About Us

We are the student government of the UW Masters of Library and Information Science program. Students in this program are automatically members of ALISS; you don’t have to do anything else to join. We are a registered student organization.

You can reach the officers by emailing aliss@uw.edu or using our contact form, which has an anonymous option. You can find us in the unofficial Facebook group, which includes alumni as well as current students, or you can summon us in Teams channels using @aliss.

Our officers are elected every year at the end of winter quarter (late March). The call for nominations will be sent in mid-March to the MLIS listserv, the Teams channel, and the unofficial Facebook group.

What We Do

The officers’ job is primarily to advocate for student needs. To that end, we send out surveys to monitor course quality throughout the year and hold a town hall event every quarter to relay student concerns to the administration.

We also host social events, both online and in person, and guest speakers on library-related topics.

What’s with the antelope?

You’ll probably read Michael Buckland’s “What Is a Document?” in either 520 or 530. There’s a discussion of whether an antelope can be a document in some contexts.