Meet…
May 5, 2008
SLIS Student Israel Yañez Wins Two Conference Grants
Second-semester SLIS student Israel Yañez is looking forward to a busy summer, taking two classes and attending two conferences in June thanks to travel grants that he has received. Yañez, who works at California State University at Sacramento in the library's cataloging department, is one of six recipients of the Sage Support Staff Travel grant, which will enable him to attend the American Library Association (ALA) annual conference in Anaheim. The grant is supported by Sage Publications in conjunction with ALA's Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS).
Recognizing that many libraries simply do not have the means to send paraprofessional staff to conferences, the Sage Travel Grant was created to make this opportunity possible for first-time attendees. Yañez will be matched up with a mentor at the ALA annual conference, who will help orient him and ensure that he gets the most out of the experience. He will then write a report about the conference, which will appear in ALCTS's newsletter.
In addition, Yañez will also attend the Special Libraries Association (SLA) annual conference in Seattle, also in June. His attendance is made possible by the Joe Ann Clifton Student Award, given through the IT Division of SLA. Yañez received this honor after submitting a paper originally written for his Information and Society class in his first semester at SLIS, which focused on information commons in academic libraries. At both conferences, he is hoping to participate in sessions that focus on IT, cataloging and metadata.
Yañez considers himself "very fortunate" to work at a supportive library that encourages his professional development opportunities. He has been working at CSU Sacramento for 18 years, first in public services and then in technical services. He is currently taking Beginning Cataloging and Classification, which is "immediately informing" his work at the library.
He said it was initially challenging to be a student again. During his first semester he found it tough to adjust, but the online aspect of classes has worked well for him. Yañez has only one regret about pursuing his master's in library and information science: that he didn’t decide to do it sooner.
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