First-year MLIS student will attend the Spectrum Leadership Institute of the American Library Association and will be mentored by professionals in the field.
Jean Lin, a first-year MLIS student in the UCLA Department of Information Studies, has been selected as a 2025-2026 Spectrum Scholar by the American Library Association (ALA). The award includes tuition assistance for her studies at UCLA, and the opportunity to attend ALA’s Spectrum Leadership Institute, held as part of ALA Annual, the organization’s national conference, to take place in Chicago in June.
Through the Spectrum Scholarship Program, the ALA advances racial equity by connecting new generations of racially and ethnically diverse librarians with a network dedicated to mutual support, advancing one another’s leadership, and making social justice part of the everyday work in the library fields. As one of 60 Spectrum Scholars honored this year, Lin will benefit from mentoring by this network of ALA professionals working in a variety of library fields.
Lin achieved her bachelor’s degree at UC Santa Barbara in English with a minor in Chinese, and previously worked in marketing and operations for Silicon Valley startups. She now looks forward to a career in data librarianship, particularly in the medical and health sciences library field.
Lin decided to pursue her MLIS after realizing that one of the things she most enjoyed about her job was “surprisingly, file management,” and ensuring that records were accessible and relevant. A course on data management and practice taught by Alicia Mara, graduate and now lecturer of UCLA’s LIS program, also ignited Lin’s interest in data librarianship. A class project in Mara’s course gave Lin the experience of creating a data curation profile, with food studies data centered around the global COVID-19 pandemic, examining different types of data being used and how the data was made available to researchers.
Lin and her classmates used a research guide from UCLA Libraries that was created by Alexandra Solodkaya, the Rothman Food Studies Librarian at the Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library, building their dataset from the reference sources and journals listed on the guide.
“This guide was instrumental in getting our project started, especially since none of us on the team had any STEM or anthropology backgrounds,” Lin says. “It’s a key example of how librarians and the resources they create can help with a research project or inquiry at any step of the process, whether you’re a subject matter expert or a complete beginner.”
Lin, who originally entered the MLIS program to become a public librarian, says that there are countless career options with the degree.
“I think the easiest way and most straightforward path to think of a library studies degree is, okay, you’ll be a public librarian,” she says. “I was the same, upon starting. And while I still love and have a ton of respect for public librarians, I’ve since learned that there are a ton of transferable skills within this field that I have, that I can work with.”
Lin says that she would urge those who are considering a MLIS degree to “look very specifically at what you enjoy about your [current] work. Look at those aspects, see if they align with the organization of information, or the retrieval of information, or helping other people to access it. If you’re in event planning, for example, event programming is a huge part of [being] a public librarian.”
Lin got her library card at age six and grew up in public libraries. She hopes to pay forward the support she gained from public librarians who went the extra mile to encourage her academic success.
“This was a big part of the scholarship essay I wrote for the Spectrum [application],” says Lin. “My parents don’t speak English. They are immigrants and one of the first stops that they had in the States was the library. English isn’t my first language, but it’s how I learned to read and write in English.
“I didn’t grow up with much. At times, when [our] electricity was cut, I would go to the library to study and do my homework. If I didn’t finish on time before I went home, the staff at my local branch would give me batteries and flashlights to take home so that I can do my homework.”
For now, Lin works to propel her fellow students’ success by serving as publicity chair for the ALA student chapter at UCLA, which recently hosted information sessions for potential applicants to the Spectrum Scholars program. Attendees gained insights and helpful tips from the Spectrum coordinator and former Spectrum Scholars, many of whom are also UCLA IS alumni.
“Having received so much from the network of Spectrum Scholars, I want to be able to be that resource for others as well,” Lin says.
Lin thanks Mara, whose course on data management and practice “really expanded my view of what librarianship could be,” as well as Joanna Fabicon, a UCLA MLIS lecturer and librarian at the Los Angeles Public Library (LAPL); Judy Low, library assistant at the Pasadena Public Library; and Kim Nguyen, LAPL librarian and alumna of the UCLA MLIS program.
“The whole community aspect behind libraries is the reason why I want to work in this field, to support not only students like me but adults that are in a similar situation,” says Lin. “At the end of the day, libraries, I think, are one of the last few institutions where it’s a neutral space. You don’t have to pay to be there, you can just… be. And read, and learn, and also access materials.
“As a librarian, you’re listening to and interacting directly with your community everyday. And you fight for them. I’ve only ever been uplifted and supported by the community I have around me. It only makes sense to me that I pay it forward, and fight for them as well.”
Recently, Lin has also been awarded the SAGE & JCLC Inc. Student Scholarship, from the Chinese American Librarians Association.
Photo by Zachary Lacson