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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Civil Engagement and Librarianship
Choosing to be civilly engaged has never been easier. As citizens, we are bombarded with 24-hour news through every means of device: our phones, computers, televisions, and, if you are […]
Other Duties As Assigned
This week, I have been spending a lot of time thinking about all of the many things I do as a library supervisor that are not written into my job […]
Student Librarian Road Trip
Photo by Lisa Ladd Salazar-Ajo Library
Hold On To Your Optimism
As the year draws to a close and we look toward 2020, I’ve been thinking about the promise of new things. Many of us use the New Year as a […]
Librarians We Need
Confession: While I’ve been working in libraries since around 2011, I did not think I wanted to be a librarian until about 8 months ago when I started to look […]
A Librarian Without Their Library
What is a librarian without their library? This isn’t some ancient riddle that you only learn the answer to once you’ve earned that hallowed MLS (or MLIS, or MIS, or […]
Academic or Public? Perhaps both.
I have worked in an academic library for thirty years. First in technical services, then transitioning to Access Services. Yet here I am, getting my MSIS with a concentration in […]
On Job Hunting and Farewell!
It’s time for my final post, and is of course obligatory here at Hack Library School, I’ll be writing about finishing school and that dreaded job hunt. As Melissa so […]
Thematic Research Collections: What’s the Big Deal?
I wanted to share some interesting things I’ve come across in my research for my thesis project. The project focuses on digital tool development as a way for librarians, research […]
Career Paths: Visual Resources
Are you interested in issues relating to the organization, access, and preservation of visual information? Interested in careers relating to data management, digital collections, cultural heritage, or art information? You […]
Digital Humanities, Service to Graduate Students and Why Future Academic Librarians Should Care
This article presents a brief overview of the digital humanities and the reasons why future academic librarians ought to pay attention to it, and focuses on a somewhat neglected area of service–service to humanities graduate students
The International Librarian
Hello, HLS readers! I’m Kait, and I’m excited to present to you my first post on international librarianship. This is a subject that HLS has tackled before, but I want […]
Living and Learning with Information Literacy
As a librarian-in-the-making, I have had some experience with setting up different educational websites and training aids—I run the site for my small educational business, for example, but until my […]
Starting Small: My Experience at the New England Archivist
Since beginning graduate school, I’ve had difficulty knowing how to engage with professional associations. Being both a Mosaic Scholar and a Spectrum Scholar, I received a free annual membership to […]
Words of Wisdom: The Advantages of Having a Peer Mentor
I would not be exactly where I am today if it were not for the people who make up my support system. In particular, I have greatly benefitted from the […]
The library’s role in scholarly communication
Over the last several months I’ve become increasingly interested in the role that libraries and librarians play in scholarly communications. Scholarly communication is, according to Wikipedia, “the process by which […]
Meeting the Women in the Boxes: Reflections on Events in the Archives
Have you ever seen the stacks of an archives? In most cases, they are rows and rows of standard sized archival boxes. The only indication of the exciting content within […]
Speed Mentoring- Can it Work for You?
The importance of mentoring has been addressed often by Hack Library School contributors (here, here, and here). In an effort to learn more about how to obtain a mentor, I […]
Every e-reader their digital book
In studying for an MLIS in Digital Library and Information Services, one of the subjects we’ve covered in detail is digital reading. This has been from the viewpoints of the […]
First steps in Information Retrieval
Before starting an MLIS in digital librarianship I have worked in libraries for around nine years. Despite being involved and enthusiastic, a lot on the course is new to me. […]
How Do Librarians Learn to Teach?
“Here,” my boss said, handing me a DVD, “you can watch this recording of me teaching. It will help.” I was a few months into a library technician job at […]
Come in, We’re Open: Maximizing your Library Visits as an LIS Student
Years ago as an undergrad on vacation, I strolled into the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library’s reading room. I may not have looked professional with my dyed bright red hair and […]
The Growing Importance of User Experience In Libraries
Nearly everyone who has ever worked in a library or has experience in library work has encountered the following statement: “So, you work in a library. What exactly do you […]
3 Lessons learned at my first library conference
At the beginning of this month, Computers in Libraries descended upon the Washington DC area, taking up residence at the Washington Hilton hotel for the better part of a week. […]
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 […]
The evolving definition of Access Services
At some point or another in our library careers, we serve on the front lines. Anyone who has worked directly with the public usually has several colorful stories to tell, […]
Concerning Big Data
Right at the end of the last semester, a professor dropped a book on my desk that inspired me to take a second look at what I had come to consider little more than hackneyed buzz-term: Big Data. I’m glad I did.
Hacking the networking game as a student
One of the most perplexing facets of working in the professional world -for me, anyway – is figuring out how to network, especially while you’re still in school. I come from a […]
Learning LIS Tech as a Novice
As I’m sure our readers know…I’m a rare book person…oh you didn’t know that? You mean me talking about it constantly didn’t give it away? Starting last summer, though, my […]
Do we really need to worry about the future?
It sometimes feel like the debate over the future of libraries and librarians will never go away. Recently, volunteer-run / community led libraries in the UK have become quite an […]
So you want to be a Latin American/Area Studies librarian?
So you know that you want to be a librarian, but have you thought about specializing in a certain field? If you have an interest in foreign languages and cultures or […]
Reflections on the ARL Leadership Symposium
Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to go to Chicago to attend the Association of Research Libraries Leadership Symposium. It has taken me a while to process all the […]
Academic and Scholarly Publishing: Why it Matters and Approaching the Process
I just recently published my first scholarly, peer-reviewed article in a library journal. It was a long and sometimes grueling process that was 9 months in the making, but it was worth it! I’d like to share a few points as to why publishing in grad school matters in the long […]
{Series} Emerging Careers in Librarianship: Digital Humanities Librarian
As library students, we’re all aware of how deeply digital tools have transformed out field, but sometimes we forget that those same tools are impacting other fields as well, fields with which our own work may eventually intersect. In the academic world, scholars are pulling computational techniques into the traditionally […]
Librarian as Project Manager
In this installment of Hack Library’s School’s Emerging Career Series, Caro Pinto explores the role of librarian as project manager. Caro Pinto is the Social Science & Emerging Technologies Librarian at Hampshire College where she oversees collection development, outreach, and instruction for the School of Critical Social Inquiry, works on […]
{Series} Emerging Careers in Librarianship: GIS Librarianship
Earlier this summer I attended the Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI) in Victoria, British Columbia. While I was there I took an intensive course on GIS and the Humanities. I was a complete novice but I enjoyed the chance to begin developing a brand-new skill set. This course was fresh […]
[Series] Emerging Careers in Librarianship: Zines (Yes, zines!)
The Emerging Careers series at HLS will focus mainly, and not surprisingly, on career paths opening up in the digital realm of the library and information science field. It’s true that our field continues to “emerge” most visibly there, while the death of print, and even of libraries themselves, continues […]
[Series] Emerging Careers in Librarianship: Data Curation
Librarianship is a quickly changing field. Thanks to computers and the internet, it has undergone a tremendous metamorphosis over the last two decades. In light of these changes, we’re kicking off a new series in which we talk about the many emerging careers in librarianship. Today’s inaugural issue talks about […]
