Welcome to the November 2010 Issue of SLIS Descriptor

Welcome to an all-new issue of SLIS Descriptor!

We are excited to bring you our last issue of the year. This month's SLIS Descriptor is loaded with even more articles to enlighten and inspire.

In this issue:

• Interested in connecting with the SLIS community? Irene Korber presents new SLIS Facebook features in Interacting with Your Learning Community.

• Self-employed Information Architect,Theresa Putkey, shows us how to network smarter - not harder - in Networking Effectively Using LinkedIn.

• Do you want to work as an academic librarian, but don't know where to start? Brian McManus shows us the way in Take Control of Your Future!

• Librarian and faculty, John D. Berry, reflects on collection development for a prestigious academic library in Just in Case or Just in Time?

• Rachel Fox puts her SLIS coursework into practice in A Summer Project: Helping Plan an Academic Library and Archive.

• Giovanna Forsyth takes on a massive and exciting internship project in How Do You Build a Library?

• Wondering about special projects? Claire Escobosa shares her experiences in Library Information Careers Emerging Titles and Trends.

• Alison Leonard tours the exciting world of film librarianship in Tour of the Margaret Herrick Library in Beverly Hills.

We hope the new year brings new and exciting courses, projects and careers for all of you. We look forward to sharing them in our upcoming January issue!

Sincerely,
Joni Savage
2010-2011 Editor
SJSU ALASC SLIS Descriptor

Interact with Your Learning Community on Facebook

by Irene Korber

Are you looking for new ways to connect with other SLIS students, as well as SLIS faculty and alumni? 

It can be challenging to stay in touch in an online learning community, and social networking sites offer new opportunities to interact and keep up with important announcements.  With this in mind, SLIS launched a Facebook page last spring, and students may want to check it out at http://www.facebook.com/sjsuslis.

The School’s Facebook page offers a number of benefits to students.  Each week the School posts news about upcoming events, recent awards, scholarship application deadlines, and student and alumni accomplishments.  You can also view and post photos on the site.

Networking Effectively Using LinkedIn

by Theresa Putkey

As a self-employed Information Architect working on my MLIS, it’s important for me to learn and make connections by meeting people in my (or related) industries. After years of struggling with making the right connections - including a lot of time spent at networking events in vain - I finally hit upon an incredibly useful technique.

LinkedIn is a great resource to reconnect to people I meet and ask for introductions. This idea took me about six years to figure out. Since I’ve always struggled with how to market my services – “information architecture” and “information architect” aren’t phrases that everyone understands and when they do, they usually don’t find it relevant – I thought I might save you some pain and misery and share the idea.

My overall goal with using LinkedIn was to find people to do informational interviews with. Before LinkedIn implemented its Companies feature, I used to look through the profiles of my connections to see who they knew. But this was quite random and  took a long time, and resulted in a list of “blah”. I was never excited about it as I didn’t feel that my list was truly targeted.

Take Control of Your Future!

by Brian McManus

  

Professional development does not start when you get your first librarianship after being newly minted from library school.  It begins when you start your MLIS and begin to understand all the professional opportunities that are available.  Not only librarians and other information professionals conduct research, write articles, and are committee members that contribute to the greater library world.  MLIS students have all these same opportunities. 

What follows is the information I accumulated for a poster presentation project in LIBR 230, Issues in Academic Libraries.  I have added some more content for a more generalized librarianship instead of the academic specialization.  Hopefully you will find the information helpful and have some new avenues of professional development to consider.

Just in Case or Just in Time?

by John D. Berry

I’ve been musing over collection development this year.  Our collection development has been frozen in time since the Third World Strike in 1968/69.  It’s never gone up, but it hasn’t gone away.

 In the interim the Native Librarians, responsible for the Native American Studies Collection at U.C. Berkeley, have valiantly built our collection.  This is just our collection in the Ethnic Studies Library, not the Bancroft or the Main Library, as we are an “Affiliate Library.”  All that generally means is, we don’t get their money, but they can’t tell us what is important either.  In the 40+ years since, we have developed a world class collection.

A Summer Project: Helping Plan an Academic Library and Archive

by Rachel Fox


When I began this program at San Jose State University, I was already employed as the Circulation Manager at a small academic library.  There have been many times during my academic career at San Jose State University where my classes and my professional work have connected, but this past year, a particular project stood out when I was involved in a building project for our library.  

When the rest of the country had been battling a bad economy, our school was blessed with donations to renovate and expand a portion of the library in honor of the twenty-fifth anniversary of our school’s president.  My classes Preservation Management and Information Organizations and Management helped prepare me for this new venture.  Three skills I learned in the process were to have good communication, flexibility, and planning.

How Do You Build a Library?

by Giovanna Forsyth

As current or aspiring librarians and archivists, we've all been to a really spectacular library. You know the one I'm talking about: with stairs leading to columns leading to a rotunda leading to a big oak desk, where you pass along all your vital information so that someone will go into a deep, dark cold vault and bring you something terribly old and awesome.  The first time I experienced this, I was in complete awe.  It was all so perfect, and I knew I wanted to be a part of it.  It never really occurred to me to think about how it all started, nor had  I even considered how a library goes about running so seamlessly.

Library Information Careers Emerging Titles and Trends

by Claire Escobosa

This summer I had a great experience completing a special project for Library 298. I updated the report on Library and Information Careers: Emerging Titles and Trends that Emma Keefe completed in 2009. You can find my report here: http://slisweb.sjsu.edu/resources/career_development/emergingtrends_2010.pdf. I would like to share my experience in case other students are curious about special projects and what they entail. 

Tour of the Margaret Herrick Library in Beverly Hills

by Alison Leonard

In June,the SJSU Society of American Archivists Student Chapter organized a tour for students at the Margaret Herrick Library in Beverly Hills. The Library is part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, otherwise known as the Oscars.

Altogether the Academy is housed in three buildings in Los Angeles. The first is the Douglas Fairbanks Center, where the Library is located. Fairbanks,a leading cinematic actor in the 1920s, was  a founding member of the Academy (founded in 1927) and served as its first president. The Library was established a year later in 1928. The second building is the Pickford Center in Hollywood, where the Academy’s film archive is housed. The Pickford Centeris named for Fairbanks one-time-spouse,Mary Pickford. Pickford was also a leading actor in early cinema and a crusader of film preservation. .  Finally, the Academy Headquarters, in Beverly Hills, is where the executive offices are, as well as the Samuel Goldwyn Theater.

Welcome to the September 2010 issue of SLIS Descriptor!

We are excited to bring you the SLIS Descriptor in a new, more interactive format.

In this issue:

Grace Chilingirian and Allison Coltin invite you to participate in a mentorship program for students interested in law librarianship.

Kimberly A. Price discusses the versatility of library and information science skills outside of the "traditional" library setting in Seeing Through Librarian-Tinted Lenses: The Relevancy of MLIS Coursework.

Margaret Puentes reviews a cutting-edge academic library in A Tour of the William H. Hannon Library.

Yolanda Ramirez examines resources for addressing intellectual freedom and privacy in Pornography: Solving an Ethical Dilemma with CALIX.

Interested in Law Librarianship?

By Grace Chilingirian and Allison Coltin
 

This fall, the San Diego Area Law Libraries Association will be launching “SANDALL Buddies," a new mentoring program that pairs up professional law librarians with library students, new librarians and other types of librarians who are interested in the field of law librarianship.

The pairs can choose to perform a variety of activities together, such as attending events, working on projects such as newsletter articles and planning a SANDALL event to help mentees get more familiar with the organization. The Buddies Program is designed to be flexible to allow pairs to set their own goals and expectations and establish their own meeting schedules and contact preferences. There will also be occasional social events where the pairs can meet other participants and share ideas.

Seeing Through Librarian-Tinted Lenses: The Relevancy of MLIS Coursework

by Kimberly A. Price

I work in a law firm without a library (eek!). I’ve sometimes lamented the fact that I do not have a job  in a traditional library setting, or even a library associated with my work; but having a job pays the bills, and given the current state of the economy, I do truly feel blessed to have a job at all. While I still long for the day I can refer to myself as a “librarian”, I have recently realized that, even in my current job, I am already using many of the skills I’ve learned thus far in my MLIS coursework.

If I put on my “librarian lenses”, I can see that much of the work I do is relevant to my future career choice. I find this encouraging, and I hope you will too, as it is validation that the things we are learning are practical and important, in more ways than I originally anticipated. This realization has broadened my own view of what it means to be a librarian or information professional, and it has helped me recognize experiences outside of my MLIS courses that will be directly applicable to my culminating eportfolio and future job.

Looking at the glass half full, I’d like to share some of my experiences, with the hope of inspiring you to put on your own “librarian lenses” and recognize the value of the lessons and skills you have learned in this program, regardless of whether you are working in a library or not.

A Tour of the William H. Hannon Library

by Margaret Puentes

On Thursday, August 26, a small group of San Jose students visited the William H. Hannan Library at Loyola Marymount University.  The tour (hosted by ALASC) was conducted by Glenn Johnson-Grau, Head of Collection Development. The library is named after William H. Hannan, whose foundations donated $20 million for the construction of the library.  Hannan became a student at Loyola University (now Loyola Marymount University) in 1933.  Since his family could not afford the tuition, his mother sent a letter to president of the University requesting that her son be admitted to the school if he promised to pay back the school after he found a job.  The president admitted Hannan on a full scholarship ($200).  Since then, his foundations have contributed approximately $83 million in donations to the University.

The library was in development for 2 years and opened in July 2009.  It replaced the old library building, which is currently being renovated into a student union.  As you enter the new library, there are touch-screen panels on the wall with information for visitors.  Near the entrance is Jazzman’s Café and media lounge, which was added due to numerous requests by students and staff.  On the first floor is the Information Commons, which contains the print reference collection and 85 computers which have double platforms, meaning that they may be booted up with either a Windows or Mac OS, depending on the user’s preference.  Students may also plug their laptop into the network or use the building’s wireless capabilities.

Pornography: Solving an Ethical Dilemma with CALIX

by Yolanda Ramirez

One evening in 2010, in a small family-oriented library where I work as a part-time Reference Librarian, I found myself faced with a dilemma. A parent came to me for assistance. She quietly stepped up to the reference desk, and so as not to be overheard, whispered that a man seated next to her 9-year-old child was using one of the public access computers to browse what looked like child pornography. I was facing one of my biggest fears: confronting someone for accessing pornography,  possibly violating his Library Bill of Rights and contradicting intellectual freedom - or was I? I was the only librarian on duty. I had to think, assess the situation, confirm the information and act quickly, discreetly, and ethically to solve this dilemma. What should I do?  What would you do? What library principles should librarians and library professionals obey in a similar situation?

I am certain that I am not the first - and sadly not the last - librarian to encounter a similar situation. First of all, without corroborating the alleged claim, I must admit that my reaction was not only judgmental; it was also unprofessional. Thus, I am writing about my predicament because, I know that as a SLIS graduate student at San José State University, I must remember to apply the concepts in Competency A “Articulate the ethics, values and foundational principles of library and information professionals and their role in the promotion of intellectual freedom.” (Statement, 2010) and this dilemma is a prime example.