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.

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.