Here we are, the home stretch! To be honest, I wasn’t sure that I was going to make it this far. The last couple of years...no, scratch that... going all the way back to 2020 and the Covid-19 pandemic I, like many, have been struggling personally, emotionally, and at times professionally. That said, the last couple of years have been especially rough. I won’t bore you with the sordid details but believe me when I tell you, I’m glad to have made it this far.
The courses that made up my final 12 hours in the MLIS program were LIS 5503: Information Literacy & Instruction and LIS 5713: Research & Evaluation Methods (Spring 2024) and LIS 5213: Social Informatics and LIS 5493: Data Stewardship (Spring 2025).
Information Literacy & Instruction was fascinating in how it framed the work we do in libraries as teaching and discussed the various types of literacy (everything from information literacy to media literacy to metaliteracy to regular old literacy literacy). The literacy portion of the class fed into Goal 2: Develop deeper understanding of information resources and information organization because it provided a new perspective on the idea of information and understanding information. The teaching angle supported Goal 4: To gain the knowledge and skills to be a successful librarian and public servant. Part of the final assignment had us develop a teaching philosophy statement. I will go into more detail on this as it is my artifact for this course but suffice it to say that I get a bit nit-picky and argue that I do not see myself as a teacher.
The final core course, Research & Evaluation Methods, was not what I was expecting. Going in, I thought this was a course about how to write better and more affective research papers (which is why I found it odd that we were recommended to take it at the end of the program). Boy was I wrong. In the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions (Hughes, 1985), this class was all about being a research librarian, which tied perfectly into Objective 1 of Goal 3: Increase reference and user services skills – Develop new research and evaluation skills and techniques. What was fun about the course was incorporating my nerdy music hobby/obsession into class projects, as I did when I compared the rankings/ratings of U2’s music across three different platforms. I was also able to use an issue with one of the collections at the Noble Public Library as the subject of my final project. Ultimately, my biggest takeaway from this course was that I do not want to be a research librarian. I’m glad to have learned about it and that knowledge will help me to be a more well-rounded librarian, but I would much rather work at a customer service/reference desk.
Reflecting on the final two courses is more difficult considering that even though we are near the end of the term, we're not done yet.
Social Informatics deals with the relationship between society and technology. If that doesn’t sound like a concise definition that’s because it’s not. According to Dr. Liu’s (2025) syllabus, social informatics “focus is on the critical analysis of cognitive, social, cultural, philosophical, ethical, legal, public policy and economic issues relating to information and computing technologies, and how these interactions shape workplace decisions and our everyday life.” This is a huge subject that touches almost all parts of modern life. Because of its breadth, the course touches on all four of my goals, but especially Goal 4: To gain the knowledge and skills to be a successful librarian and public servant. I see the impact that technology has on people and society every day at my job, whether it is when I am assisting someone print a document from their phone, send a fax, or fill out an online form.
A lot like Research & Evaluation Methods, Data Stewardship is not at all what I expected. Admittedly, I didn’t know what to expect even after reading the syllabus. This course deals with data, obviously, but also gets deep into the weeds of using services like GitHub and programs like R and RStudio, all of which require computer coding skills. I do not have computer coding skills. I found the content in this course more advanced than I anticipated, but thankfully, Dr. Lamba is eager and ready to help. The similarities to Research & Evaluation Methods continue with Data Stewardship tying directly into Objective 1 of Goal 3: Increase reference and user services skills – Develop new research and evaluation skills and techniques. The course also reinforced my opinion that being a research librarian is not for me. That said, I found the content to be interesting and it is obviously an important subject.
Hughes, J. (Director). (1985). The breakfast club [Film]. Universal Pictures.
Lamba, M. (2025). LIS 5495: Data stewardship [Syllabus]. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma.
Liu, J. (2025). LIS 5213: Social informatics [Syllabus]. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma.