Library News, Reviews, and Views
By Stephanie L. Maatta “It’s tough out there!” echoed from Boston to Seattle and Minneapolis to Miami. For 2010 graduates, the past year presented challenges in finding professional jobs with adequate living wages; however, it also offered unexpected opportunities and sounded positive notes despite a battered economy. A total 1,789 LIS graduates responded to LJ’s [...]
A tough job market demands creativity and commitment The job picture painted in the latest LJ Placements & Salaries Survey of library and information school grads reflects the realities of an unyielding economy. “It’s tough out there!” grads across the country told Stephanie Maatta, who has written the survey since 2003. Her report mirrors what [...]
Having a strong mentor during your first few years as a librarian can provide a safety net of advice, encouragement, and caution for a newly minted professional. Such a relationship would be even better if it began during LIS education. This would also serve to diminish the perceived divide between practice and library schools. In [...]
THE BRIGHT, NEW YOUNG LIBRARIANS graduating from our LIS programs are the best news in this awful period of library decline. Every semester my classes at Pratt Institute in New York and Dominican University in the Chicago suburb of River Forest bring a new cohort of students, each as good as or better than the [...]
However engaging, thought-provoking, and even polarizing the speakers were at the Future of Academic Libraries Symposium presented by McMaster University and Library Journal, they couldn’t match what five McMaster University students had to say. “Hearing from Our Users: What Students Expect,” moderated by Mike Ridley, CIO and chief librarian at the University of Guelph, offered [...]
LIS faculty, administrators, and other stakeholders could take a lesson in transparency from their students. At the “Hack Library School” blog (bit.ly/eAeELW), students in various LIS programs around the country offer up opinions, insights, and some useful truths about their LIS education. Recent posts have compared information architecture courses across schools and addressed the divide [...]
“I like books.” This is one answer to the introductory question I ask when meeting a class for the first time: “What brings you to librarianship?” The answers vary just as LIS students do, whether they’re recent college graduates or those returning to school for a second career in libraries. The “books” answer begs the [...]
If you are on the fence about emerging technologies, take a look at the new Horizon Report (www.nmc.org/horizon; see also LJ‘s summary). The 2011 report not only presents technologies to watch but offers a road map for planning and an ongoing dialog about change in education, learning, and libraries. Supported by research and evidence, it [...]
Daniel Chudnov, librarian and programmer in the Office of Strategic Initiatives at the Library of Congress, recently blogged “Advice to a Library School Student” at One Big Library. Dan writes: The best advice anybody ever gave me when I was finishing library school and looking for a job was “look at all your options and [...]
INFOdocket by Gary Price
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