Helpful Hacks from the Halfway Mark
“Once you’re halfway home, you know that you can probably get the rest of the way there.” – Janis Ian Last August, I quit my full-time nonprofit tech job and […]
Thinking about “Post-Truth”, #ThisIsNotUs, & Charlottesville
Following up on yesterday’s great post about handling anxiety in our current social climate, I wanted to talk a bit more on situating ourselves as information professionals in light of […]
Three Things I am Not Neutral About
On April 13, Ivanka Trump sent out a tweet in honor of National Library Week. “…we honor our libraries and librarians for opening our eyes to the world of knowledge.” […]
Add STEAM to Your Next Program
One benefit to working at a library while being in library school is having the practical, on-the-ground experience to complement what is being taught in the classroom. However, when you […]
Creating Community: Five Simple Steps to Help You Become Involved On and Off Campus
Getting involved as a student is an important part of the MLIS experience but it’s easier said than done (especially for those of us who are introverts!) Here are five short and simple ways to get involved on and off campus as an MLIS student:
Your EAD Primer: Part 2
Author’s Note: This post is Part 2 of the EAD Primer written by Carissa Hansen in December 2016. The author will also present a poster on the topic of EAD […]
Our Work, Our Selves: Using Our Tools for Resistance
In the transformation of silence into language and action, it is vitally necessary for each one of us to establish or examine her function in that transformation and to recognize […]
ASpace: The Archival Frontier
ASpace: The Archival Frontier. These are the voyages of the Star Ship UIowa. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new information management systems, to seek out new tricks and new […]
#dearHLS: Announcing HLS’s Very First Twitter Chat!
Mark your calendars! Hack Library School will host its very first Twitter chat on Tuesday, February 21, 2017 at 8pm CST.
Your EAD Primer: Part 1
Author’s Note: Over the last few months, I’ve heard from several archives students that they’ve had trouble gaining experience with Encoded Archival Description (EAD) in their classes. Luckily, EAD is […]
The Glamorous World of Data Modelling
This semester, I am enrolled in a Digital Humanities seminar. I wanted to get a theoretical foundation for how evolving technology is shaping […]
Technology & Coalition Building: A Critical Review of Online Platforms
Last September, Hack Library School outlined three initiatives to work on over the next year. Since then, we’ve made some changes according to these initiatives–some expected, some not. What has come out of those […]
Making Connections: Your SLIS-mates and You
As I’m sure many of you know the last month or so of the semester is a real time crunch. (We do have some posts on managing it all here, here, […]
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 […]
Digital, Digital, Digital: Content & Collections
Co-authored by HLS Contributing Writers, Carissa Hansen and Kendra Werst. This post is meant to serve as a primer for beginners interested in digital collections work. There are three sections: […]
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. […]
Cataloging the Margins: Zine Librarianship
Zine librarianship presents an interesting intersection of archival practices and librarianship, while also posing a number of challenges for fitting zines into the practices and standards developed around printed books.
Confronting the Myths of Coding and Librarianship
This semester I enrolled in LIS452, “Foundations of Information Processing.” I am learning Python. I’m learning how to code!
What’s Mine is Yours: A Love Letter to Interlibrary Loan
When I started working in interlibrary loan two years ago, my experience with the system was limited to getting one book on vintage hairstyles through my public library and frantically […]
Making Your Program Your Own
It’s that time of the year again. For those of us that took a summer off from our LIS studies to have, well, a summer away from school, welcome back! […]
Owning Your Professional Engagement
Until this summer, I never struggled with feeling disconnected as a student or a professional. I chose an in-person LIS program for precisely this reason, and my public library job […]
Digital Literacy, Small Children, & Lots of Hugs [Farewell Post]
During graduate school, lots of things changed in my life. I gained new perspectives, read challenging articles and theories, traveled to Italy to present research I worked on, faced the […]
Library Team Dynamics: Texting my way through the LIS Conversation
Having experienced numerous career changes in my lifetime and mid-life exposure to higher education, I am in my third semester in Library School at the age of 47. Each semester, […]
Navigating the Mess: Making Sense of Technology in LIS Education
Lately, I’ve been thinking about how to address the broad and messy task of incorporating technology education into my LIS program. It all started with my resolution to add a […]
Modern Lud: How I Cope with the Rise of Technology
I am a Luddite, or at least on the Luddite spectrum. I drive a stick shift. I write in cursive. The only thing I dread more than a software update […]
algorithms and libraries: a case for paying attention
That technology influences information and behavior through built-in and often invisible assumptions is neither a new phenomenon nor new to dialogue among librarians. (Although we could always stand to talk about it more than we already do.) In this post, I highlight some recent contributions on algorithms and libraries in hopes of keeping it in the forefront. If we didn’t already, librarians have to care about algorithms now.
Podcasts in Library Land
Nancy Lovas is pursuing her MLS at the University of Maryland, where she works in the University Libraries as a Research & Teaching Fellow and as a graduate assistant in […]
Unencrypted: Why you should care about Apple vs FBI
The standoff between the US District Court of California and Tim Cook of Apple Inc. should concern everyone who works in our industry.
Building a Professional Website
About a year ago, I started thinking about building a professional website. It seemed like the “next” step in my professional life. If a built a website in my first […]
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 […]
Holiday projects
It is, of course, a good and necessary thing to have a break from study if you are able to over the holiday season. We’ve had some ideas on here […]
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 […]
Saving Twitter
Digital preservation has found its way into the mainstream of modern librarianship. Odd and awkward as it may feel to us in these early days, saving Twitter is a critically important project that can help us redefine what it means to be a librarian and reclaim some of our lost cultural significance.
Curating a Twitter Presence as a Library Student
I have to admit that I didn’t “get” “twitter” “before” I was in library school. I may not “get” it. I had an account before I applied and it has […]
Cloud Storage: Dropbox
All Hail Cloud Storage Summer’s an excellent time to reenergize, as well as a fine period for preparing for upcoming classwork or for reevaluating old methods & making new tactics. […]
Let’s Talk Listservs
You’re a savvy library student. You read HLS, you may be active on Twitter, you’re learning to network with other library students and librarians—you’re doing it all right. There are […]
Laptop Requirements & Access in LIS Education
This past semester my institution decided to spread the news that beginning in the fall semester it would institute a mandatory (for enrolled students) laptop requirement for our program. My […]
Presentation Alternatives: Reveal.js
This is a new series offering alternatives to Microsoft’s Powerpoint by highlighting various presentation software. As we tend do in library school and librarianship, I’ve given a few presentations lately. […]
So you want to be a Data Visualization Librarian?
So you know that you want to be a librarian, but have you thought about specializing in a certain field? Maybe you have an interest in emerging technologies or you want […]
Presentation Alternatives: Prezi
This is a new series offering alternatives to Microsoft’s Powerpoint by highlighting various presentation software. As librarians, it is our responsibility to learn about new technologies and software that could […]
Hack Quirk Your Demonstrations
Many library positions will involve some element of instruction or demonstrating tools or resources. It’s likely that most will, when you think beyond formal instruction sessions and start to consider […]
Trials and Tribulations: Survey Research as an MLS Student
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Erica Hayes, Siobhain Rivera, Ariadne Rehbein, MLS Candidates at the Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing. We started with the best of intentions. […]
Things You Can Do as a Library Student to Prepare for a Career as a Data Librarian
Editor’s Note: Celia Emmelhainz worked as an international librarian for three years while studying for her MLS, and now works as a Social Science Data Librarian in Maine. She blogs […]
Digital Housekeeping
One of my new year/new semester resolutions is to really get my digital housekeeping in line. Over break I read a Washington Post piece shared by Brianna, a wonderful HLS alum, […]
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 […]
Creating a Meteorology Maker Space
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Katherine Hickey, MS and Kyungwon Koh, PhD. Innovative learning spaces called Makerspaces and Learning Labs have become a ubiquitous presence in the world […]
#critlib: Chatty Critical Librarianship on Twitter
No matter how exhausted I am, every other Tuesday night I do something that helps reinforce and nuance what I’m learning in library school: I spend an hour or so […]
Open Access (or, why I love the internet)
The internet is pretty awesome guys. Privacy attacks and trolls aside, no other tool humans have ever created can match its potential for information transfer. Sure, I often use it […]
Hack your tablet: Notetaking apps
When my boss told me that one of our vendors was giving each of us in the office an iPad (let’s just breeze over the issues this introduces into the […]
Hack Your Digital Presentations Like a Pro: Tips & Tricks
As the leaves turn a subtle amber and the wind begins to usher us along our hectic school schedule, no sooner is the fall semester underway in library school land. With it, […]
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 […]
Open Access Student Publishing
Sometimes, the stars of open access (OA) and student publishing align. Alignment generates academic journals of student works that are made freely accessible to all. Many institutions already support student journals, as this vast survey of the undergraduate publishing landscape shows. How can LIS students contribute our unique skills and perspectives to student publishing? And how would everyone involved benefit from such involvement? Adding Value In […]
What’s That Tape? Media Carriers 101
On Friday, I had the opportunity to join the Virginia chapter of the Special Libraries Association on a tour of the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation. It was a spectacular experience – now I know what 50 petabytes of data storage capacity look like, what a U-matic reformatting robot looks […]
A Multitude of You 2.0’s
Way back in 2011, this blog featured a pair of posts about personal branding, the idea of designing and manging your professional, digital self. In Online Presence, a.k.a. You 2.0, Annie reminded us of the importance of being ‘Googleable’ and of our abilities to control the information that employers can […]
Top Twitter Hashtags for Librarians
Are you ready to become a tweetbrarian? Twitter is a fantastic tool for engaging with other librarians, monitoring LIS trends and debates in real time, and gathering unfiltered insights and inspiration from peers and seasoned professionals. The challenge for new tweeters is to know where to start among the 5,000 librarylanders on Twitter! So […]
Hack Your Image of Libraries as Place
Last semester, members of my ALA Student Chapter joined a public tour of the James B. Hunt Jr. Library at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina. It’s an extraordinary facility with a growing list of accolades, including the 2014 Stanford Prize for Innovation in Research Libraries. I was […]
Virtual Interning: Is It for You?
Just a few days ago, I finished up a semester-long virtual internship with Digital Learn, a PLA initiative grant-funded by IMLS designed to”create an online hub for digital literacy support and training.” Over the last four months, I learned a lot about this fabulous organization, and I also learned a […]
Editing Wikipedia While In Library School
Are you a Wikibrarian? I recently became one—a librarian who edits Wikipedia (“the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit”)—and I have found the experience rewarding in the extreme. I have even stumbled into a role as an embedded consultant, helping faculty teach undergrads how to write Wikipedia articles on gender history, on which improvements are […]
Cheap Skate or Pioneering Information Professional?
I’m not going to say that my graduate student budget forced me into the world of open source software, but it certainly didn’t hurt. There was a time when “open source” was synonymous with “free of charge”, but with the proliferation of mobile technologies and free apps, the lines between […]
The Highs and Lows of Teen Tech Week
If you work in teen services you are probably already elbow deep in programming, but for the rest here is a reminder: it is almost Teen Tech Week! Next week, March 9-15, libraries across the country will be celebrating YALSA’s “DIY @ your library” theme by providing programs on coding, […]
Creating and Curating Your Digital Professional Learning Network
Hello, hackers! Do you have a digital PLN? If not, this post will explain the concept and share some tips for success. I discovered the concept of the digital PLN (a web-based personal or professional learning network) through an information literacy instruction class I took in Fall 2013. One of […]
What You Should Know About HASTAC
By Brianna Marshall and Anna-Sophia Zingarelli-Sweet HASTAC, or the Humanities, Arts, Sciences, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory, was founded in 2002 to serve as a community of “humanists, artists, social scientists, scientists and technologists working together to transform the future of learning for the 21st century.” It’s an incredible online portal […]
DH and Open Access
Image courtesy of the J. Murrey Atkins Library at UNC Charlotte Open access refers to free and unrestricted online access to publishing, especially scholarly research. Examples range from articles, theses, and dissertations to conference presentations. In some cases, open access work is free of copyright or licensing restrictions, meaning researchers […]
DIY DH+LIS
Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Dana Bublitz. So, you’re interested in digital humanities as a library science student, but your LIS program (and maybe your whole university) doesn’t even have the slightest idea what you mean when you talk about “DH”–or maybe they just give you a […]
From an Undergraduate Digital Humanist
Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Grace Thomas. “I am an English major at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), with a minor in Computer Science.” After the initial eye-widening or eyebrow-knitting of the questioner, I am asked, “So…what do you, umm, hope to do with that…?” Depending on […]
A 3-Step Introduction to Digital Humanities for Library-Dwellers
Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Ashley Maynor. 1. There is no universally-accepted definition for Digital Humanities and probably never will be. Instead, Digital Humanities (DH) is and will continue to be defined by the kinds of collaboration and innovation that occurs at the intersection of liberal arts […]
Digital Humanities Week, 1/20-1/24
We’re excited to share that next week Hack Library School will feature an entire week of digital humanities-related content – we’re dubbing it “DH week.” Here’s what you have to look forward to: 1/20 – An introduction to DH for library-dwellers, Ashley Maynor 1/21 – From an undergrad digital humanist, […]
The (Other) Digital Divide
When people discuss the digital divide, they are usually talking about how race and class differences contribute to one’s ability to access and use computers and the Internet. But in my opinion, there is another digital divide among professionals, one that separates those who make their living creating technologies and […]
Google and the Librarian: Best Frenemies Forever
I hope each one of you have had a happy holiday season, and warm wishes for a happy and healthy New Year! Perhaps it’s the end of the year, or the end of the semester, but I’ve been reflecting quite a bit lately on my work over the past few […]
A Liberal Arts Major’s Guide to Coding
As programmer and tech journalist Ciara Byrne noted in her op-ed “No–You Don’t Need to Learn To Code”, learning to code is not always fun, easy, or even useful for every career path. Nonetheless, programming can develop several soft skills that translate across a broad range of professions. In addition […]
Seeking Digital Humanities Blog Posts!
Readers, we have exciting news! Hack Library School will be featuring a digital humanities-themed week of posts in early January 2014. We are soliciting content from readers who have ideas they’d like to share. We’re looking for posts on the following themes: A basic introduction to DH Alt-ac careers for […]
Hack Your Study Space
Although I’ve been working on an MLS for a little over two years, I’m still trying to improve my study space. While I plan to work IN a library when I graduate, my default study space is at home. One thing I’ve learned in talking to my library school classmates […]
Technology in Education: Too Much or Not Enough?
My first interaction with a computer was in my second grade public school classroom. Each day we had a set rotation where students either spent the afternoon reading a book, writing in a journal, or playing in the “computer lab.” The latter rotation section was a favorite because a handful […]
Web Apps 2.0
It is Monday morning, and I’m polishing this piece from a coffeeshop, about 900 miles from my university after working on it periodically from 3 cities on 2 continents. The file is being automatically updated to the cloud ever time I save, just in case my battery or computer dies […]
Social Media and #LIS
In library and information science schools we are coming to terms with, well, terms. Lexicons, vocabularies, common jargon sets and search terms are the tools of our trade. So I ask: Have you noticed though how many verbs have been web-born? Or, in the spirit of web 2.0, social web-re-born? […]
Web Development 101 – Beyond the Basics
Editor’s note: This is part 2 of a guest post by Bryan J. Brown. You can read part 1, The Basics, here. After learning HTML and CSS, the next steps on your path to web development greatness depend largely on what you want to do. Depending on your personal and/or […]
Web Development 101 – The Basics
Editor’s note: This is part 1 of a guest post by Bryan J. Brown. Part 2 will be posted on July 30. If you’ve been paying attention to the librarian blog scene at all, you’re probably familiar with the infamous “Should librarians learn to code?” debate. Maybe “debate” isn’t the […]
Building Your eResume
Do you have an eResume yet? I think it goes without saying that every day we become more and more digitally driven. Personally, even though I know it is still done, I cannot imagine sending a hard copy of my resume or examples of my work anywhere. I have my […]
EADiva brings plain talk to Encoded Archival Description
Ruth Tillman doesn’t like to be bored. In addition to being a full time library paraprofessional and part time library student, she has embarked on a number of projects that many of us might see as full-time jobs unto themselves. I wanted to talk to her about one of her […]
{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 […]
A FASTR Open Access
Last week Nicole discussed getting political, and the very next day an opportunity came. On February 14, the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR) was introduced in both the House and Senate. As a library school student who is passionate about open access and interested in scholarly communications, this bill is […]
Library School Resolutions
Happy New Year, hackers! I hope that everyone had a nice, relaxing holiday break, and that you’re all refreshed and ready for a new semester. With classes starting next week for me, I thought I would take some time to come up with a few resolutions to guide me through […]
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 Library Will Be Crowdfunded
Crowdfunding is when individuals come together as a crowd to fund projects by other individuals and organizations. Often funders get perks or rewards for their contribution, ranging from small benefits like a thank you post card or a tote bag to original artwork or a private concert. The two most popular crowdfunding […]
Librarianship and Freedom of Expression in the Era of the Global Internet
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by David Winger. When I looked at the New York Times website a few weeks ago and saw that Twitter had agreed to a formal request from the German government to block access by users in Germany to the Twitter account of a […]
Getting Along With Computer Science Folk
It’s a simple fact: each year library and information science becomes a more technical field; there is an increasing expectation that by the time you leave library school you will have some amount of technical skill (coding, web design, database creation, etc.). As many schools adopt more and more technical […]
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Social Media
I’d like to start my tenure here at Hack Library School with a dose of brutal honesty: I’m not a huge fan of people. Ok, to be fair, it’s not that I don’t LIKE people. It’s just that, as an introvert, I find them exhausting, and the prospect of seemingly […]
Wikipedia, Libraries and the GLAM Project
How often do you use Wikipedia? If you’re anything like me, probably a lot! I’ve been interested in exploring the relationship between libraries and what I’m pretty sure it’s the only encyclopedia I’ve ever used for a long time (giant physical copies were already on their way out by the […]
Tech Tools for LIS Students {Starter Kit}
My MLIS program has a strong commitment to encouraging students to use various online and computer-based presentation/communication tools in class projects. We use a number of different programs in addition to the course management system on campus (Desire2Learn, which is like Blackboard and Moodle). This immersion in the wide range […]
My Experience at the HathiTrust Uncamp
On September 10th and 11th, I attended the HathiTrust Research Center UnCamp held in Bloomington, Indiana. The UnCamp was a joint venture organized by Indiana University, my institution, and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. All in all, the UnCamp spanned a day and a half of demonstrations and hands-on examples […]
Scholarly Journals in Library and Information Science
Being more than a month into my second year at Pratt SILS, I’m trying not to drown in the load of reading that comes with the classes. A majority of my readings are from scholarly journals, and I’d like to give a run down of some of the journals that […]
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 […]
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 […]
Librarian By Name, Geek By Nature
My cohort, we talk. After our weekend intensive classes, we often go out roaming in search of a likely bar, and when we find one, we sit, we drink, and we talk. And since we’ve generally just spent 12 hours in class together, we usually end up talking about library […]
Webinars
I had hoped to be able to write up a brief review of a professional development library webinar this semester, but my two attempts to join in on live webinars via ALA and OCLC proved unsuccessful due to technical difficulties on my end. For one webinar, the audio connection was full of static […]
Is LinkedIn worth the effort?
A classmate from my Transformative Learning and Technology Literacies class at San Jose State University sent me a LinkedIn connection request about a month ago prompting a total revamp of my oft-neglected and unfinished LinkedIn profile. I realized that my profile needed to be presentable if my classmates were going […]
How to Stand Out in the Job Search Crowd
Over the last couple of weeks, we have brought you a series of posts about preparing yourself for the job search. Ashley gave you general advice she gleaned from an interview with a hiring manager. Rose brought you advice on filling out your job application and creating a cover letter. […]
We Are All Curators
The word “curation” in common usage has lost some its meaning. We think of it more in terms of collector, aggregator or disseminator and not as “caretaker” as is its true definition. We future and current archivists and librarians, are all curators of information. We are shepherds and superintendents of […]
