library school

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What’s in a program?

Editor’s note: This article was originally published on July 7, 2016. Recently a panel of Catholic University of America faculty and department affiliates interviewed me as a part of a […]

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The Hats We Wear

The capstone course of my dual degree in Children’s Literature and Library and Information Sciences is on “positionality.” Half the the students in the class been in the dual degree […]

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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.

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Navigating a Non-Archival MLIS Program

At 21 years old and about to graduate, I was afraid to move. Not only had I lived and attended university in the same area I grew up in, but I was worried I wouldn’t be able to support myself financially. So, I found myself again at the University of Washington (UW), this time in a library program that did not have an archives focus. Yet I wanted to become an archivist and the two or three archives-focused classes offered was off-putting. I was afraid I wouldn’t gain the skills that would make me a competitive applicant once I graduate.

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Trans Folks in the Library – A Meditation on Personal vs Public

A month ago, I attended a webcast seminar, ‘Transgender Inclusion in Libraries’, hosted by San Jose State University’s iSchool. This was the first webcast seminar, or webinar, I was attending under my own power since entering SJSU’s MLIS program, and this likely contributed to my wild underestimation of the number of audience members and, thus, overestimation of my ability to personally engage with the webinar speakers. Last semester saw the composition of my first academic paper written as an MLIS candidate, and with a sixteen-page paper on the queer information community in hand, I was eager to supplement the narrow spread of academic work that I had found that covers transgender issues in the library.

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Behind the Highlight Reel

One of my last tasks in my library school career is my choice of end of program assessment, an online portfolio. As I roll the credits on my time in library school, I wanted to take a moment to talk about “the hard stuff.” My portfolio is essentially a highlight […]

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History of LIS Education

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 […]