End of the Semester–Time Flies!

Posted May 7, 2026 by Abby Edgecumbe

The end of the 2025-2026 school year is upon us! This milestone means different things to all of us in the SLIS community– graduation, or a few classes added towards that goal. For me, it marks my official halfway-point through the program. Wild, right? Time has flown. As you all may remember, I am in the Libraries/Librarianship track, so in honor of passing “Go,” I decided to share with you all what my program has looked like, and how I’m planning to finish out my last year.

The MLIS has a selection of courses that are required for everyone, that many people take– either in bulk or at least one or two– in their first semester. These classes are LIS 407 Information Services, Behaviors, and Ethics, LIS 415 Information Organization, and LIS 488 Technology for Information Professionals. As a full-time student, I take 3 courses per semester, and those were the three I took in my first term. LIS 407 introduced me to library theory and presented some of the challenges librarians can face and helped me build a toolkit for navigating those circumstances. LIS 415 was my long-awaited introduction to MARC cataloging! This was an intense course built around learning basic library cataloging methods, and besides the aforementioned and much beloved (to some) MARC, we also covered XML, DublinCore, and RDA. If these vague acronyms are intimidating, yeah, me too. That’s why we take LIS 415. Now, don’t quake in your boots, but yes. We do learn to code in our first year here! If you’re anything like me, you have close to zero coding or STEM experience before beginning your MLIS, but fear not. LIS 488 was actually one of my favorite classes, and I had an absolute ball coding my final project, a portfolio website, using HTML and CSS. 

My second semester, which I just officially finished all my coursework for on Saturday, was another full load of three classes. I took LIS 404 Principles of Management, LIS 450 Public Libraries, and LIS 453 Collection Development and Management. These classes are required for the Librarianship concentration (I chose Public Libraries because that’s what I’m interested in, but you could also fulfill that requirement with Academic or Special Libraries). LIS 404 taught me to be a manager, and all the strain that comes with it: budget cut assignments, scheduling, emergency response, all that jazz. For my final, I wrote a 10-page grant proposal to establish a hypothetical seed library. LIS 450 taught me about how public libraries work, where they get their funding, and how to build successful programming and community partnerships, among other things. For my final, I worked in a group to create a presentation to the board of trustees to propose a bookmobile initiative! LIS 453 was probably the most challenging of the three for me, but also very rewarding. We learned how to build and weed a collection, including budgetary concerns, readers’ advisory, and a myriad of other factors that go into being a collection development librarian. For my final, I created a collection development guide for public librarians interested in developing a collection in nature writing. 

Phew! And that’s only halfway! Next fall, I’m slated to take LIS 420 Modern Publishing & Librarianship, LIS 451 Academic Libraries, and LIS 505 Special Topics: Foresight and Futures Thinking for Library Professionals. In the MLIS we are required to take five elective courses, and these three courses are three of those five electives for me. I’m really, really excited for my courses in the fall (especially the special topics!). That leaves me with two more electives to take in the spring, along with my final required course, LIS 408 User Instruction and Information Literacy. 

Now that I’ve reached halfway, and I’ve charted out the second-half, the end is really in sight! Which is a crazy thing to say, considering it feels like I just started. You know what they say about having fun. Makes time fly and all.

If you’re considering joining us at SLIS, I hope this course breakdown helps you see what it might look like for you. There’s a lot of freedom to design the degree to your interests and goals, as well as being a very well-established structure to ensure you get all the knowledge you need to thrive as a librarian.