Seeking a leadership position that would increase her involvement in the San José State University School of Information virtual learning community and connect her with fellow students, MLIS student Jennifer Gibson tossed her hat into the ring during the recent call for nominations for ASIS&T Student Chapter Executive Board members and was voted Chair for the 2012-2013 academic year. “The ASIS&T student chapter at SJSU is relatively new, and I would like to help lead the way to creating a robust, productive, and engaging student chapter,” she said.

Among her main duties chairing the SJSU Student Chapter of ASIS&T (American Society for Information Science & Technology), Gibson will lead the development of a year-long strategic plan, for which she feels fully prepared after taking INFO 204 (Information and Organizations Management). “Creating a strategic plan for an academic library in my INFO 204 course was the most meaningful assignment I’ve done at San Jose State University,” she said. “I’m planning on applying what I learned in my new role as ASIS&T Student Chapter Chair.”

Gibson, who received this year’s Terry Crowley Scholarship for students dedicated to reference and information services, believes that the experience of chairing the student chapter will help her future career goals in a number of ways. “Committee work and group work will be inescapable in my professional library career,” she said. “My experience as Chair will directly inform those future collaborations.”

Having already received a law degree from Pepperdine University School of Law, in Malibu, CA, Gibson plans to focus her electives on the MLIS program’s  Academic Librarianship career pathway, with the eventual goal of working as a reference librarian in an academic law library. “At law school, I was a Law Review editor and spent a lot of time in the library,” she said. “The librarians there were all former iSchool students and encouraged me to apply. I wanted to work while going through a second graduate program, so the fully online aspect of the MLIS program made it really easy.”

Gibson imagines putting her law degree to use in the field of library and information science: “I’d like to apply my JD in the area of copyright and licensing of digital content,” she said. “All the old models for purchasing and licensing are changing. It’s a turbulent time for policies, and I’m hoping to use my legal background to influence the conversation.”

Raised by adoptive parents in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Korean-born Gibson received the American Library Association (ALA) Spectrum Scholarship and the Association of Research Libraries Initiative to Recruit a Diverse Workforce (IRDW) Scholarship, the latter of which sponsored her attendance at the 2012 IRDW leadership conference at ALA’s Mid-Winter meeting. Gibson plans to complete her MLIS degree at the end of Fall 2013.