Member Spotlight: Perris King

Name: Perris King

Degree: MIS

Anticipated graduation date: May 2013

I'm from Fresno California. I'm currently doing an internship at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, working at the Support Center, and job hunting. I enjoy cooking, knitting, reading (like most Slizzards), travelling, and watching movies in my spare time.

I started in the MLS program because I was interested in going into business research, but I eventually realized I was more interested in metadata and electronic publishing. My favorite class so far has been Human Computer Interaction. The instructor (Hamid Ekbia) is great and we got to develop an app focused on improving people's behaviors, which was an interesting challenge.

I'm really enjoying my internship at the IMA and would love to have a job like that where I get to work with large image collections and creative people. I'm also interested in electronic publishing and developing electronic books.

Resume/Portfolio site: http://www.perrisking.com/

LinkedIn profile: www.linkedin.com/pub/perris-king/27/292/a56

Member Spotlight: Margaret Janz

Name: Margaret Janz

Degree: MLS, specialization in chemical information

Anticipated graduation date: May 2013

I'm originally from central Wisconsin and earned my bachelor's degree in Information Resources from the School of Information Science at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee in 2010. I work at the Life Sciences and Chemistry Libraries here at IU as a graduate assistant and at the Lilly Library as an assistant to the ALF Cataloger.

My focus at SLIS has been on science librarianship, because I'm really interested in the sciences, especially the biological ones. I also am really interested in data management and the issues surrounding open access publishing. My tendency to think outside the box made special libraries very appealing to me once I knew they existed. I really love that there are libraries everywhere and have the idealistic notion that information sharing is a key component to solving all problems.

I am really proud of a lot of the work I've done professionally and as a student at SLIS. One item of note was publishing the paper "Scholarish: Google Scholar and its value for the sciences" in the Summer 2012 issue of Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship with by my Sci&Tech Information class. I'm also very excited about collaborating with the IU Libraries' e-science librarian on a project this semester about data management practices of zoo researchers.

I'd love to work for a library at a National Park or in a zoo library.

You can connect with me on LinkedIn. That name again is Margaret Janz.

Thanks to those who were able to make it out to our No Pressure Networking event this week. We were a small group, but it was a good time! Sorry to those who couldn't be there, hopefully we'll see you at some of the things coming up. On that note, here are some of the things we talked about on Tuesday:

There are a few events taking place in Indianapolis this semester, including the Indy Librarian Tweet-Up (Feb 23 1-4pm), IUPUI Libraries and SLIS Joint Confernce (Mar 23 9:15am-12:30pm), and the ACRL Conference (Apr 10-13). These are all pretty general interest library-related events so we're hoping to set up some ride-shares with some of the other SLIS student groups. If you're interested in attending these events, let us know!

In March we're hoping to put together a Resume Spin session. Participants in this event will find a job ad or description that appeals to them and write a cover letter/resume for the position. Then we'll get some professionals in to look at what you've got and help you spin your experience and skills when applying for jobs. More information on this will be available soon!

Another couple of things to look forward to are the forthcoming Member Spotlight and Special Library Focus features of this here blog. The Member Spotlight will showcase our amazing members, giving faces to our really nice group. The Special Library Focus feature will give our members a chance to learn more about the libraries that interest them, an opportunity to have a writing sample out in the world [wide web], and let all interested parties find out what kinds of libraries are out there.

This is shaping up to be an exciting semester for us! Check back for more updates!