Fall Meeting Times

The SLA-SC usually meets once a month, the second week of each month. I have created a survey of possible meeting times. If you are interested in attending the meetings this fall, please fill out the survey so that I know when the best times are for people.

SLA-SC Co-Sponsoring September Career Events

The SLA-SC will be co-sponsoring two career events put on by SLIS this fall:

• Advice from Early-Career LIS Professionals (Panel and Discussion) on Tuesday, September 15 from 4:45 to 6:15 in the SLIS Commons. A panel of recent graduates will talk about their experiences working in academic libraries, archives, digital collections, public libraries, school libraries, special libraries and youth services. Discussion groups follow the panel. Pizza will be served.

• Writing Resumes and Cover Letters for LIS Professions on Thursday, September 24 from 11:45 to 1:00 in the SLIS Commons. Speakers include John Pollitz, Director of Libraries at UW-Eau Claire; Brad Hughes, Director of UW-Madison's Writing Center; and a recent graduate TBA. Sample resumes and cover letters from recent SLIS graduates (who found jobs!) will be provided.

I went to both of these events last year. The Advice from Early Career-Professionals gives great advice on how to prepare for and conduct your job search. The Writing Resumes and Cover Letters gives out very good writing tips from people involved in hiring and those who were successful in their job searches. I recommend bringing along a resume and cover letter of your own so that you can take notes. After the resume workshop I completely rewrote mine!

The SLA-SC plans on sponsoring other SLIS events this year and will advertise them here as they arise. The SLIS events calendar can be found here.

-LuMarie Guth, Chair

Orientation Update

It looks like Doug Mullin may also be coming to the orienation. Doug is a SLIS Alumnis who has participated in SLA-SC events in the past. He work for Fiskars now. His Linkedin can be seen here.

I will also be participating at the orientation earlier in the day helping students to check in and talking about the special libraries track.

About Kyle Naff

Just thought you might want a bit of his background when thinking about possible topics. For his undergrad he majored in Spanish and minored in business. He went to University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign for his MLIS. You can see his alumni page here. He is currently a business librarian at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. His Linkedin page is here and his website is here.

Orientation News and Student Outreach Night

I contacted Doug Mullin who came to some of the SLA-SC events last year and asked him if there were any handouts I could use at the orientation. He got me in contact with the woman who handles membership at headquarters (HQ!) and she sent me the two .pdf's that are in the previous post. The first is a membership brochure and the second is the SLA application form. There is no charge to be in the student chapter, but there is a formal application if you want to be a member of the SLA.

Doug also got me connected with Kyle Naff, who is the co-chair elect for the Wisconsin Chapter. He believes he will be able to come to the orientation, and is also interested in doing a student outreach night in October or November. Andrea Poehling is getting in touch with him to work out those details, and if the event happens then the SLA-SC will probably sponsor it. Please send in any suggestions for topics you would like to discuse with Mr. Naff. Ideas so far have included public speaking and how to best utilize that first job once you've gotten your MLIS.

Membership Application and Handout

SLA Member Handout
SLA Member App.

Should We Twitter?

After making the last blog post I was thinking about the different ways that you can choose to follow the blog. Many of you may have Bloglines, Google Reader, or something along those lines. Should the Madison SLA-SC have a profile on Twitter and tweet whenever we update the blog?

Also, I made the blog searchable in order to make it more accessible. Because of this I changed the settings for the comments so that they are moderated (in order to limit spam). Let me know if anyone thinks the settings should be changed back.