Next semester I will be taking over for Ben as ALASC co-chair AND also assuming webmaster duties from Mana. I am crazy considering my new job, but since Angie has since “culminated” / graduated, and Ben has stepped up into Chair of ALASC, I figured it was time I helped out. I’m not sure how much of a time commitment this is going to be, but since I firmly believe it is important to be active in “the process,” in this instance school and professional organizations, here’s my chance to put my time and money where my mouth is.
Archive for the ‘slis – library school’ Category
ALASC and me
Monday, December 19th, 2005Nearly Back
Thursday, December 8th, 2005It’s been a long haul this semester and I am nearly done for this year but not quite yet.
I attended a very well organized, useful, and fun workshop titled Rethinking Library Collaboration and Partnerships in San Francisco held by InfoPeople. The workshop instructor, Joan Frye Williams, knows her stuff. The class reminded us of the strengths that the library has and really emphasized leading with our strengths when we are ready to approach folks with partnership ideas. Libraries tend to come across as beggars and not really partners. By sharing what we do have to offer puts us in a better position to negotiate collaborative partnerships. The rest of the class and the framework built on those concepts and really created an easy framework (built around a courtship metaphor) for how to find likely partners, get to know them, and start a partnership. What I really liked was that all of the exercises were not just exercises but actual processes that were part of the larger goal. This is where the modern librarian needs to be headed and I suggested that we get her to speak to a group of students and she was all over it. In all honesty, this is how all classes should be taught.
SJSU Permission Numbers No More
Sunday, November 13th, 2005As of this weekend, the School of Library and Information Science at SJSU has eliminated the requirement to obtain permission to register for classes. The process involved making up to six class requests a few weeks prior to registering for classes. The idea was to make it a fair and equitable process by which students could be guaranteed getting the classes they wanted. Apparently prior to this, SLIS students with early registration appointments would register and fill up all the most popular classes. Two weeks into classes before the drop window, students would drop the classes that they really didn’t want but signed up for as backups. SLIS is(was) the only graduate program at SJSU using the permission number program. It was a huge workload for the administrative staff and the software that controls the permission numbers didn’t recognize them after the first batch was sent out. So, rightly, the adminstrative staff, after working their butts off, abandoned the whole cumbersome process.