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.