Megan Phillips wins SLA scholarship

by Jonathan O'Connell

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

Only after she received an email from her mother wondering why she hadn't yet accepted a scholarship from the Special Libraries Association, did Phillips realize a $6000 check was waiting for her. "I must have missed the announcement in the mail," Phillips says. "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. There she attended the SLA Scholarship Winners’ Breakfast, enjoyed various conference events and received her check.

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 wants to encourage people not to be dissuaded by the negative perceptions people sometimes have of librarians.

"Library school 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 received a B.A. in journalism from the UW-Madison and expects to graduate with and M.L.S. from SLIS next spring. She 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."