The courses that brought me to the 24 hour credit mark were LIS 5053: Information Seeking and Use and LIS 5183: Information Resources and Services for Children (Fall 2022) and LIS 5193: Information Resources and Services for Young Adults and LIS 5970: Comics and Graphic Novels (Spring 2023).
Information Seeking and Use was one of the most challenging courses in the program. One major focus of the course dealt with writing and citations. Something that I was not familiar with when I started the MLIS program was the American Psychological Association (APA) Style of citations because nearly all of my previous experience was with the Modern Language Association (MLA) Style. At the time, some of the assignments and grading seemed a bit nit-picky but by the end of the semester, I had a much better handle on using APA. This would be a huge help for me in the rest of the program. When I think about how this course affected my progress towards my goals, I think that it helped me achieve a goal that I did not know that I had, which was correctly using APA in my academic writing, a skill that I have used in every course since. The other aspects of Information Seeking and Use touched on various aspects of all four of my goals. Understanding how information is discovered and used plays into everything from reader’s advisory to collection development to library values to research to intellectual freedom.
Both Information Resources and Services for Children and Information Resources and Services for Young Adults helped me to better understand the development of children and teenagers. The Noble Public Library sits across the street from a 4th and 5th grade elementary school and a few blocks away from the middle school. Because of its location, the branch has had a large amount of traffic from children between the ages of 9 and 14. The insights I learned from these courses were invaluable. Also, both courses exposed me to children’s and YA books that I probably would have never read. These courses helped me with Goal 3: Increase reference and user services skills by exposing me to a variety of titles for children and teens and Goal 4: To gain the knowledge and skills to be a successful librarian and public servant by giving me a better understanding of where children are in their developmental process and into how minds at those ages work.
Comics and Graphic Novels was just plain fun. I love comics books. Heck, I host a book club at a local comic shop. This is my bread and butter. One of the texts used for this course was Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. The graphic novel digs into the history of the medium, arguing that sequential art can be traced back to hieroglyphics and cave paintings (McCloud, 1993, p. 10-15). Admittedly, I think this argument is dubious at best and, whether intentional or not, an attempt to bring more legitimacy and gravitas to a medium that has been derided for most of its existence, but I digress. My own nit picking aside, this course has helped with Goal 3: Increase reference and user services skills and Goal 4: To gain the knowledge and skills to be a successful librarian and public servant. I am responsible for the teen and adult graphic novel collections at the Noble Public Library and have used what I learned in this course when doing reader’s advisory, collection maintenance, and when training co-workers on comics and graphic novels.
McCloud, S. (1993). Understanding comics. HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.