Published: May 5, 2019 by Havilah Steinman

Students at the San José State University School of Information have an excellent Advising Toolkit available to them when choosing electives to take during their program. A core part of this Advising Toolkit for students in the Master’s of Library and Information Science program are the 14 Career Pathways, ranging from Data Science to Special Librarianship. Another exciting tool within the Advising Toolkit has just been introduced called the MLIS Career Pathways Course Intersection. This tool allows students to find classes that intersect with two or more Career Pathways at once.

Accessing the MLIS Career Pathways Course Intersection

One way to access this new tool is to navigate to the Find Your Program page from the main hamburger menu on the iSchool website. To get there, follow these simple instructions:

• From the iSchool home pages, open the main hamburger menu and click directly on Programs. A grey menu entitled Programs Menu appears at the top of that page.
• Click on the drop down arrow and select the Advising tab. This opens the iSchool Advising: Overview page and the link for the iSchool Advising Toolkit appears under the “First Steps” heading.
• Click on the iSchool Advising: Toolkit page and peruse your options.
• Towards the bottom of the list, click on MLIS Career Pathways Course Intersection.

I Found It! Now What?

In order to fully utilize this important tool, it is important to familiarize yourself with the 14 Career Pathways that MLIS students have to choose from. While selecting a pathway is not required, it is a helpful tool when focusing your studies at the iSchool. Your choice to pursue a Masters in Library and Information Science is an exciting one, because the degree is incredibly versatile and can take you many different places professionally. If reviewing the Career Pathways did not spark your imagination, I recommend exploring the Your Career – MLIS page to see iSchool alumni in action.

Now that you have a good idea of what pathways interest you, you are ready to see what the tool can do for you!

Course Intersection In Action

It is my second year at the iSchool, and I have been loosely following the Academic Librarianship Career Pathway. I have gotten involved with the Society of American Archivists Student Chapter, and have decided to take some archiving classes. Rather than browsing the course schedule for the upcoming semester without any guidance, I can use the MLIS Career Pathways Course Intersection tool first to guide my search. 

I am a Mac user, so I select the Academic Librarianship option first, and then hold down the command button and also select the Archives and Preservation option. With these two highlighted, I click the view button on the top and nine classes populate to the right of the tool. I can easily navigate to the course description of each of these classes because each is linked. 

From there, I can choose which ones I hope to take and bring that list with me when I explore the course schedules for the upcoming semesters. This makes the planning process much more efficient!

The tool isn’t limited to only two pathways though! If you are hoping to focus your studies even more, you can select as many as you want. For example, I can select Academic Librarianship, Archives and Preservation, and also Special Librarianship. This search yields three classes to choose from!

This incredibly valuable tool is part of the Advising Toolkit which students can use to guide their academic experience in the program. I encourage you to also check out other parts of the toolkit, including the iSchool Curriculum Center curated by our Associate Director Dr. Linda Main. Once you’ve chosen your classes another excellent part of the toolkit is the Syllabi Search page, which lists Syllabi for current and previous semesters. I hope you enjoy exploring the MLIS Career Pathways Course Intersection tool!