Freshly Minted: Lisa Bowker

July 11, 2022

MLIS Candidate, Faculty of Information and Media Studies, Western University

Which information studies program are you attending?

I’m about to enter my final semester of Western’s MLIS program in London, Ontario.

What are your current classes like? Which is your favourite so far, and why?

So far, I have done all of my classes online which I have enjoyed. Online learning and working gives me a nice work life balance. I am focussed on the information side of this degree, and have taken things like learning and instruction, databases, records management, information management, information and privacy, and consumer health information. It’s hard to pick a favourite, but probably information policy, there were lots of interesting debates and ideas on the forum and interesting reading too.

Is there one aspect of the profession that surprises you that you were not expecting when you started the program? What is it?

I was surprised by how much professionals in this sphere seem to be out of the box thinkers and early technology adopters. I guess I might have been swayed by the stereotypes of librarians who shush, but I have been impressed by how engaged, creative, and passionate my professors and fellow students are. I have enjoyed the opportunity to be creative with project submissions and professors have been willing to let me try out several new technological ideas, with varying levels of success.

What was it that initially drove you to librarianship?

My sister!

She kept pointing out that the joy I feel when organizing and categorizing could be turned into meaningful work through an MLIS.

When COVID came into play and I started to work from home several of the tasks that had filled my time at work were no longer necessary, so I turned my focus to trying to sort, categorize and apply version control conventions to the way my team dealt with documents. I found it energizing! I loved being able see things take shape and improve the way our team was functioning. I was so invested, that the project expanded into a complete overhaul of our recordkeeping, and I learned SharePoint well enough to create a content management system for my team.

I enjoyed the project so much that I decided to take my sister’s advice and go back to school with the aspiration of turning records management and information governance into a career.

If you could work anywhere, and do anything with information, what would your dream job look like?

Ideally, I would like to continue remote work with a focus on information governance or information policy. I am very interested in relating information policy to online privacy, consent and artificial intelligence. I like advocacy and research as much as I like sorting and organizing content, so it’s hard to narrow down just one focus right now!

If someone were considering going to information studies, what would you advise them about?

Take some time to enjoy the process. Grad school is far more intense than my undergraduate degree was, but also more engaging. An MLIS is a broad degree, so don’t be afraid to try taking a course in something you never thought about before, you never know what you will learn!

I have found this to be a kind, supportive, enthusiastic community of professionals who are always happy to share their experience and ideas which makes learning fun and rewarding.

What do you think is the most important aspect of being an information professional today?

Adaptability. I think this field that is growing and evolving quickly, so staying current with technological methods used for digital file management and aware of the policies and acts that are governing privacy and digital data collection will be important.