In the past few months, I’ve been hustling to land a summer internship, endlessly trawling the internet for opportunities, incessantly bugging professors and mentors for recommendations, and rewriting my resume […]
Each week, we reflect on the top articles, blog posts, tweets, news, thoughts, and other tidbits we’ve found interesting or useful. Enjoy!
Library school can seem very short. My personal experience was four semesters and a summer internship. Such a short time span doesn’t leave much room for all the classes, conferences, […]
The conversation around the merits of distance LIS education is an ongoing process in the library profession. Popular discussion points include connecting with peers, job and life flexibility, financial pressures, […]
As I prepare to graduate this upcoming Sunday, I’ve been thinking a lot about my two years in graduate school. I came into the program at the University of Illinois […]
Each week, we reflect on the top articles, blog posts, tweets, news, thoughts, and other tidbits we’ve found interesting or useful. Enjoy!
This semester I decided to do something that terrifies me: I enrolled in a storytelling course. As an anxious public speaker, I challenged myself by taking a class in which […]
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 […]
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 […]
Each week, we reflect on the top articles, blog posts, tweets, news, thoughts, and other tidbits we’ve found interesting or useful. Enjoy!
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, […]
When we talk about LIS education, we’re talking about providing education for a professional career in libraries, with all the traits the word ‘profession’ implies: professionalism, prolonged training, and formal education. This […]
First, a brief background, since I’m new here. I finished my undergrad in 2003, and in the ensuing 12 years, went about as far outside of the academic realm as […]
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 […]
Each week, we reflect on the top articles, blog posts, tweets, news, thoughts, and other tidbits we’ve found interesting or useful. Enjoy!
Working in a library with diverse patrons can be both easy and difficult depending on the way you look at it. Speaking from experience, if you come from a minority it […]
Summer 2015 I went on an interview for a position at a large, Midwestern university for work in the academic librarianship field. It started right before 8:00 a.m. and ended after […]
Less than four months into my MLIS, I have already become immersed in the library world within academia. Not only do I wish to be an academic librarian after I […]
Here it comes again, the clichéd question: “Why bother with library school? We have the internet now.” I’ve been working in libraries for the better part of a decade so, […]
Each week, we reflect on the top articles, blog posts, tweets, news, thoughts, and other tidbits we’ve found interesting or useful. Enjoy!
It’s almost graduation time for many students and job searching is in full swing. Although I’m new to the library science program, I have worked for many years managing teams and people. […]
During the course of my career as a library science graduate student, I learned that it is critical for librarians to have strong interpersonal skills, such as how to be a […]
When I first started my archives program last fall, everyone at my institution encouraged the new cohort to “get involved” in student leadership, professional organizations, conference activities and the […]
When I began my MSLIS program, the universe of librarianship and information science seemed to stretch out eternally before me. As such, I felt like a bit like Kimmy Schmidt […]
Each week, we reflect on the top articles, blog posts, tweets, news, thoughts, and other tidbits we’ve found interesting or useful. Enjoy!
The Web-based Information Science Education (WISE) Consortium is a cooperative endeavor among seventeen library schools that allows students to have greater access to a variety of online courses. Each semester, schools in […]
Librarians love a conference – there’s nothing quite like getting together with a hall full of your like-minded peers to discuss library life. However, dedicated librarian conferences like ALA Annual […]
Each week, we reflect on the top articles, blog posts, tweets, news, thoughts, and other tidbits we’ve found interesting or useful. Enjoy!
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. […]
In the words of Charlotte’s Mayor Jennifer Roberts, “This legislation is literally the most anti-LGBT legislation in the country. It sanctions discrimination against the LGBT community.” The legislation provides legal protection of rights in employment and public accommodation for individuals on the basis of “race, religion, color, national origin, age, biological sex or handicap,” and goes on to state that these protections cannot be expanded by “any ordinance, regulation, resolution, or policy adopted or imposed by a unit of local government or other political subdivision of the State.” In other words, local governments can no longer define discrimination within their own towns, cities, or counties.
Have you ever felt like your colleagues know more about your field than you do? Or like your successes can be attributed to luck rather than hard work and persistence? […]
Each week, we reflect on the top articles, blog posts, tweets, news, thoughts, and other tidbits we’ve found interesting or useful. Enjoy!
As online educational tools continue to disrupt traditional classrooms, two of our writers discuss the implications.
Talking about time management is helpful. Tips and encouragement (as found here previously on HLS) are great ways to offer help about the time we have and how to best […]
Jessica Fletcher, the goddess herself, portrayed by Angela Lansbury, has kept me company during long IM chat shifts with no users, during marathons of library data analysis, while I was […]
As spring rolls around, I know that many of us are “cleaning” up our resumes/CVs and wordsmithing our cover letters. It’s time to find that job…whether it be a graduate […]
Each week, we reflect on the top articles, blog posts, tweets, news, thoughts, and other tidbits we’ve found interesting or useful. Enjoy!
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.
Drum roll please! Here they are: HLS’s ten newest contributors. We can’t wait to hear how they will “hack” library school!
Each week, we reflect on the top articles, blog posts, tweets, news, thoughts, and other tidbits we’ve found interesting or useful. Enjoy!
This semester I’m taking my last introductory course in UW-Madison’s program – a class called Organization of Information, or in other words, basic cataloging/metadata/resource description/organization all in one. The class […]
Editor’s note: This post is part of our series entitled Voces del Sur: Rethinking LIS from the Latin American and Caribbean Perspective, featuring writers from the blog Infotecarios. Guest bloggers will […]
Editor’s Note: In order to learn more about the candidates for President of the American Library Association, HLS asked the candidates a few questions about topics relevant to students and early […]
Editor’s Note: In order to learn more about the candidates for President of the American Library Association, HLS asked the candidates a few questions about topics relevant to students and early […]
Editor’s Note: In order to learn more about the candidates for President of the American Library Association, HLS asked the candidates a few questions about topics relevant to students and early […]
As I get started with my second semester, I thought it would be a good time to re-visit the subject of self-care and time management, particularly as a mature student. […]
Each week, we reflect on the top articles, blog posts, tweets, news, thoughts, and other tidbits we’ve found interesting or useful. Enjoy!
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 […]
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 […]
Places flashlight under chin. I’m going to tell y’all a story. So once there was a library student just like you, sitting at this computer that was very much like […]
There aren’t a ton of articles on this topic here at HLS, so today we’re going to talk about failure. More specifically, my failure. I’ve been serving on the display […]
The standoff between the US District Court of California and Tim Cook of Apple Inc. should concern everyone who works in our industry.
Each week, we reflect on the top articles, blog posts, tweets, news, thoughts, and other tidbits we’ve found interesting or useful. Enjoy!
If you are a librarian or librarian-aspirant, you are probably already familiar with the current most popular provider of online library and information science education. It’s not USC. But that may be a good thing.
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 […]
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 […]
Each week, we reflect on the top articles, blog posts, tweets, news, thoughts, and other tidbits we’ve found interesting or useful. Enjoy!
Paul Lai, HLS alumnus, works as a manager of information resources for an online university’s writing center and as a librarian in a public library. He lives in the Twin Cities, […]
Some early lessons learned from working with Wikipedia and digitized special collections.
Each week, we reflect on the top articles, blog posts, tweets, news, thoughts, and other tidbits we’ve found interesting or useful. Enjoy!
A professor recently posed the following question to my class: are librarians required to be activists?
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 […]
Hey there readers! Here at Hack Library School, we pride ourselves on providing engaging, thoughtful, and useful resources for Library and Information Science students. The best part of this experience is […]
Now that it’s February and prospective library school students will soon start receiving admission notices and making decisions about which library school to attend, I’m going to take a step […]
Each week, we reflect on the top articles, blog posts, tweets, news, thoughts, and other tidbits we’ve found interesting or useful. Enjoy!
Today marks the end of our ACRL/HLS Collaboration, check out Dylan Burns’s post on ACRLog about “Experience and LIS education.” Thanks to everyone involved, from the readers, to the contributors, […]
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 […]
Jennifer Jarson is the Information Literacy and Assessment Librarian and Social Sciences Subject Specialist at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA. Her research interests include information literacy and student learning pedagogy […]
Brenna and Maura were asked to write collaboratively to explore academic interviews from both sides– job applicants and administrators. ACRLog is also featuring this post today. Brenna is a student […]
Editor’s note: This post is part of our series entitled Voces del Sur: Rethinking LIS from the Latin American and Caribbean Perspective, featuring writers from Hack Library School and from the […]
This is part of the ongoing ACRLog/HLS collaboration. Check out ACRLog for Madison Sullivan on “Librarianship Doesn’t Need Professionals” Read more about the project here! Heidi Johnson is the Social Sciences […]
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, […]
Each week, we reflect on the top articles, blog posts, tweets, news, thoughts, and other tidbits we’ve found interesting or useful. Enjoy!
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 […]
Program Overview The MLIS program at the University of Denver is a part of the Morgridge College for Education, in the Department of Research Methods and Information Science. DU’s library […]
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 […]
Editor’s Note: Each week, we reflect on the top articles, blog posts, tweets, news, thoughts, and other tidbits we’ve found interesting or useful. Enjoy!
This is part of the ongoing ACRLog/HLS collaboration. Check out ACRLog for Elizabeth Lieutenant’s post on “Practitioner Engagement in LIS Education” Read more about the project here! Callie Wiygul began […]
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.
The semester might be over, but HLS has something special planned for the beginning of 2016. For the next month, we are teaming up with ACRLog the blog of […]
This past week I did something crazy. Or at least something I thought I would have to be crazy to ever do again. Maybe it was the fact that I […]
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 […]
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 […]
Editor’s note: This post is part of our series entitled Voces del Sur: Rethinking LIS from the Latin American and Caribbean Perspective, featuring writers from the blog Infotecarios. Guest bloggers will […]
Editor’s note: Some of our amazing HLS writers have just finished their first semester of library school! They want to give you the full story on what they learned, what […]
We haven’t featured a librarian gift guide since 2013, so I figured it was high time to give some updated ideas for great gifts for your friends, coworkers, and of […]
As the semester nears its end — like a rogue semi reaching the top of a runaway truck ramp — I’m wrapping up a slow read of The Power to Name (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002), Hope Olson’s feminist critique of library classification systems. It is kicking my ass.
Editor’s Note: Each week, we reflect on the top articles, blog posts, tweets, news, thoughts, and other tidbits we’ve found interesting or useful. Enjoy!
Do you know what’s scary? Networking. It is just this monolith of an idea and often it evokes images of large events with sticker name tags, tiny plastic plates of […]
Often in our line of work, people above us make choices without fully comprehending what will happen next. The impact often trickles down (and usually gains momentum) and we as librarians and […]
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 […]
You’re not alone in worrying about the future. In fact, we are not alone in our profession-wide agonizing over “the future of ___,” nor are we alone in chasing a […]
Are you passionate about making libraries user-centered? Maybe you love designing study or communal spaces based on the experiences of your users. Or you find joy in crafting library services […]
Most of us will work our way through library school. Whether it’s a graduate assistantship, a part-time gig at a public library, or an internship at an archive, we’re all […]
Editor’s note: This post is part of our series entitled Voces del Sur: Rethinking LIS from the Latin American and Caribbean Perspective, featuring writers from the blog Infotecarios. Guest bloggers will […]
Last month, my school, UW-Madison, announced that it is revamping its curriculum for new students starting next fall. For the rest of us current students, we have the choice of either […]
Everybody thinks we library types spend all our days lost in the pages of a book (in between the shushing and the date-stamping of course), and alluring as that may […]
I know what you’re thinking. “Another article about defending your library career? Didn’t someone write one of those a couple of weeks ago?” The answer? Yes. Also, “I think someone wrote […]
Editor’s Note: Each week, we reflect on the top articles, blog posts, tweets, news, thoughts, and other tidbits we’ve found interesting or useful. Enjoy! Brenna In library school we hear […]
