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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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.
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
If your classes are asynchronous, you probably have to write posts and responses about class readings. This format is not isolated to LIS programs. In a former graduate program, I […]
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 […]
As you work through your time in library school you are going to become intimately familiar with many different databases. You will know the ins and out of those hosted […]
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
2020 will be a very interesting year. The United States will have another presidential election. The James Webb telescope, Hubble’s replacement, is scheduled to launch into space. And the United […]
Each week, we reflect on the top articles, blog posts, tweets, news, thoughts, and other tidbits we’ve found interesting or useful. Check out what our writers have spotted this week […]
Each week, we reflect on the top articles, blog posts, tweets, news, thoughts, and other tidbits we’ve found interesting or useful. Check out what our writers have spotted this week […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
My neighborhood library, the Main Library in San Francisco, is continually active with classes, events, speakers, and makerspace. Although there are many programs for adults, they are mostly focused around […]
One of my favorite components of library school is the opportunity to take an elective that dives into an interesting topic and learning more about a world or community that […]
Prior to library school, I never saw librarianship as a particularly adventurous career. So I was pleased to discover that librarianship can take one to exciting places.
The late summer and fall of 2017 had more than its fair share of disastrous weather, particularly when it came to hurricanes making landfall. In the midst of these storms […]
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 […]
Summer breaks from library school are made for trying to recharge from a busy school year and enjoy non-library-related fiction. But a library-minded student cannot help but find the connections […]
“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 […]
One of the hazards of library school is a distinct lack of spare time. While I find myself doing plenty of reading for classes, it’s tough to squeeze in extra […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Like many hackers before me, I embarked on my post-MLIS job search over the winter break. As I have only been doing this for about a month, I don’t have […]
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 […]
This semester, I am enrolled in a Digital Humanities seminar. I wanted to get a theoretical foundation for how evolving technology is shaping […]
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 […]
In the last few weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about the bubbles I create for myself – the bubble that made the recent election results so utterly unimaginable to […]
This semester I enrolled in LIS452, “Foundations of Information Processing.” I am learning Python. I’m learning how to code!
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 […]
Theft is a concern in all libraries. The best practices employ a combination techniques to create environments in which all stakeholders are empowered to protect the collection.
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
My library experience so far has been a battle of two passions – I love archives, and I could see myself spending the rest of my life holed up in […]
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. […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
Learning to love online classes has to be one of the biggest surprises I’ve had in my first year of library school. I’d still go for in-person classes if time and money permitted it, because being physically isolated from library people can suck, but I’ve genuinely enjoyed the online atmosphere […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
You’re already reading Hack Library School, and you’ve undoubtedly heard about the magic being done at INALJ. Therefore, it can be deduced that you are indeed a savvy library student. But don’t you ever feel the need to branch out? Don’t you ever want to diversify your list of go-to […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
When evaluating which courses to take, students often start with the list of undeniably library-specific courses: reference, cataloging, archives, etc. But as the profession continues to evolve it has become more and more interdisciplinary. Library students today take end up taking everything from web programming to marketing, from database design […]
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 […]
This post is part of a new series called “So What Do You Do?” in which LIS students talk about their experiences as interns. We want to showcase the wide range of things people are doing in the world of library and information science. Tell us a bit about yourself. […]
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 […]
Editor’s note: This is the first of a two part series. An interview with Andromeda Yelton of Gluejar will be posted next week on Thursday, December 6. We drew you in, didn’t we? Well, it’s true: librarian and author Lauren Pressley is working with crowdfunding startup unglue.it to provide free access […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
so much dependsupon a red wheelbarrow glazed with rainwater beside the whitechickens. The literature fan in me can’t help but begin with William Carlos Williams’s well-known poem from his collection Spring and All (1923), if only with the flimsiest excuse of lifting the phrase “so much depends” for this post (and for the […]
An interesting post from Justin De La Cruz, who has written for us before about doing an online MLIS. I’m in a unique position. In the second year of my MLIS program at Florida State University, I’ve been granted the opportunity to work and study abroad in Florence, Italy. I’m […]
I’ve written on my own blog about my feelings as a Borders employee and the company’s collapse. In this post I intend to dissect why Borders failed, and what it means for books, bookstores, and libraries. There are a lot of factors that led to Big Red Books’ down fall, […]
{This is one of the first posts I wrote about my experiences in Library School, and it spawned a great series of guest posts over at my blog. This was kind of the impetus that began the hacklibschool seedling in my mind. Enjoy!} I know. This is like the worst […]
