I was inspired to start this blog by a workshop hosted by my library school on Friday. It was called Web 2.you: A Workshop for Information Professionals, and, despite not yet being an information professional, I found all of the presentations both interesting and potentially applicable to my future career. Two of my classmates, Amy Buckland (of informing MUVEs) and Jan Dawson (of Jan Dawson’s part of the blogiverse), put a whole lot of work into organizing the event and also gave a tremendous presentation on librarianship in Second Life. I’d never really considered writing my own blog until I saw John Dupuis (of Confessions of a Science Librarian) present a talk called Blogging for Professional Development. He really sold me on the idea of blogging and made me want to share my ideas with the library community. My other major inspiration was Jessamyn West (of librarian.net, among others), whose enthusiasm for the future of libraries through Web 2.0 gave me hope for my career.

So, what is the ILSS all about? First and foremost, it’s written by a library school student in the hopes of being read by other library school students, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be something for everyone. My message is that providing access to information is exciting, even if library school isn’t always. I don’t mean this as a criticism of library programs or educators – it’s not their fault that the cataloguing rules of the AACR2 don’t make students want to do their happy dance. I firmly believe in the importance of learning about advanced database search techniques and chi-square tests; however, I’ve learned firsthand that it’s easy to become disillusioned without spending a bit of time thinking about the innovative and fun work going on in the field. Some might see this as a distraction from flowcharts and Dialog searches, but I intend it to be a supplement – my hope is that through this blog, we’ll all learn the things not covered by our classes, the things that our classes are preparing us for.