About The Attendees

Who are we? Why are we here? What’s the point of our existence?

While we can’t answer that last one, we gotcha covered on the first two. We are graduate students pursuing degrees at Pratt Institute, School of Information and Library Science. At the end of our courses of study, we will be awarded Master’s of Science in Library and Information Science, or MSLIS degrees. The four of us are being graciously sponsored by SILSSA, or the Pratt SILS Student Association, who are in turn sponsored by the American Libraries Association, more commonly known as the ALA.

We are here to observe, participate, and contribute to this year’s gathering of librarians as the LIS community comes together to teach, share, and discuss the many changes in our world- in our profession, the United States, and internationally- and via this blog we will report back on all we saw.

Now, personally, who are we?

Allison Cloyd, a San Diego native, moved to New York City in August of 2011 to attend graduate school at Pratt Institute, where she will graduate from in December of 2012 with her MSLIS and a certificate in Archives. During her first fall in NYC, Allison interned at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, working as an archival assistant on the James Parker Papers in the European Sculpture and Decorative Arts Department. During the spring semester of 2012, she interned at the Oskar Diethelm Library, part of the Institute for the History of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, where she inventoried, re-housed, and cataloged the 500 or so objects that make up the Prints and Photographs Collection. This summer she will continue that internship by contributing to the creation of an online presence for the collection, hopefully in the form of a digital archive. A member of  the ALA, SLA-NY, and Archivists Round Table-NY, she works as a graduate assistant for Dr. Irene Lopatovska, Ph.D., as well as at the Pratt Manhattan Library. Allison graduated from California State University San Marcos magna cum laude with a Bachelor’s of Arts in History in May of 2011.

Davis Erin Anderson is an MSLIS candidate at Pratt Institute with big plans to graduate in December 2012. An active member of SLA, Davis currently serves as President of SLA@Pratt as well as Library Student Liaison for the New York chapter. Davis is a recipient of SLA’s Rising Star Award, and is honored to have been included in Library Journal’s Movers & Shakers Class of 2012. A French horn player, Davis’s previous degrees are in music performance.