...and, I'm back?

Happy New Years everyone!

Believe it or not, I'm still alive and well.  I will soon be starting my 4th semester at GSLIS -- not my last, but getting there.  I think I will be done Fall 2011.

Here is what you missed: I took Special Collections: Collection Development, Electronic Publishing, and Information Modeling.  The first one is going towards the Special Collections Certificate I want to receive.  The other two go towards my new goal: a specialization in Data Curation.  The two last classes were very interlinked -- so much, that sometimes I forgot what class I was in at the moment  o.o

This semester, I'm taking another three classes: Foundations of Information Processing in LIS, Digital Libraries: Research and Practice, and Foundations of Data Curation.  Of course, these are all for the Data Curation specialization.  I will be posting my homework, as well as projects from last semester, on this blog. 

Hopefully, I will keep blogging this semester and keep up with my newsfeeds.  I am very behind in the library world  :(

Final Learning Reflection LIS 458

Ok, it is not the summer yet, but I am posting my final learning reflection of LIS 458 (Instruction and Assistant Systems).  I took a very different approach to this assignment, but I think it answers the question.

Please read the rules about posted assignments before reading onward.

Write a 1,000-1,500 word essay in which you reflect on what you have learned this semester. 
 
You might start by thinking about the following questions. You are not required to answer any of these and you
certainly should not attempt to answer them all – these are merely offered to jumpstart self reflection.  
 
• What did you hope to learn in this class? What did you learn? What do you now wish you had learned? 
• How has your knowledge and understanding of higher education and academic libraries grown or changed
since the beginning of the semester? 
• What are your career plans and how has this class informed or influenced those career plans? 
• What is the most important thing you learned this semester?  
• What is the most surprising thing you learned this semester? 
• If you were advising a future student, what would you tell them to expect to learn?

Entering the End Game

I am now entering the "end game" of my semester, and what a semester its been!

Last semester I took the easy route and did two classes, with a total of 6 credit hours.  I thought to myself, Wow, that was EASY!  I can probably take more!  With that in mind, I took three classes: Cataloging and Classification I, Digital Preservation, and Instruction and Assistance Systems, for a total of 10 hours.  What a difference.  Even though one class was only for 2 credits, I had to work very hard to earn them.

Cataloging and Classification can only be described as a tornado- the 15 weeks you are in class you feel like a bunch of information is being thrown at you, and afterwards you look around and think WHAT JUST HAPPENED?  What happened was you learned the basic concepts of cataloging without even realizing it.  As I am now finishing my final assignment, a mock MARC record of a fake book, The Easter Eggroll: Chinese Dim Sum Snacks for Spring Occasions, I figured out just what accomplished in the class.  I may not remember every single rule of AACR2 or every MARC field, but I know what to look for and where to find the answers.  Isn't that the best description of what a librarian does?  We might not know all of the answers, but e certainly know where to find them.

I might have not been the number one participator in Digital Preservation, but it certainly made me think a lot about the present (and future) problems digital objects present to librarians, archivists, and preservationists.  I talked about some of these topics with my family, friends, and everyone else in the bar who would listen to me.  They were annoyed, but I was happy to discuss one of the big ideas of the class to anyone- in this digital age, can we really preserve everything?  Maybe the LoC will answer that with its Twitter collection- will all tweets be there, or just a select few?  If a select few, which tweets?  Who gets to pick the tweets?  I could go on forever with these questions.

I took Instruction and Assistance Systems as a 2 credit hour course, but I feel like I learned 8 credit hours worth in that time.  Maybe the most important thing I learned was about myself and how I learn.  Knowing how I learn makes me feel better simply because I now understand that its ok not to be the most vocal person in class.  My brain simply does not function that way.  Instead, I like soaking up the knowledge and thinking about it for a while before I try to discuss it with people.  No wonder my rhetorical questions on topics of digital preservation and the anonymity of the Internet come out in bars, after some time to think and a beer to ponder on (the anonymity of the Internet deserves its own post- I've been reading some books....). 

Now, as I am at the "end game," I know that I did not participate as much as I wanted to.  This past semester, in terms of my personal life, was a roller coaster of emotions and happenings, and while I won't write what they are, believe me when I say that they were indeed life changing.  You know, when you think to yourself I'm going to look back in 5, 10 years and know that my life is this way because I did _______?  Yup, that kind of life changing.  It might have made my student/"professional" life harder, but I still feel a little more at ease with things. 

Now, to get back to my work!  Here are the things I have left to do....

Cataloging Final: Due today (Edit: finished 2:54 pm Sunday)
Learning Response: Due tomorrow (Edit: finished 8:32 pm Monday)

DRAMBORA group project: Due Thursday

Next time I write, it will be "summer"  :D

My Alternative Spring Break

I had to write a report about my Alternative Spring Break.  It definitely does not cover everything I did, but its a start!

Please read the rules about posted assignments before reading onward. 

I was not sure what to expect my first day for ASB at Columbia College Library, Chicago, IL. April Levy, my site supervisor, emailed me a week ahead of time telling me that she filled my agenda with people to meet and libraries to see. I was not certain that these tours would be of any use to me, nor would meeting with a couple of librarians. Looking back, it seems silly to question this because I know meeting the librarians I met made me think about what direction I wanted to take in selecting my courses. The experience made me think about what kind of job I wanted when I graduate from GSLIS.

My first day started with an interview. I never had to interview someone before, so I felt very nervous about the situation. What if I did not ask the right questions? Fortunately for me, the librarians at Columbia College are very understanding. My first interviewee, along with everyone else I talked to that week, made me feel as comfortable as possible and included me in all of their activities.

It was my luck that the reference librarians had a “Peer Teaching” session the week I was there, and they invited me to participate in the session. As the reference librarians went over typical reference questions they answered, I felt that the Columbia College Library was an institution people could say they enjoyed working for. From what I saw, they felt as if their bosses would listen to their problems and take their suggestions. I started thinking to myself that I would be lucky if I worked for an institution such as the Columbia College Library.

I also had a few tours, which was probably my favorite part of the week. Columbia College has a few unique collections, which certainly represent the unique character of the college. Their Special Collections department, though tragically squashed in a small room, holds items that are popular to show in class or very expensive. My favorites included the Visionaire publications and some conceptual art from the movie Ratatouille. The Center for Book and Paper Arts allowed me to see their presses and typesetting collections, some of which were wooden. The most unique, in my opinion, is the Fashion Columbia Study Collection. Their collection of clothing requires special cataloging and treatment from typical items found in a special collection.

The Library and Archives of the Center for Black Music Research was where I realized what I wanted to do in my career, though I did not expect to find the revelation there. I have been struggling to figure out how to merge my two interests in library science: rare/special collections and new technologies. The librarians at the Center for Black Music Research found a way to combine both. The three librarians in charge of the center have to do many tasks themselves, like cataloging, as well as answer reference questions and take care of the fragile materials. They have record players, tape decks, and even a keyboard for musicians who want to play one hundred year old hymns. As I toured this library, I thought about how this would be a dream come true for me. I would be able to manage all aspects of librarianship if I worked in a specialized collection such as the Center for Black Music Research.

Though I did not complete project during my stay at Columbia College Library, I did learn a lot about my future profession. I saw the “daily grind” of the library, and how a cohesive library “team” works. I met many librarians, most who had jobs I did not even realize librarians did. I also met people who were only support staff, but want to become future librarians because of their time working at the Columbia College Library. Most importantly, I think I figured out what I want to do when I complete my degree at GSLIS.

I have come to understand documents by analogy with human beings.  Documents are surrogates for people.  They are bits of the material world (stone, clay, wood pulp, and now silicon) that we create to speak for us and take on jobs for us.
 David Levy

When we say that a digital object has "integrity," we mean that it has not been corrupted over time or in transit; in other words, that we have in hand the same set of sequences of bits that came into existence when the object was created.
Clifford Lynch

Both from: Council on Library & Information Resources (May 2000). Authenticity in a Digital Environment. Washington, DC: Author. Available at: http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub92/pub92.pdf

These are two of the quotes my professor put on the whiteboard yesterday during our Digital Preservation class on "Authenticity, Integrity & Trust."  I feel like during the discussion, we kept going in circles, which I pointed out.  I do not want to re-post what people wrote without their permission, so I'll try to paraphrase.

It seems that whenever we end up talking about ideas such as "integrity," "authenticity," and "trust," we end up with the same questions:

1) What IS authentic in the digital world?
2) Can a copy be authentic?
3) How much needs to be preserved in order for it to be called authentic?
4) Who figures out what is authentic and what is not?

What burning questions!  But what are the answers to these questions?  We keep circling and circling around them, but I don't know whether we ever find the answers.  I am thinking that we never find a definite answer is because digital preservation is such a new issue.  We have ideas and practices on preserving books, art, and music because professionals have been discussing this for a long time.  We are still developing new types of digital objects, let alone some standards for digital preservation.

Another idea that comes with these questions is "intent."  I discussed this a little earlier in the semester.  It would be much easier to figure out what to do with digital objects if creators left a "will" of sorts for their creations, like "I want these to be preserved, but since I cannot predict the future, please decide for me how you would like to preserve this," or "BURN THEM!"  Maybe not in those words, but wouldn't it be nice?

Anyways, this is a bit muddled, but this post has been sitting in my drafts folder for a while and I want the world to see it.  I don't know what to do with everything right now, but I know what to do on a case by case basis.

LoC and Twitter?

I was doing so well posting on the blog!  And then, it happened again- no postings.  I am pulling the personal life card on this one.  It happens every once in a while.

Big news in the library world: the Library of Congress is going to archive ALL tweets tweeted since March 2006.  I'm not sure how to reply to this, except Did they think this through?  I am not an expert by any means, but this is a serious undertaking.  Some of the questions that are already racing through my mind are:

How will these be stored?  Will there be paper copies? (I hope not)
Where will these be stored?
Who will go through every tweet and organize them, along with create millions of new authority headings and bibliographic entries?  (My CV is linked above)

Self Directed Reading #3

 Please read the rules about posted assignments before reading onward. 

For the Self Directed Readings, I had to 1) read an article, 2) write a paragraph summary, and 3) write a paragraph of my reactions to the article.  A short but sweet assignment.

Julian, Suzanne and Kimball Benson. “Clicking your way to library instruction assessment: using a personal response system at Brigham Young University.” College and Research Libraries News 69.5 (May 2008): 258-60.

In order to facilitate student participation in their library instruction sessions, Brigham Young University instructors purchased a PRS, or a Personal Response System.  This involves the students using "clickers" to answer predetermined questions about the different topics covered in the session.  The instructors were quickly recognized several benefits to using the clickers, which included more student participation, checking student comprehension, and hearing more of the students' opinion because results were posted anonymously.  The authors cautioned interested clicker users to word questions wisely and not to rely on the clickers too much throughout the presentation. Instructors at Brigham Young University recommend the clicker system to anyone searching for a new way to assess their library instruction sessions.

As a former user of the clicker, I saw that there was a lot of potential in the clicker for a physics class I took several years ago.  Unfortunately, the professor never tested the clickers before class and most people would forget to bring them, which made clicker ultimately useless.  After reading this article, I am again hopeful that clicker technology will expand and be used to its fullest extent.  Instructors can easily find out what students need help with, or whether they are paying attention, and change their session accordingly.  Any data received can be examined later, to better plan future sessions.  The Personal Response System is an easy way to get quick answers.