Published: August 30, 2016

Your education at the SJSU School of Information goes far beyond turning in course assignments. Students at the iSchool can participate in student groups, online conferences and attend live career webcasts. Recordings of these presentations are available for you to listen to at your convenience.

On-demand webcast topics include teacher librarianship, information governance, diversity, MOOCs, virtual careers in librarianship and information technology and many more. These webcasts are a great way to take a look at future career possibilities and the latest news and trends in a wide variety of information subjects. SJSU School of Information faculty members are featured in some of these lectures, as well as iSchool alumni and even current students.

Highlights from a Few of My Favorites
Webcasts featuring iSchool instructors include one entitled  “Surviving and Thriving at Professional Conferences” by Patty Wong, a chapter councilor for the ALA, who has attended quite a few conferences of her own. Going to professional conferences can be overwhelming, but with a bit of planning and a few strategies in place you can come out with a productive learning experience and a much bigger network of contacts within your chosen information field. I wrote an iStudent Blog post about the webcast shortly after it was presented and found it very helpful in planning for my next conference experience.

 

In November of 2015, instructor Beth Wrenn-Estes and iSchool alumna R. Lynn Baker put together a webcast entitled “Early Childhood Literacy and the Importance of Addressing the Whole Child Through Multi-Literacy.” I listened to this webcast and was thrilled by all the information that I could apply to my Info 269 Early Childhood Literacy Class, to my as a children’s librarian and as practical application to my own kids (my very own early literacy guinea pigs.)

During this webcast, both Wrenn-Estes and Baker outlined six specific forms of literacy and defined in detail and provided examples of each one. One of the six forms of literacy is social literacy—defined as the child’s ability to get along with and cooperate with others. “In order to become successful within school and throughout the world a child needs to learn to navigate socially,” said Baker, stressing the importance of social literacy to help a child develop as a whole person.

These six forms of literacy are what help a child become a successful and wholly developed adult, and it takes a village that includes the adults in the child’s life at home, at school and in the community library. “Caregivers, teachers and librarians are a team when it comes to helping children in the acquisition of information,” said Wrenn-Estes.

 

 

Other webcasts are given by experts in the information fields, like the presentation on April 21, 2016 entitled “Do We Need a Climate Change? Where Diversity Meets the Academic Library and Archives Environment.” Archivist and author Rebecca Hankins and author and doctoral student Miguel Juarez ask the question, “Where are all the librarians of color?” 

Juarez and Hankins asked the contributors to their book on diversity entitled Where Are All the Librarians of Color? The Experiences of People of Color in Academia to write essays on topics including stereotypes, the lack of managerial opportunities for people of color, expectations from institutions and community and issues surrounding the retention and promotion of academic librarians of color.

“In librarianship, there needs to be as much information on diversity as there is on subjects like information literacy,” said Hankins. She argued for the need to keep an ongoing dialogue that represents a wide variety of perspectives.

During their presentation, Hankins and Juarez examined how librarianship can “set the stage for diversity in the profession.” They asked contributors to address the questions—“What ingredients need to be in place to facilitate diversity in institutions?” and “How can current librarians of color be supported, promoted and retained?”

 

Future Webcasts
Webcasts for the 2016-2017 academic year promise to bring information experts and exciting trends to the iSchool. Be sure to mark your calendars for the next big online conference webcast on October 6 —the Library 2.016 conference entitled Libraries of the Future. As with the iSchool webcasts, Library 2.0 conferences are all available to listen to as recordings after the event.

Coming on October 12, 2016 is “The Good, The Bad and The Exciting: Public Librarianship Today,” featuring Rosanne Macek, an iSchool alumna and Director of Library Services for the City of Mountain View, California Public Library. Those students who are interested in careers in public librarianship should definitely check out this webcast to hear about the highlights and challenges of working in public libraries.

No matter your professional or personal interest in the world of information science, there is bound to be a webcast in the iSchool collection that will enhance your knowledge and experience and could even point you in the right direction for your next career.

For related stories, be sure to check out these posts, too:
Creativity, Collaboration and Compassion at Library 2.016: Library as Classroom

Thought-provoking Presentations on Privacy at Library 2.016

The iSchool’s Best Resources for Networking and Planning Your Career

image courtesy of Stuart Miles

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