Welcome to the NMRT SASCO Update
The 2011-2012 NMRT Student and Student Chapter Outreach Committee will publish a newsletter once a month. We aim to please, so if there is an area we are not covering or information you’d like us to include, please don’t hesitate to contact your SASCO liaison. SASCO Speakers’ Pool Up & Running! Let us connect you! SASCO provides LIS students with the opportunity to have active NMRT and ALA members speak (virtually or in-person) about involvement in the Association and professional development topics. This is a wonderful opportunity for ALA's best and brightest to be ambassadors to the next generation of library leaders and to keep our professional organization viable. Any questions about the SASCO Speakers' Pool should be directed to the current chair (Erin Dorney). Visit http://www.ala.org/nmrt/oversightgroups/comm/libschoutr/sasco to view available speakers and sign up to be added to the pool!
News
New Members Round Table 2012/2013 committee volunteers are now being accepted NMRT Elections
The 2012 ALA Elections are rapidly approaching. The NMRT Nominating Committee would like to announce a live chat hosted in ALA Connect. The chat will be held on March 14 at 7pm EST. The chat will allow candidates to discuss their candidacy and answer questions while providing NMRT members an opportunity to hear directly about the issues that matter most to them. Learn what qualifications they bring to their position and their vision for NMRT and its future. Watch the candidates on the NMRT YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/NewMembersRT
Student AL Direct Issue
Did you know that ALA puts out an exclusive supplement for ALA Student Members in addition to ALA Direct? No? Then check it out!
Professional Development/Publication Opportunities
Joint Conference for Librarians of Color (JCLC) Kansas City, Mo.—“KCMO,” “the City of Fountains,” “the Paris of the Plains”—will soon be the host to the Joint Conference of Librarians of Color (JCLC). Housing and registration for the Joint Conference of Librarians of Color, Sept. 19-23, 2012, will open on March 1. For complete details, visit Housing & Registration at www.jclc-conference.org
Scholarships & Funding
ALA Awards & Grants
ALA offers hundreds of grant and award opportunities throughout the year and for all types of librarians/students. Check out their list of grant opportunities often so that you don’t miss out!
Open Jobs & Internships
Data Curation at the Library of Congress Residency
Organizers plan to start taking applications this summer. Recently, the Library of Congress, Office of Strategic Initiatives, partnered with the Institute of Museum and Library Services to create a residency program focused on digital curation. Application for the six-month residency program will be open to postgraduate students later this year. For more information on this exciting collaboration, please follow click here.
Internship Programme at the Joint Inspection Unit (JIU) of the United Nations
Intern on Archives and Records Management in the United Nations.The JIU, the only independent external oversight body of the United Nations system mandated to conduct evaluations, inspections and investigations system-wide, is currently seeking an intern with a background in Archives and Records Management who can intern for a minimum of four months and a maximum of six months (preferable) starting in mid-October 2012.
Job Hunting Resources
Hiring Librarians
Organized by a job-hunting librarian, this blog surveys hiring librarians to learn what will really get you hired (or, dropped out of the running quickly).
Job Hunters’ Resource Round-Up
Written by the Hiring Librarians blog (above), this is a great list of resources.
Open Cover Letters
Wondering what your cover letter should look like? Tired of looking at all those online templates? Check out Open Cover Letters, which is full of anonymous cover letters from hired librarians and archivists.
I Need a Library Job
ALA JobList
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Monday, May 7, 2012
Awesome Alumni Interview: Andrea
Andrea Goldstein finished her MSLIS at Drexel in March 2011. She was co-chair and treasurer of SCALA for the 2010-2011 year. During her two years at Drexel, Andrea was an intern at the University of Pennsylvania Dental Library. She also volunteered at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society library and held two internship positions as Drexel's Hagerty Library (in engineering instruction and reference analysis). Prior to library school, Andrea was a post-baccalaureate research fellow at the National Institutes of Health, doing behavioral neuroscience research. Her undergraduate degrees are in chemistry and psychology.
What is your current job?
I'm a Liaison and Outreach Librarian at the Health Sciences and Human Services Library at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. Specifically, I'm the liaison to the School of Medicine, which, aside from your obvious med students, includes Physical Therapy, Public Health, PhD programs in the life sciences, as well as the physicians and residents at the hospital on campus.
How did you find your job?
I found this particular job on the medlib-l listserv, which is specific to medical libraries. While I was searching for jobs, though, I was on a number of mailing lists, and I kept up with a huge number of job boards and Twitter feeds, including HigherEd Jobs, LibGig, LIS Jobs, ALA JobList, and the University of Texas iSchool jobs list. It's a lot to go through, but it's worth the time and effort if you want to make sure you don't miss out on your dream job!
This was actually the second position I interviewed for at this library. I felt really good about my first interview, didn't get the job, but was encouraged by the search committee to apply again if anything opened up. When this job was posted a few months later, I jumped at the opportunity. It turns out that if they hadn't gone with an internal applicant for the first job, I would've been their first choice. So don't get discouraged from applying to your dream library if you don't get it the first time - your rejection might have nothing to do with you.
What does your typical day look like? Is this what you expected when you took the job?
I absolutely hated when librarians I talked to would tell me this, but there really is no typical day in my job. As a liaison librarian, my time is almost entirely scheduled by what faculty, students, and staff request of me. At my library, we have a separate reference department, so I don't have any desk hours. I do have research consultations with students, faculty, and staff who need more in depth and personal help with their research than a stop at the reference desk can provide. Usually this involves people who are working to publish their research and need help with their literature review, but could also include a student writing a paper for class. I spend a great deal of time on instruction. I train all of the new students, faculty, and medical residents each year, so while most academic librarians have a light summer, I'm actually busiest in June and July. I also teach more specialized research-oriented classes on demand, and I participate in our library's workshop series, teaching on topics like PubMed and Journal Impact Factor (and other metrics). I also do some pretty typical subject librarian tasks - I go through our approval plan every week to request books to purchase (although as a state school, we have no budget for purchasing right now), I keep LibGuides in my subject areas updated. One of the cooler things I get to do is go to morning report over at the hospital every few weeks. I listen to residents from Internal Medicine report on cases, go back to the library to do some research about any lingering questions the group has, and blog about what I found (and how I found it) later that day. That way the residents get to keep learning about medicine even post-med school, and hopefully they pick up a thing or two about searching along the way. I'll also (fingers crossed) soon be involved in a grant to learn more about the information needs of researchers involved in the University's new Clinical and Translational Science Institute, which will let me visit some other medical libraries, survey our faculty, staff, and grad students, and find a way to get them the training and resources they need to do better work in informatics. Aside from that, I serve on the library's Staff Education and Training committee, a committee to plan an Apps and Tablets fair for the fall, and I go to a lot of various faculty meetings as they come up.
This is all pretty much what I expected of the job when I took it, although I didn't realize how much of my work would be driven by my actions, as opposed to my going out to the School of Medicine and drumming up business for myself and for the library.
What do you enjoy most about your job?
The biggest reason I left biomedical research and decided not to get my PhD was that doing the same thing at the same time every single day made me crazy. Here, everything is so dependent on what patrons need that I can never predict what I'll be working on any given week. I could have a handful of consults to prepare for and then follow up on; I could have two or three classes to teach in a day, or a day of back to back meetings. It's always changing, and it's always different, so it's very rarely boring. And because of my subject area, I occasionally get to use that chemistry degree, so it hasn't been languishing in a drawer somewhere.
What are some of the common misconceptions about your job/your area of librarianship?
I don't think there are any major misconceptions about working in public services at an academic library. I will note that medical librarianship, even in an academic setting like mine, really is pretty specialized and can be more urgent than other areas of librarianship. While it's more common to hospital librarians, it's not unheard of to have a physician come in needing to find information from the literature to help with a case they're currently working on. You're dealing with real people with real medical conditions, and it's important to keep that in mind when you're doing a search. I won't go as far to say that lives depend on the searching we do in medical libraries, but it's definitely more pressing (and a little more stressful at times) than helping freshmen write their first big research paper.
What was the most valuable thing that you did or learned while in library school?
The absolute best thing I could have done in school was work in a library. I worked at Penn for 2 years, all the way through library school, and I can't recommend their vast internship program enough. Between that job (and to some extent my other internships), I learned more about being a librarian than I got from any class. I got experience working at the reference desk, teaching workshops, making video tutorials and LibGuides, and more skills that I use on a regular basis in my current job. I was lucky enough to hold several paid internships that allowed me to spend as much time as I did in libraries, but even if you're not getting paid, it's hugely valuable to work in a library before you graduate. I know for sure that having so much experience before I graduated was a big part of what got me my job.
What inspired you to choose this career?
As I said before, I started out in biomedical research. It was incredibly tedious, but I didn't want to leave the sciences. As a medical librarian, I get the best of both worlds. I get to work on a variety of tasks, but I also get to work with people in all areas of medicine whose research is fascinating. Whenever I have a consult or go to morning report, I get to learn about areas of scientific research I didn't know about before. And with tuition remission, I get to be the perpetual student of the sciences I always wanted to be (next fall: human anatomy)!
What do you wish you had learned more about?
The University, and in turn, the library, have recently started focusing a lot more informatics. I have a little bit of bioinformatics background from my undergrad biochemistry classes, but I'm starting to wish I'd taken a course or two on the Healthcare Informatics track while I was still at Drexel. I avoided it because I couldn't quite figure out what informatics was (it turns out no one really has a good definition, even the people who teach the workshops I've been to since graduating). It's definitely a huge area though, and anyone in medical libraries is going to have to start learning more about it. I'm hopefully going to start to remedy that this summer at a week-long biomedical informatics course.
Any tips for current students?
Like I said earlier, work in a library while you're in school. I was lucky enough to come to Drexel with a pretty clear career path. I wasn't sure about tech services vs. public services, but I knew I'd end up in a medical or science library, and I was able to work in all of those areas to narrow down my interests. If you don't know what you want, in addition to getting a library job or volunteer position, make an effort to do informational interviews with librarians in as many fields as you can think of. Ask them tough questions about what they like and dislike about their jobs; where they see their fields going in the future; what skills you'd need to do what they do. If you can't work in public, academic, school, and special libraries, you can at least get a better idea of what people who work in them do.
On a related note, take advantage of student pricing for professional organizations. Hopefully as a SCALA member, you've joined ALA and any of their divisions that interest you (I'm already missing paying student dues). SLA, MLA, and other organizations all give you a similar deal. Even if you don't get involved in any committees, you'll get useful publications from the organizations you join, and you'll be able to go to their conferences for far less than other members. National conferences can be overwhelming, but they're a great opportunity to network and to learn more about your chosen field. A presentation or poster might inspire you to try something new, or give you something great to talk about when you go to your next interview. Plus, you never know who you'll meet! I was assigned a great mentor from the Delaware Valley Chapter of ACRL, and he really helped me through the job search process. I'd definitely recommend seeking out mentoring opportunities from both local and national organizations.
Feel free to get in touch with me at andrea.l.goldstein@gmail.com or follow me @oreadandletsing, where I do occasionally tweet about librarianship, despite a fair number of cooking and tv-related tweets.
What is your current job?
I'm a Liaison and Outreach Librarian at the Health Sciences and Human Services Library at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. Specifically, I'm the liaison to the School of Medicine, which, aside from your obvious med students, includes Physical Therapy, Public Health, PhD programs in the life sciences, as well as the physicians and residents at the hospital on campus.
How did you find your job?
I found this particular job on the medlib-l listserv, which is specific to medical libraries. While I was searching for jobs, though, I was on a number of mailing lists, and I kept up with a huge number of job boards and Twitter feeds, including HigherEd Jobs, LibGig, LIS Jobs, ALA JobList, and the University of Texas iSchool jobs list. It's a lot to go through, but it's worth the time and effort if you want to make sure you don't miss out on your dream job!
This was actually the second position I interviewed for at this library. I felt really good about my first interview, didn't get the job, but was encouraged by the search committee to apply again if anything opened up. When this job was posted a few months later, I jumped at the opportunity. It turns out that if they hadn't gone with an internal applicant for the first job, I would've been their first choice. So don't get discouraged from applying to your dream library if you don't get it the first time - your rejection might have nothing to do with you.
What does your typical day look like? Is this what you expected when you took the job?
I absolutely hated when librarians I talked to would tell me this, but there really is no typical day in my job. As a liaison librarian, my time is almost entirely scheduled by what faculty, students, and staff request of me. At my library, we have a separate reference department, so I don't have any desk hours. I do have research consultations with students, faculty, and staff who need more in depth and personal help with their research than a stop at the reference desk can provide. Usually this involves people who are working to publish their research and need help with their literature review, but could also include a student writing a paper for class. I spend a great deal of time on instruction. I train all of the new students, faculty, and medical residents each year, so while most academic librarians have a light summer, I'm actually busiest in June and July. I also teach more specialized research-oriented classes on demand, and I participate in our library's workshop series, teaching on topics like PubMed and Journal Impact Factor (and other metrics). I also do some pretty typical subject librarian tasks - I go through our approval plan every week to request books to purchase (although as a state school, we have no budget for purchasing right now), I keep LibGuides in my subject areas updated. One of the cooler things I get to do is go to morning report over at the hospital every few weeks. I listen to residents from Internal Medicine report on cases, go back to the library to do some research about any lingering questions the group has, and blog about what I found (and how I found it) later that day. That way the residents get to keep learning about medicine even post-med school, and hopefully they pick up a thing or two about searching along the way. I'll also (fingers crossed) soon be involved in a grant to learn more about the information needs of researchers involved in the University's new Clinical and Translational Science Institute, which will let me visit some other medical libraries, survey our faculty, staff, and grad students, and find a way to get them the training and resources they need to do better work in informatics. Aside from that, I serve on the library's Staff Education and Training committee, a committee to plan an Apps and Tablets fair for the fall, and I go to a lot of various faculty meetings as they come up.
This is all pretty much what I expected of the job when I took it, although I didn't realize how much of my work would be driven by my actions, as opposed to my going out to the School of Medicine and drumming up business for myself and for the library.
What do you enjoy most about your job?
The biggest reason I left biomedical research and decided not to get my PhD was that doing the same thing at the same time every single day made me crazy. Here, everything is so dependent on what patrons need that I can never predict what I'll be working on any given week. I could have a handful of consults to prepare for and then follow up on; I could have two or three classes to teach in a day, or a day of back to back meetings. It's always changing, and it's always different, so it's very rarely boring. And because of my subject area, I occasionally get to use that chemistry degree, so it hasn't been languishing in a drawer somewhere.
What are some of the common misconceptions about your job/your area of librarianship?
I don't think there are any major misconceptions about working in public services at an academic library. I will note that medical librarianship, even in an academic setting like mine, really is pretty specialized and can be more urgent than other areas of librarianship. While it's more common to hospital librarians, it's not unheard of to have a physician come in needing to find information from the literature to help with a case they're currently working on. You're dealing with real people with real medical conditions, and it's important to keep that in mind when you're doing a search. I won't go as far to say that lives depend on the searching we do in medical libraries, but it's definitely more pressing (and a little more stressful at times) than helping freshmen write their first big research paper.
What was the most valuable thing that you did or learned while in library school?
The absolute best thing I could have done in school was work in a library. I worked at Penn for 2 years, all the way through library school, and I can't recommend their vast internship program enough. Between that job (and to some extent my other internships), I learned more about being a librarian than I got from any class. I got experience working at the reference desk, teaching workshops, making video tutorials and LibGuides, and more skills that I use on a regular basis in my current job. I was lucky enough to hold several paid internships that allowed me to spend as much time as I did in libraries, but even if you're not getting paid, it's hugely valuable to work in a library before you graduate. I know for sure that having so much experience before I graduated was a big part of what got me my job.
What inspired you to choose this career?
As I said before, I started out in biomedical research. It was incredibly tedious, but I didn't want to leave the sciences. As a medical librarian, I get the best of both worlds. I get to work on a variety of tasks, but I also get to work with people in all areas of medicine whose research is fascinating. Whenever I have a consult or go to morning report, I get to learn about areas of scientific research I didn't know about before. And with tuition remission, I get to be the perpetual student of the sciences I always wanted to be (next fall: human anatomy)!
What do you wish you had learned more about?
The University, and in turn, the library, have recently started focusing a lot more informatics. I have a little bit of bioinformatics background from my undergrad biochemistry classes, but I'm starting to wish I'd taken a course or two on the Healthcare Informatics track while I was still at Drexel. I avoided it because I couldn't quite figure out what informatics was (it turns out no one really has a good definition, even the people who teach the workshops I've been to since graduating). It's definitely a huge area though, and anyone in medical libraries is going to have to start learning more about it. I'm hopefully going to start to remedy that this summer at a week-long biomedical informatics course.
Any tips for current students?
Like I said earlier, work in a library while you're in school. I was lucky enough to come to Drexel with a pretty clear career path. I wasn't sure about tech services vs. public services, but I knew I'd end up in a medical or science library, and I was able to work in all of those areas to narrow down my interests. If you don't know what you want, in addition to getting a library job or volunteer position, make an effort to do informational interviews with librarians in as many fields as you can think of. Ask them tough questions about what they like and dislike about their jobs; where they see their fields going in the future; what skills you'd need to do what they do. If you can't work in public, academic, school, and special libraries, you can at least get a better idea of what people who work in them do.
On a related note, take advantage of student pricing for professional organizations. Hopefully as a SCALA member, you've joined ALA and any of their divisions that interest you (I'm already missing paying student dues). SLA, MLA, and other organizations all give you a similar deal. Even if you don't get involved in any committees, you'll get useful publications from the organizations you join, and you'll be able to go to their conferences for far less than other members. National conferences can be overwhelming, but they're a great opportunity to network and to learn more about your chosen field. A presentation or poster might inspire you to try something new, or give you something great to talk about when you go to your next interview. Plus, you never know who you'll meet! I was assigned a great mentor from the Delaware Valley Chapter of ACRL, and he really helped me through the job search process. I'd definitely recommend seeking out mentoring opportunities from both local and national organizations.
Feel free to get in touch with me at andrea.l.goldstein@gmail.com or follow me @oreadandletsing, where I do occasionally tweet about librarianship, despite a fair number of cooking and tv-related tweets.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Awesome Alumni Interview Series: Catherine
This week's alumni interview is with Catherine Odson. Currently, Catherine is the courseware support librarian at the University of Pennsylvania. She graduated from Drexel with an MS(LIS) in March 2011 and was president/co-chair of SCALA from June 2010 to March 2011.
While at Drexel, Catherine completed internships with the research and instructional services and courseware support departments at the University of Pennsylvania's Van Pelt Library.
Before library school, Catherine was a children's department and circulation clerk volunteer at her hometown public library. Her past jobs include newspaper reporter, substitute teacher, and youth tennis instructor.
What is your current job? I am the courseware support librarian at the University of Pennsylvania. Most of my time is spent providing end-user support and instructional design support for Blackboard and other courseware systems. I also help lead our social media efforts, provide reference services, work on our website, and occasionally help out with library instruction.
How did you find your job? I had a number of internships at the Penn Libraries during grad school, and a position opened up a few weeks before I graduated. I was extremely lucky and spared most of the job search.
What does your typical day look like? Is this what you expected when you took the job? I have two kinds of typical days. At the beginning of each semester, my days are completely packed with day-to-day-type activities, such as answering support questions and helping instructors create their course sites. The rest of the year, I’ll start my day with those same day-to-day tasks and catch up on email. After that, I’m able to tackle some projects, such as writing or updating Blackboard how-to documents, revising a workshop script, preparing for an instructional session, or planning our social media calendar. I appreciate both the breakneck pace of the busy days and the more project-driven style the rest of the year offers. This job gives me the opportunity to have both. I was already working with the courseware team as an intern, so I had very few surprises when I started full-time.
What do you enjoy most about your job? Thinking about using technology in innovative ways to improve student learning and helping faculty discover ways they can do this in their courses.
What are some of the common misconceptions about your job/your area of librarianship? There’s a misconception that libraries are in panic mode and making drastic changes to stay relevant. The reality for many libraries is evolution, not revolution. We are continuously working to better position ourselves to support teaching, learning and research on campus.
What was the most valuable thing that you did or learned while in library school? Most valuable experience: SCALA. Most valuable class: INFO 608 Human-Computer Interaction.
If you are reading this blog, you likely understand the value of being involved in professional associations. SCALA was the best fit for me; find your niche, whether that’s a student group or a local association, and start getting involved now.
INFO 608 will change how you live your life. You will find yourself analyzing doors, grocery store layouts, web services, always thinking about how a different design would make something more or less intuitive. Much of the reading applies to both digital and physical environments, and you will find a way to apply the concepts in your library or information organization.
What inspired you to choose this career? I got into libraries because I wanted to work with books. I originally wanted to be a children’s librarian. After I started my internship at Penn, I realized that an academic setting was a much better fit for me.
What do you wish you had learned more about? I wish I had taken more digital libraries and systems classes, both because they would support the work I am doing now and because they would have given me a stronger foundation in the technologies that are both the present and future of libraries. I’ve worked in both academic and public libraries, and it’s harder to get the maximum value out of classes that review a lot of what you may have learned on the job (for me, INFO 651 Academic Library Service in my last quarter really drove this point home). Challenge yourself to think about the profession more broadly, and find classes that will help as libraries continue to grow.
Any tips for current students? Grad school is what you make of it. You won’t learn everything you need to learn in class, and sometimes you have to make classes work for you and go beyond the required readings to get something out of it. It’s called the easy way out for a reason, but think bigger and get the most out of every class.
You need to be getting library (or archives or knowledge management and so on) experience while you are in school. The job market is tough, and even if you have an arsenal of valuable skills (accounting, development, communications, customer service), little substitutes for the word “library” (or archives or knowledge management and so on) on your resume. Making time for internships or part-time jobs is going to let you see how the theory you learn in class is actually applied (or ignored) in the real world. It also will help you focus your career goals.
Finally, get involved. It’s networking, it’s learning, it’s professionally developing, and it’s good for you!
While at Drexel, Catherine completed internships with the research and instructional services and courseware support departments at the University of Pennsylvania's Van Pelt Library.
Before library school, Catherine was a children's department and circulation clerk volunteer at her hometown public library. Her past jobs include newspaper reporter, substitute teacher, and youth tennis instructor.
What is your current job? I am the courseware support librarian at the University of Pennsylvania. Most of my time is spent providing end-user support and instructional design support for Blackboard and other courseware systems. I also help lead our social media efforts, provide reference services, work on our website, and occasionally help out with library instruction.
How did you find your job? I had a number of internships at the Penn Libraries during grad school, and a position opened up a few weeks before I graduated. I was extremely lucky and spared most of the job search.
What does your typical day look like? Is this what you expected when you took the job? I have two kinds of typical days. At the beginning of each semester, my days are completely packed with day-to-day-type activities, such as answering support questions and helping instructors create their course sites. The rest of the year, I’ll start my day with those same day-to-day tasks and catch up on email. After that, I’m able to tackle some projects, such as writing or updating Blackboard how-to documents, revising a workshop script, preparing for an instructional session, or planning our social media calendar. I appreciate both the breakneck pace of the busy days and the more project-driven style the rest of the year offers. This job gives me the opportunity to have both. I was already working with the courseware team as an intern, so I had very few surprises when I started full-time.
What do you enjoy most about your job? Thinking about using technology in innovative ways to improve student learning and helping faculty discover ways they can do this in their courses.
What are some of the common misconceptions about your job/your area of librarianship? There’s a misconception that libraries are in panic mode and making drastic changes to stay relevant. The reality for many libraries is evolution, not revolution. We are continuously working to better position ourselves to support teaching, learning and research on campus.
What was the most valuable thing that you did or learned while in library school? Most valuable experience: SCALA. Most valuable class: INFO 608 Human-Computer Interaction.
If you are reading this blog, you likely understand the value of being involved in professional associations. SCALA was the best fit for me; find your niche, whether that’s a student group or a local association, and start getting involved now.
INFO 608 will change how you live your life. You will find yourself analyzing doors, grocery store layouts, web services, always thinking about how a different design would make something more or less intuitive. Much of the reading applies to both digital and physical environments, and you will find a way to apply the concepts in your library or information organization.
What inspired you to choose this career? I got into libraries because I wanted to work with books. I originally wanted to be a children’s librarian. After I started my internship at Penn, I realized that an academic setting was a much better fit for me.
What do you wish you had learned more about? I wish I had taken more digital libraries and systems classes, both because they would support the work I am doing now and because they would have given me a stronger foundation in the technologies that are both the present and future of libraries. I’ve worked in both academic and public libraries, and it’s harder to get the maximum value out of classes that review a lot of what you may have learned on the job (for me, INFO 651 Academic Library Service in my last quarter really drove this point home). Challenge yourself to think about the profession more broadly, and find classes that will help as libraries continue to grow.
Any tips for current students? Grad school is what you make of it. You won’t learn everything you need to learn in class, and sometimes you have to make classes work for you and go beyond the required readings to get something out of it. It’s called the easy way out for a reason, but think bigger and get the most out of every class.
You need to be getting library (or archives or knowledge management and so on) experience while you are in school. The job market is tough, and even if you have an arsenal of valuable skills (accounting, development, communications, customer service), little substitutes for the word “library” (or archives or knowledge management and so on) on your resume. Making time for internships or part-time jobs is going to let you see how the theory you learn in class is actually applied (or ignored) in the real world. It also will help you focus your career goals.
Finally, get involved. It’s networking, it’s learning, it’s professionally developing, and it’s good for you!
Monday, April 23, 2012
Interview Series: Awesome Alumni
This post introduces our interview series with Drexel iSchool's 'awesome alumni'! Through this series, we hope to show current students what they can do after graduation with their MLIS. We also want to show students what it takes to get that elusive full-time job, and what that job looks like on a daily basis. For our first entry, we spoke with Doreva Belfiore, who graduated from Drexel with her MLIS in 2011.
Doreva attended the iSchool as a part-time student from 2008-2011, and was a co-chair of SCALA from 2009-2010. Throughout her program, Doreva had four internships: digital collections management internship at the Internet Public Library (ipl2), a general library internship at Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Library of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), a digital libraries and circulation internship at the Rutgers Camden Law Library, and an electronic resources licensing and cataloging internship at the University of Pennsylvania.
What is your current job?
Dorevea: I work as a bibliographic assistant in the Digital Library Initiatives Department of Temple University Libraries. This is a relatively new department that is charged with digitizing materials from the Special Collections Research Center and other specialized collections at Temple Libraries.
Temple University Digital
Collections website: http://library.temple.edu/digitalcollections/
What do you enjoy most about your job?
Doreva: Primarily, I enjoy being able to work on multiple projects that have a diverse variety of subjects and materials. I love the fact that in this field I get to learn new things every day on and off the job. It’s very satisfying to be able to show a digital collection or a thematic exhibition website as the final product of many hours of effort and teamwork.
What are some of the most common misconceptions about your job or your area of librarianship?
Doreva: I often wonder if other people think of me as “one of those people in the basement (archives) who run the scanners”. Of course, I do work with scanning materials, but our work is much more than that: we are actively involved in cataloging digital materials, maintaining and configuring the software which supports our projects, and ensuring the long-term access to our digital materials by configuring a robust server hardware infrastructure that will support large-scale storage with future format migration over time. I believe that digital librarians and archivists are really members of an institution’s collection development team. As academic libraries in particular move away from collecting tons and tons of print materials, and instead focus more on specialized collections, people working in the realm of digitization are important partners in the efforts to develop, maintain, and promote such special collections.
What was the most valuable thing that you did or learned while in library school?
Doreva: I think the most valuable thing that I did during my time at Drexel was to seek out a variety of internships related to digital libraries. In particular, I took an internship in which I had to work an inconvenient schedule that involved evenings and weekends. While the schedule could occasionally be frustrating, that experience gave me direct experience in computer programming and digital library infrastructure. It enabled me to complete relevant, real-life projects and then publish a paper about my work in an online professional journal, Code4Lib Journal. I would argue that there is no “perfect” internship, and that you get out of the internship what you put into it.
What inspired you to choose this career?
Dorevva: For many years I worked in information technology in technical support, network administration and project management. I enjoyed that work but I knew that I had a longstanding interest in digital preservation, especially film and media preservation. When exploring changing careers, I decided upon digital librarianship as the perfect combination of librarianship (materials access, public service), archives (materials preservation and access), and technology (hardware, software, and computer programming).
What do you wish you had learned more about?
Doreva attended the iSchool as a part-time student from 2008-2011, and was a co-chair of SCALA from 2009-2010. Throughout her program, Doreva had four internships: digital collections management internship at the Internet Public Library (ipl2), a general library internship at Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Library of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), a digital libraries and circulation internship at the Rutgers Camden Law Library, and an electronic resources licensing and cataloging internship at the University of Pennsylvania.
What is your current job?
Dorevea: I work as a bibliographic assistant in the Digital Library Initiatives Department of Temple University Libraries. This is a relatively new department that is charged with digitizing materials from the Special Collections Research Center and other specialized collections at Temple Libraries.
How did you find your job?
Doreva: I found my current job via a
combination of networking and tracking job ads. I had been an intern at the
University of Pennsylvania in the Information Processing Center (technical
services department) for slightly over one year. I had met my current
supervisor while she was working at Penn, and I knew that she had moved to
Temple University to be the head of digital projects. After graduation from the
iSchool, I saw that a position had come open at Temple University. I contacted
her for more information about the position, and subsequently applied for it.
What does your typical day look like? Is this what you expected when you took the job?
Doreva: My typical day involves managing up
to four students in various projects related to digitization: scanning print
materials, organizing scanned materials for cataloging and upload into our
digital management system (OCLC’s ContentDM), or editing metadata for cataloged
materials. I generally attend
anywhere from 1 to 3 departmental or project meetings per day that are related
to the management of specific digital projects going on throughout the library.
At other times, I may be found testing and troubleshooting software for our
future upgrade to a new version of ContentDM, or I may be reviewing and editing
metadata for sets of digital objects. Currently, I am learning Drupal to manage
websites and import data from external systems using XML.
Overall, this is pretty much exactly
what I expected to be doing. One thing that surprised me is the amount of
planning and team effort that is required for large scale digitization
projects. Much of digitization is entirely dependent upon a robust hardware,
software, and support personnel infrastructure in order to be successful. Also,
in a large system, metadata choices can have long-term implications, so you
generally want to get it right the first time.
What do you enjoy most about your job?
Doreva: Primarily, I enjoy being able to work on multiple projects that have a diverse variety of subjects and materials. I love the fact that in this field I get to learn new things every day on and off the job. It’s very satisfying to be able to show a digital collection or a thematic exhibition website as the final product of many hours of effort and teamwork.
What are some of the most common misconceptions about your job or your area of librarianship?
Doreva: I often wonder if other people think of me as “one of those people in the basement (archives) who run the scanners”. Of course, I do work with scanning materials, but our work is much more than that: we are actively involved in cataloging digital materials, maintaining and configuring the software which supports our projects, and ensuring the long-term access to our digital materials by configuring a robust server hardware infrastructure that will support large-scale storage with future format migration over time. I believe that digital librarians and archivists are really members of an institution’s collection development team. As academic libraries in particular move away from collecting tons and tons of print materials, and instead focus more on specialized collections, people working in the realm of digitization are important partners in the efforts to develop, maintain, and promote such special collections.
I think that members of the general
public may wonder why librarians are needed when one can just Google anything
on the internet. Well, if your
website and your digital collections do not have specific metadata and specific
data structures, Google might not be able to find your digital objects. It’s
important to have knowledgeable people behind digitization projects who can
manage these types of details so that digital collections are actually
discoverable. You cannot use what you cannot see.
What was the most valuable thing that you did or learned while in library school?
Doreva: I think the most valuable thing that I did during my time at Drexel was to seek out a variety of internships related to digital libraries. In particular, I took an internship in which I had to work an inconvenient schedule that involved evenings and weekends. While the schedule could occasionally be frustrating, that experience gave me direct experience in computer programming and digital library infrastructure. It enabled me to complete relevant, real-life projects and then publish a paper about my work in an online professional journal, Code4Lib Journal. I would argue that there is no “perfect” internship, and that you get out of the internship what you put into it.
In terms of classes, the most
important things that I learned came from areas related to my concentration –
Digital Libraries. Every week I
utilize skills that I learned in various classes, including HTML editing, MARC
cataloging, Dublin Core metadata, and XML and XSLT transformations. In a
greater context, I also am called upon to have knowledge and appreciation of database
architecture, archival processing, archival materials preservation, copyright,
and professional ethics.
What inspired you to choose this career?
Dorevva: For many years I worked in information technology in technical support, network administration and project management. I enjoyed that work but I knew that I had a longstanding interest in digital preservation, especially film and media preservation. When exploring changing careers, I decided upon digital librarianship as the perfect combination of librarianship (materials access, public service), archives (materials preservation and access), and technology (hardware, software, and computer programming).
What do you wish you had learned more about?
Doreva: I wish that I could have taken more
Archives classes beyond Archives I and II, and I plan to go back and take more
classes online as continuing professional education. I would have loved to have
learned more about content representation, instructional design, teaching
methodologies, and XML.
Any tips for current students?
Doreva: I highly recommend that current students try to find at least one internship or volunteer experience in the area of librarianship that interests you. It’s not always possible to obtain a paid internship, but even unpaid or volunteer experiences can be highly valuable for building skills. During my time at the iSchool, I was a part-time student by choice, so I was able to get a total of 4 internships (2 paid and 2 unpaid) over 3 years. In your internship, whenever possible, document a list of the skills that you acquire or the projects that you have worked on, and add that to your future portfolio. If you internship is located at an academic or public library, take advantage of any opportunities for professional development that you can, which might include software training classes, lectures, and training webcasts.
Website: www.dorevabelfiore.com
I have found that an important
component of my work has been HTML, web design, and computer graphics.
Knowledge of a scripting language like perl, python, php, cgi, or javascript is
also highly useful.
I highly encourage any iSchool
student to take the Introduction to Web Design class, or some type of web
design class, if you do not have direct experience in creating and maintaining
websites. Before attending Drexel,
I took some local classes in Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator, and
this knowledge has proved to be directly relevant to my everyday work.
To supplement my knowledge of perl
programming, I have been studying javascript programming free online as part of
the CodeYear project sponsored by Codeacademy. For those in the Delaware Valley
area, I also highly recommend the free classes in python scripting offered for
women and their friends from Pystar Philly.
Any tips for current students?
Doreva: I highly recommend that current students try to find at least one internship or volunteer experience in the area of librarianship that interests you. It’s not always possible to obtain a paid internship, but even unpaid or volunteer experiences can be highly valuable for building skills. During my time at the iSchool, I was a part-time student by choice, so I was able to get a total of 4 internships (2 paid and 2 unpaid) over 3 years. In your internship, whenever possible, document a list of the skills that you acquire or the projects that you have worked on, and add that to your future portfolio. If you internship is located at an academic or public library, take advantage of any opportunities for professional development that you can, which might include software training classes, lectures, and training webcasts.
One of the things I do that I
recommend to any students is to identify job descriptions for positions that
interest you, even if you are not qualified for them. Keep those descriptions
in your own personal database (PDF, word, text files, whatever works for you).
Use those descriptions to identify the experience, skills, and traits that are
sought for that type of position and think about ways that you can get that
experience and develop those skills and traits.
Consider joining either a student
chapter or a local chapter of a professional library or information
organization. You never know what
valuable information you might find in a speaker’s presentation or what
connections you might make at a networking mixer. I enjoy hearing presentations
on a variety of topics related to library science even if they are not related
to my specialty, because I get to experience other aspects of librarianship
that broaden my perspective of the profession.
Connect with Doreva at:
Twitter: @dorevabelfioreWebsite: www.dorevabelfiore.com
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Joint membership in ALA
ALA just made it even easier for students to join- through a joint membership, students are able to join both ALA and their state ALA chapter for $35 from now through August 31st. Also, ALA has moved the joint membership forms so that students can now apply both online and by mail. With all the benefits that ALA can provide, joining your state ALA chapter at the same time gives students local opportunities to get involved as well.
To take advantage of the joint membership program, visit: http://www.ala.org/groups/joint-membership-program
To take advantage of the joint membership program, visit: http://www.ala.org/groups/joint-membership-program
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Getting Involved with ALA
In this series, SASCO liaisons and leaders will share how they became involved with ALA and its Divisions. Each of us became involved in our own way and maintain individual levels of participation. We hope that by sharing our stories it will help you find your own place in the organization.
Part 1: Conferences and Committees
By: Lindsay Sarin, Academic Librarian, Committee Nerd
I started my involvement with ALA as an executive board member of the University of Maryland ALA Student Chapter. The experience helped me learn a little about the inner-workings of ALA, but it wasn’t until I attended an ALA Annual Meeting that I really got involved. Lots of people contribute without going to conference, but for me it was essential. Here's how I used Annual to jumpstart my ALA participation.
Preplanning/Trying to Find Your Niche
ALA is overwhelming at first, especially at Annual. There are so many groups, sessions, and meetings; it can be tough to find your way. I started planning my visit by spending a lot of time on the ALA website looking at divisions and groups (with ALA Connect this is now a little easier since all the documents are in one place). I picked out the groups I thought were interesting and planned to attend their sessions.
New Member Sessions
My very first session was ACRL 101 (I went to the ACRL session because I've always been into academic libraries but NMRT's is great too). ALA 101 sessions are invaluable because they are friendly spaces for new members, presenters help clarify the ALA structure, and usually there is an opportunity to mingle.
Go to Meetings and Not Just the One's on Your Schedule
During Annual I went to some of the committee meetings and presentations on my schedule, but I ended up going to more that I heard about from those at the 101 session and from socials. Most importantly, at the meetings/sessions, I participated. As a newbee it can be a little scary to speak-up, but people pay attention if you do. If you want to be involved either on a committee or in the discussion you have to be willing speak (Steven Bell thinks so too). Don’t be afraid to speak-up, shake someone’s hand, or ask about being involved.
Socials/Networking
Socials are the bread and butter of conferences for a lot of reasons; one they're fun and casual ways to meet new people; two you never know who's going to be there; three they're good places to find out what's going on behind the scenes. They're also great opportunities to ask someone who's been there. During my very first session I struck up a conversation with an ACRL member who was willing sit down with me and quite literally outline the committee structures and suggested some groups to check out (I now co-lead one of them).
The Hard Part
If leaders in ALA don't know you want to be a part of the process, you'll never will be. You have to actually contact them. Send an email, post to a group on ALA Connect, find someone on Twitter, friend someone on Facebook. It doesn't take much. Just let the right person know that you're willing to contribute, and they'll probably take you up on it. For me it was just a matter of sending a few emails after the conference.
From ALA NMRT's SASCO Update #3. Check out the SASCO Update #4 and the SCALA blog later this month for Part 2.
Part 1: Conferences and Committees
By: Lindsay Sarin, Academic Librarian, Committee Nerd
I started my involvement with ALA as an executive board member of the University of Maryland ALA Student Chapter. The experience helped me learn a little about the inner-workings of ALA, but it wasn’t until I attended an ALA Annual Meeting that I really got involved. Lots of people contribute without going to conference, but for me it was essential. Here's how I used Annual to jumpstart my ALA participation.
Preplanning/Trying to Find Your Niche
ALA is overwhelming at first, especially at Annual. There are so many groups, sessions, and meetings; it can be tough to find your way. I started planning my visit by spending a lot of time on the ALA website looking at divisions and groups (with ALA Connect this is now a little easier since all the documents are in one place). I picked out the groups I thought were interesting and planned to attend their sessions.
New Member Sessions
My very first session was ACRL 101 (I went to the ACRL session because I've always been into academic libraries but NMRT's is great too). ALA 101 sessions are invaluable because they are friendly spaces for new members, presenters help clarify the ALA structure, and usually there is an opportunity to mingle.
Go to Meetings and Not Just the One's on Your Schedule
During Annual I went to some of the committee meetings and presentations on my schedule, but I ended up going to more that I heard about from those at the 101 session and from socials. Most importantly, at the meetings/sessions, I participated. As a newbee it can be a little scary to speak-up, but people pay attention if you do. If you want to be involved either on a committee or in the discussion you have to be willing speak (Steven Bell thinks so too). Don’t be afraid to speak-up, shake someone’s hand, or ask about being involved.
Socials/Networking
Socials are the bread and butter of conferences for a lot of reasons; one they're fun and casual ways to meet new people; two you never know who's going to be there; three they're good places to find out what's going on behind the scenes. They're also great opportunities to ask someone who's been there. During my very first session I struck up a conversation with an ACRL member who was willing sit down with me and quite literally outline the committee structures and suggested some groups to check out (I now co-lead one of them).
The Hard Part
If leaders in ALA don't know you want to be a part of the process, you'll never will be. You have to actually contact them. Send an email, post to a group on ALA Connect, find someone on Twitter, friend someone on Facebook. It doesn't take much. Just let the right person know that you're willing to contribute, and they'll probably take you up on it. For me it was just a matter of sending a few emails after the conference.
From ALA NMRT's SASCO Update #3. Check out the SASCO Update #4 and the SCALA blog later this month for Part 2.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
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