Library grad student wins national scholarship

Megan Phillips won a scholarship and she didn’t even know it.

Only after she received an e-mail from her mother, wondering why she hadn’t yet accepted a scholarship from the Special Libraries Association, did Phillips realize a $6,000 check was waiting for her.

“I must have missed the announcement in the mail,” says Phillips, who received a B.A. in journalism from UW–Madison and expects to graduate with a master of library science degree next spring from the School of Library and Information Studies. “I was very surprised.”

Phillips won the 2000 SLA Affirmative Action Scholarship for graduate studies and was flown to the Association’s annual conference in Philadelphia last month.

In the Social Work Library, Phillips assists academic librarian Jane Linzmeyer with book orders and reference work. She also trains and manages student workers.

Entering a library studies program was not always Phillips’s plan. “I had no idea there was such a thing as a library school when I was younger,” she says.

She says she wants to encourage people not to be dissuaded by the negative perceptions people sometimes have of librarians. “Library schools and libraries need a more diverse population. There’s a stereotype out there about librarians — Marian the Librarian, who has the bun in her hair. That needs to be broken.”

Phillips plans to stay in Madison and apply for work in a Madison-area library, possibly in the General Library System.

Phillips credits UW faculty and staff Marvin Birnbaum, Paula Panczenko and especially her mentor, Linzmeyer, as instrumental to her success in school. “You get to really know students and faculty,” she says. “I think that is the most important part of library school, getting to know people.”