the Sucker: Getting Out of a Funk
Getting stuck in a funk is a common occurrence. Feeling off your game and disconnected from the world can impact your life, work, and school. So, how do you get […]
An International Library Student’s Perspective on Remote Work During the COVID-19 Pandemic
While attending the University of Iowa’s School of Information Science, I have also served as a student cataloger in the UI Main Library’s cataloging department. Like most metadata and cataloging […]
“So, How Are You Doing?”: An (Almost) Year-End Retrospective
So, I am writing this roughly a week after the initial Election Day here in the United States, two days after our president-elect and vice president-elect have been announced […]
So you want to be an academic librarian? You should learn about OERs.
I make no secret that I am a huge proponent of the open education and open pedagogy movements. Everyone who knows me professionally knows that my specialty in copyright has […]
