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Alissa Droog: Falling in love with librarianship

By Ryan Sluban

Alissa's hometown: Creemore, Ontario

Alissa Droog is bringing her passion for teaching and research to the course-based MLIS program at Western.

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Alissa Droog grew up in a small rural community in central Ontario. She went on to acquire a Bachelor of Education at Laurentian University. While pursuing her dream of teaching, Alissa worked at an academic library at Laurentian and absolutely loved it. Halfway through her degree, she realized she loved library work just as much. It was then that she decided to take a break after graduation and figure out how she was going to fuse both passions vocationally.

During this break, she earned a master’s degree from Queen’s University in religious studies, knowing that she would eventually end up in the field of librarianship. She came to Western with the goal of acquiring the knowledge and skills to teach in an academic library.

Alissa says the MLIS program has been a great experience for her. Her five semesters spent in FIMS helped her to gain perspective and think in different ways. She says the program introduced her to new methodologies for doing research, which is one of her passions.

Alissa was not planning on working on research projects while pursuing her MLIS degree, since it isn’t a research-based program. However, when the opportunity arose, she and three of her classmates began a project researching LGBTQ+ children’s picture books.

A year after the course, Alissa and her group have continued their research. They are working on a journal article and this April, Alissa and her group will be presenting at the Alberta Library Conference called, Is Tango All We Get? Evaluating LGBTQ+ Children’s Picture Books.

“I think the biggest growth for me was through my co-op experience. It gave me a ton of ideas about what I wanted to do in my career and what type of courses I wanted to take when I got back.”
Alissa says her favourite thing about the program is the flexibility. She initially chose to come to FIMS because it is one of the only schools in Canada that offers the degree in a one-year program. She later realized she would want to experience a co-op in an academic library at the University of Waterloo. She says it was nice to be able to do an eight-month co-op through FIMS, even though she wasn’t planning on doing so.

Fun Fact

Alissa is afraid of butterflies.

Alissa will be graduating in spring 2019 and beginning her career in librarianship. Until then, she’ll be continuing in her position on MLIS student council, working on both personal and academic research projects and enjoying her last months as a student in FIMS, preparing to embark on a career that she is passionate about.

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Profiles in the Meet Our Students section are written by students in the Master of Media in Journalism & Communication program, who are enrolled in MMJC 9604 - Professional Writing.