UT ALA/TLA Student Chapter

Joint ALA/TLA Membership: Now Available Online!

Franny Gaede — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 02:55:27 +0000

If you are interested in joining the American Library Association and Texas Library Association, you can now join both for a very reasonable $35. Click here to see the new online form.

Membership in ALA/TLA is not required to participate in student chapter activities, but you might consider joining your professional associations to take advantage of the resources and perks they offer, including discounted admission to conferences and mentorship programs. Click here to read more about membership benefits (download PDF).

Upcoming ALA/TLA Events: April 2012

Franny Gaede — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 03:29:07 +0000

Volunteering at McBee Elementary School
Date: Friday, April 13, 2012
Time: 3:30 P.M.
Location: McBee Elementary School (Google Map)

Help McBee Elementary School Library and librarian extraordinaire Heather Stephens, hang out with your fellow iSchoolers, then head to happy hour! Please sign up here so we can get a headcount for Heather.

Happy Hour with ALA
Date: Friday, April 13, 2012
Time: 5:30 P.M.
Location: Chuy’s Restaurant (North Lamar location, Google Map)

Even if you can’t make it to McBee, come enjoy Chuy’s excellent Friday happy hour.

Spring Bake Sale
Date: Monday, April 16, 2012 and Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Time: 11 A.M. – 1 P.M.
Location: Tocker Student Lounge (1.508)

Break out the cookie sheets and cake pans, it’s time for the bake sale! Please sign up here to pledge your pastries or donate your time.

Genre Reading Book Club: Romance
Date: Sunday, April 29, 2012
Time: 6 P.M.
Location: Mozart’s (Google Map)

This month’s selection is Julia Quinn’s The Duke and I! The first 60 pages are available to read for free here. As always, everyone is welcome and encouraged to attend (and don’t feel like you can’t come if you haven’t read the book), and ALA/TLA will provide some delicious nibbles to get our discussion started off on the right foot!

ALA/TLA Events for the Week of February 20 – 26

Franny Gaede — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 17:59:39 +0000

Midwinter Conference Recap
Date: Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Time: 5 P.M.
Location: 5.552 (the large conference room)

Come hear about ALA Midwinter from student attendees! Pizza and soda will be provided.

Genre Reading Book Club
Date: Sunday, February 26, 2012
Time: 6 P.M.
Location: Spider House (Google Map here.)

Suffering from Downton Abbey withdrawal? Come to the first meeting of our genre book club to discuss the work of P.G. Wodehouse and his hilarious depictions of the British aristocracy between WWI and WWII. We will be discussing Thank You Jeeves, but feel free to read any Wodehouse that suits you! (His short stories are available at Project Gutenberg.) The first round of appetizers is on us! If you have any questions, e-mail sarah.e.brandt[AT]gmail[DOT]com.

Volunteering with the Inside Books Project
Date: Sunday, February 26, 2012
Time: 8 P.M. – 11 P.M.
Location: Space 12 (Google Map here.)

Come help the Inside Books Project provide reading materials to those incarcerated in Texas prisons. Feel free to bring snacks and beverages and, if you can, books to donate! There is a special need for paperback dictionaries, African American materials, and Native American materials.

Please sign up here and let us know if you need a ride! If you would just like to donate books, please e-mail sarah.e.brandt[AT]gmail[DOT]com or add your name to the volunteering spreadsheet.

Weekly Wrap-Up: February 6 – February 19

Franny Gaede — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 03:30:06 +0000

If you have any links you’d like to submit, please send them along to ALATLAstudent[at]gmail[dot]com.

Digital Divide: If You’re Reading This, You’re One of the Lucky Ones: An interesting infographic created by Online IT Degree, featured on Mashable, about the digital divide and the National Broadband Plan. (American Libraries published this article about librarians and the National Broadband Plan a few years ago).

“You’re Not Really a Librarian”: What defines a school librarian? K-M the Librarian explores student perception.

A Catalog of Bookstore Cats: AbeBooks ponders collective nouns and profiles some adorable bookshop kitties. (See also: Dewey Readmore Books, the Library Cat)

Random House’s Historic E-Book Announcement: After meeting with ALA leadership, Random House breaks with the Big Five and we (finally!) hear some good news on the e-book front.

Excerpt from The Information Diet, by Clay Johnson: Boing Boing features a snippet from this interesting book about information consumption today.

Professional Development Q&A with the Lead Pipe Librarians: The wonderful folks over at In the Library with the Lead Pipe fielded questions from library school students at UNC Chapel Hill about committee work, conference attendance, and the pros and cons of participating in social media, among other things!

50 Great Google+ Tips for School Librarians: It’s a little meta to feature a link round-up in a link round-up, but for those of you interesting in building your social media presence, and, more specifically, how to use Google+, this post gathers some excellent resources for everyone, not just school librarians.

The Art of Google Books: This Tumblr captures the quirks of the Google Books project, featuring digitizations that didn’t quite go as planned.

E-Book Library Lending Rises, Publishing Industry Grapples With Change: iSchool student Barbara Galletly wrote this excellent article for Digital Book World about the current state of e-book lending and what’s on the horizon.

Libraries Receiving a Shrinking Piece of the University Pie: Have libraries lost their status as the “intellectual hubs” of their universities?

This is What a Librarian Looks Like: Bobbi Newman and Erin Downey Howerton put together this Tumblr to challenge librarian stereotypes, an extension of the Library Day in the Life project featured last week.

A Weekly Wrap-Up: January 30 – February 5

Franny Gaede — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 03:08:19 +0000

This is a new feature to keep track of what’s new and exciting in the blogosphere! If you have any links you’d like to submit, please send them along to ALATLAstudent[at]gmail[dot]com.

Round 8 of The Day in the Life Project: Bobbi Newman coordinates this massive (332 people and counting!) project: every participant captures a day in their life and reports back on Flickr, Twitter, and/or their blogs. This page has the master list to follow along.

Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries: The Association of Research Libraries released this accessible guide by and for research librarians. An interesting read for anyone interested in fair use and copyright issues.

The Future of the Book is in the Stream: The Atlantic compares the digital book to Spotify and Netflix. Sounds a bit like a library, no?

The Introvert’s Guide to Networking: Author of The Introvert’s Guide to Success in Business embraces her introversion. A great conversation follows in the comments.

Best of Fall Semester 2011: HackLibSchool gathers their greatest hits from fall 2011. Read about Occupy Wall Street, Work/Life Balance, and the Library School Starter Kit. A great resource for new and continuing students!

The First Rule of ALA Executive Board is You Don’t Talk About ALA Executive Board: Curious about the inner workings of ALA? Bobbi Newman of Librarian by Day explains how the Executi ve Board works and why members should vote in ALA elections. (This year’s voting begins March 19, 2012 at 9am CST)

Digital Content Curation is Career for Librarians: John Farrier for Library Journal explores the connection between librarianship and content curation.

The Occupy Wall Street Librarians: Miss ALA Midwinter? Check out this video with Occupy Wall Street Librarians Danial Norton, Mandy Henk, Betsy Fagin, Jaime Taylor, and iSchool alum Zachary Loeb. Click here for a full-text transcript of their presentation at the ALA Midwinter Meeting Masters Series.

Folklorist’s Global Jukebox Goes Digital: How 17,000 tracks from the collection of ethnomusicologist and folklorist Alan Lomax were made available.

A Crowdfunded Approach to Setting E-books Free: Startup Unglue.it tries to make beloved titles available to libraries under Creative Commons licenses via crowfunding.

The self-epublishing bubble: Ewan Morrison for The Guardian explores the self-epublishing phenomenon.

Announcing the new ALA/TLA Co-Directors

ALA/TLA — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 00:09:09 +0000

Thanks to everyone that ran and voted in this round of the ALA/TLA Co-Director elections. You new co-directors are:
Kathryn Benson
Sarah Brandt
Alexa Doval
Franny Gaede

If you have any programming ideas or want to be involved in any way, contact any of the co-directors. We’re looking forward to a great spring semester.

Want to attend the ALA Conference?

michellek — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 23:09:35 +0000

Want to attend the ALA Conference? Apply for the ALA Student to Staff Program by Dec. 3rd.
Apply to participate in the ALA Student-to-Staff Program during the 2012 ALA
Annual Conference in Anaheim, CA in June 2012!

Our ALA Student Chapter can nominate one (1) student member for the
Student-to-Staff program each year. Student-to-Staffers work 4 hours per day
with an ALA staffer at the ALA Annual Conference in June from Friday through
Monday (16 hours total), in exchange for:

• Free conference registration
• Free housing (with roommate)
• A per diem for meal expenses

The student selected from the UT chapter is expected to be an active member of
the Student Chapter in the following year (2012-2013). An “active” member
might serve as an ALA/TLA Co-director, act as the Webmaster, or participate in
some other way.

To apply:

1. Write one page describing:
• Why you want to attend the ALA conference
• What you could share from the conference with students at the UT
School of Information
• What you would bring to the UT ALA student chapter as an active
member OR leader?
2. Include your name, ALA member number, & expected date of graduation.
**Your member # MUST be active by 1/2/2012 in order to be considered.
3. Submit your application to ALATLAstudent[at]gmail.com no later than December
3rd, 2011.

Fine Print:

To qualify for the ALA student-to-staff program, each student must be a current
ALA member and a student chapter member, have an expected graduation date of
May 2013 or later, and cannot have previously participated in the program. In
addition, all students selected must be ALA members and current students during
the 2012 ALA Annual Conference. Only one student will be accepted per chapter.

Students are expected to work 16 hours for four days (Friday, Saturday, Sunday,
Monday). Transportation costs (taxis, flights, etc., are the student’s
responsibility.

For more details, please visit:

http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/affiliates/chapters/student/resources/studenttostaffprogram.cfm

Questions? Contact: ALATLAstudent[at]gmail.com OR Don
Wood at ALA (for big questions), dwood[at]ala.org

Interested in becoming an ALA/TLA Co-Director?

michellek — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 03:28:03 +0000

ALA/TLA is currently looking for new co-directors! All iSchool students interested in assuming a leadership role in the group are invited to apply to be a co-director for Spring ’12 through Spring ’13. Students graduating in December 2012 are still eligible to serve.

ALA/TLA co-directors are responsible for coordinating various programs, such as webinars, career panels, and tours. Co-directors additionally raise funds (ie bakesales) and maintain the group’s internet presence. We welcome applicants with innovative suggestions for new ALA/TLA programing!

Interested students should apply by sending a brief statement explaining why they’re interested in the position, as well as relevant experience and thoughts on the role of the ALA/TLA student group. ALA/TLA will share your statement on our blog so that the iSchool student body can vote for our incoming co-directors.

Along with your statement, please submit your expected date of graduation and either your ALA or TLA membership number to ALATLAstudent[at]gmail.com before Friday, November 11th at midnight.

We look forward to hearing from you! Please email ALATLAstudent[at]gmail.com with any questions or concerns.

ALA/TLA Volunteering

michellek — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 21:59:58 +0000

We had a great time volunteering at McBee Elementary this semester and earned some hours for the iGive Campaign.

We helped out by:

processing new books

weeding the science section

and withdrawing old books.

Thanks everyone!

Students Get Great Tips at the Librarian Panel

ALA/TLA — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 01:44:16 +0000

We had a well attended session at the ALA/TLA Librarian Panel Tuesday evening. We learned what interviewing is like and what employers are looking for from people who have been there.
Our speakers had a diverse range of experience and gave great insight to the whole job search process.

Thanks for coming and thanks to our great speakers!
If you want ALA/TLA to make anything happen, don’t forget to e-mail us at alatlastudent[at]gmail[dot]com