Emergency Remote Teaching ≠ Online Learning
For many MLIS students, looking ahead to a fall semester consisting of all-online courses will not be new, given the availability of online-only MLIS programs in the pre-COVID world. However, […]
Coding in Librarianship – Tips, Tricks, and and Troublesome Foibles
2020 will define the next several years, perhaps the next decade or two, of librarianship in the United States. A cascade of statewide quarantines from March and onward wreaked havoc […]
When one of us screws up and we do nothing, that makes us all look bad. And no, backpedaling doesn’t help.
On July 4th, a story broke about UWM School of Information Studies Senior Lecturer Betsy Schoeller and the heinous comment she made about the murder of Specialist Vanessa Guillen on […]
It’s the Algorithm: How Your Favorite Search Engine Promotes Racism
In the fall of 2010, Safiya Umoja Noble was searching the internet; looking for things that may interest her stepdaughter and nieces. However, when she Googled the phrase “black girls,” […]
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 Reserves: A Pandemic Tale
For those of us in the academic library world, the past few weeks have been an eye-opening experience. Like every schoolteacher in the world, our faculty had to convert their […]
OLA’s 2019 Copyright Symposium at the Intersection of Copyright Law and Indigenous Knowledge
During my day job, I handle copyright at an academic library, so I was supremely lucky this year that my manager was able and willing to send me to the […]
Hack Social Media
Social media can be an excellent way to promote and market library services and resources. Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook open up opportunities to engage in conversation with patrons, increase library […]
Libraries and the Newest Privacy Issue
Libraries no longer act solely as repositories of books. They now act as living rooms, offering anything from craft programs and makerspaces to computer classes and technology assistance. But what […]
Making a Makerspace
Before starting at the University of Washington, a former coworker once asked if I was going to be taking classes on how to sew and thread a needle in my […]
Surviving Tech Courses
As more MLIS programs integrate tech courses and requirements into their curriculum, many MLIS students who are not tech-savvy nor have a tech background struggle in these courses. At the University of Washington, there are numerous tech courses available for students and a requirement that every student takes at least one of these courses. I’ve heard stories and also personally experienced the struggles of these courses and even some of the mental breakdowns. Many students dread these courses and the long hours they often require.
Meeting Marion
I am one semester into my Master of Library Science program and while my area of major interest (currently health librarianship!) has shifted and morphed over the past five months, […]
Some Thoughts on Big Data, Library Usage, and Measuring Student Success
A big trend in libraries everywhere is data. Usage data, collection data, user survey data, the list goes on and I’m sure you all can name several more types of […]
A People’s History of (Humanities) Computing in the United States
Recently, I had the pleasure of reading Joy Lisi Rankin’s 2018 book, A People’s History of Computing in the United States. As someone who thinks a lot and writes a […]
The Hype Cycle
Have you ever heard of the Hype Cycle? I hadn’t heard of it until listening to the third season of one of my favorite podcasts, ZigZag with Manoush Zomorodi and […]
Leadership & Library Technology: Reflections, Insight, and Advice
Many thanks to Karen Estlund for sharing her story!
Facilitation & Data Operations in Academic Libraries
Many thanks to Christina Harlow for sharing her story! “Get your hands dirty. Go to conferences; sign up for workshops; propose the sessions and meetings you think are missing wherever […]
Tribal Collections [Series]: Sustainable Heritage Network
This series on tribal collections highlights three projects from across the libraries, archives, and museums space that focus on Native American communities and culture, using best practices set forth by […]
Resources Beyond the Library
I recently had the pleasure of writing a post about some topic modeling research I did for a Digital Humanities class I took last year for our fellow library blog […]
Tribal Collections [Series]: Warm Springs Sound Archives Preservation Project
This series on tribal collections highlights three projects from across the libraries, archives, and museums space that focus on Native American communities and culture, using best practices set forth by […]
The Best Interface Is No Interface: Perspectives Beyond Library World
I have three screens in front of me as I consider writing about The Best Interface Is No Interface by Golden Krishna, a book whose main thesis maintains that our […]
5 Inspiring Interviews to Make You Excited to Become a Librarian
When you’re in the thick of the semester with a mound of reading and assignments ahead of you, you sometimes need a little inspiration. Amidst a polarized political climate, school […]
The Great Debate
That’s right, it’s time to talk about the great debate of library school students (and all readers, for that matter). The topic that leads to the most personal of classroom […]
The Art of Science Librarianship: Why the “A” in STEAM Matters
When I started library school, I knew I wanted to be a STEM librarian. For those who aren’t familiar, STEM stands for “Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math”. I have an […]
Tribal Collections [Series]: The Indigenous Digital Archive
(Image from the Indigenous Digital Archive: “The Pratt’s Quarters Carlisle Indian School housed 100,000 children between 1879 and 1918″) This series on tribal collections highlights three projects from across the libraries, archives, and museums space […]
According to the Internet
The other day I saw a meme that made me pause. It read “The Dark Ages began with the closing of a Library”. It took me a bit by surprise […]
Claim Your Name: Get Your ORCID iD
Chances are there is at least one other person in the world that shares your exact same name. You might have used multiple names during your lifetime, and you may […]
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
SESTA/FOSTA and LIS [Farewell]
My semester is coming to its end, though my grad school career is not (I still have one more semester!). Still, this will be my last post on Hack Library […]
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 […]
Visualize It: Ann K. Emery
Have you ever needed to make a chart or graph for a presentation or project? Creating a simple visual tool may appear to be an easy task, but with seemingly […]
Visualize It: Uncertainty
As I explored the work of data visualization experts and practitioners in an Introduction to Information Visualization class in the fall of 2017, the website and work of Alberto Cairo […]
Focusing on Local: Librarianship and Public History
Part of what initially attracted me to pursuing a Masters in Library & Information Science was the public, or community focused, aspect of the work. As an undergraduate student in […]
Special Librarian: An Interview with Jeff Waryan
For those of you who know me, you know that I have a lot of librarian heroes, but my favorite librarian is my dad. While I was in high school, […]
A Tour of Duty in Tech Services
Today we welcome a guest post by Autumn Wetli. Autumn is a graduate student pursuing her MLIS at Wayne State University with a focus on academic librarianship. She currently works […]
Intellectual Freedom in the News: Net Neutrality Rollbacks & Banned Words
“Diversity. Entitlement. Evidence-Based. Fetus. Science-Based. Transgender. Vulnerable.” Over the weekend, reports have been rolling in about a list of words that the Trump administration wanted removed and banned from official […]
Visualize It: German Elections
This fall semester I have been taking an elective course for my MLIS called Introduction to Information Visualization. In this course, we have explored data and information and the ways […]
A Reflection on the Design for Diversity Forum
A Reflection on the Design for Diversity Forum When a friend of mine invited me to the Design for Diversity (D4D) Forum at Northeastern University earlier this week, it was […]
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. […]
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 […]
