Library Day in the Life – #libday8 Day 2

February 1, 2012 in Library Day in the Life 8 | No comments

libday8This is the second post in my Librarian Day in the Life series where I bravely attempt to document how I spend my days as the digital archivist for Voices of September 11th. The other posts in the series can be located here.

In my job, I am a solo librarian which puts me in the position of being the organization’s “expert” on topics like information organization, technical support, and sometimes instruction. At times, these expectations are very intimidating; especially to a newly-minted librarian like myself. So far I have skated along on my research skills and personal knowledgebase. There are classes from library school which have helped me, especially my library management and instructional design class. When I am not feeling like a schoolboy faking as the teacher, I certainly appreciate being considered a valuable asset to the team and a reliable resource for the organization.

Yesterday my role in the organization was one of project manager and grant writer. Today I got to play several roles through the day. My day started by checking e-mail and responding to a family member that I have been working closely with on managing the huge amount of audio and video content she has given to us and the 9/11 Museum. Following September 11th, she took it upon herself to conduct an extensive range of interviews (nearly 60 hours!) with family and coworkers of her brother-in-law and other people that were involved in the tragedy in New York City. She began transcribing some of the interviews and writing a book, but stopped when she learned that there would be very little publisher interest. She also had several hours of video of her sister and brother-in-law which was included in the materials sent to me. I have had these materials in hand for a while, but it has been only recently that I have been able to set aside time to begin properly processing them into our archives. One challenge that I am facing here is that the video files are enormous – averaging about 5 GB – and when they were copied to the DVD media sent to me the writing process was corrupted. The family member and I are going to working to try and get clean copies made (she paid a vendor to do the digitization, so will be able to get corrected versions). Uncertain about the DVD+R media, I am considering options to send her a portable external hard drive to store the content on – which should improve my ability to retrieve the data.  The other challenge I’m facing is the sheer amount of data to process in this case. I have over 60 interviews to archive and catalog – and I’m not even considering the effort for transcription yet. It may be a project I can focus several of our interns this summer on. Some may ask me, “What is the point of all this effort?” especially since I have hundreds of gigabytes of other content to process. I think I may handle that question in a future blog post though (yes, I am dodging the issue for now).

One of the things I try to do while working is maintain several ongoing projects so that I can break up my day with different activities and focuses. Another area in the organization where I play a large role is in technology development and decisions. Most of this responsibility comes from the fact that so much of my job relies on the computing systems we have place, as well as the computers my coworkers are using. One of the issues the organization has struggled is being too reactive to technology needs rather than proactive. This has led to a great deal of running around and putting out fires as one emergency follows another. In addition, we have ended up with a patchwork of servers, computers, and accessories from different bouts of donations and purchases. Lately, there has been a lot of conversation about our technology priorities and preparing a purchasing plan to improve the technology being used throughout the organization. Personally, I would love to take the time and develop a proper technology plan (my library school education focused on a blending of academic reference and systems librarianship – look where I ended up!), but there are limits to what I am able to do and only 24 hours in the day. Part of today was spent in a small meeting group discussing the justifications for the technology we feel is needed to present to our director and business manager.

After the technology meeting, I had been asked to work with the two new social work interns we have with us this summer and teach them how to use our office management database. Intern training (and training in general) is another area that has been sort of slap-dash (I’m sure you’re seeing a pattern here by now) and one that I have begun working on improving. I have the goal to develop a proper training course and have it ready for the group of summer interns we will be getting so that their learning will not be so informal and piecemeal.

Finally, I closed out the day by spending some time beginning to work on my monthly report and catching up on my timekeeping notes. The monthly report is an initiative I am beginning on my own to help demonstrate to the organization what I am doing and the current progress on our archive’s development. In addition, I feel it will add a greater degree of accountability to my job, which is something I feel is lacking. While it is nice not to have someone always looking over my shoulder judging my efforts, I feel that I could get away with spending the day watching cat videos on the internet.

Tomorrow, I plan to finish my monthly report, continue working on the audio and video content, and start tackling my long list of procedure writing. As with any plan, it is perfect until the armies enter the battlefield, so it’s possible that tomorrow’s post will talk about something completely different. Until then, good night and safe journeys.

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Library Day in the Life 8 – #libday8 Day 1

January 30, 2012 in Library Day in the Life 8 | No comments

libday8

Hi folks, this will be my first attempt at chronicling my day for Library Day in the Life. For those out of the know, Library Day in the Life is a project spearheaded by Bobbi Newman at Librarian By Day that seeks to spread understanding of what librarians do everyday of their lives beyond the stereotypical shelving books and shushing unruly library-goers.

First off, a confession – I do not work in a library. Instead I work at Voices of September 11th which is a non-profit organization providing social work and mental health services to people and families affected by the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Since 2007, the organization has also worked on creating a online Living Memorial to all the lives lost on that day. Since the start of the Living Memorial project they have collected nearly 1.5 terabytes of digital content. As the organization’s archivist, it is my responsibility to work on managing this collection and find a way to shape it into an effective digital archive. This includes monitoring content collection as well ensuring that storage meets the standards and that proper metadata standards are being kept. While this is my main focus, I find myself filling a great many roles throughout the organization as well. I am the ad hoc tech support when our web master/IT specialist (who only works part time) is unavailable. In addition I am trying to improve the general information management culture in the organization – which is a difficult endeavor as many years have pass with little thought to such ideas. I’m sure more of duties will become clear as this week progresses.

I spent today actually doing none of the above. Instead I spent almost all my time (and staying late for an hour or so as well) completing a draft for a grant proposal which was dumped in my lap the morning before I left for ALA Midwinter in Dallas. The grant is a small project grant from the New Jersey Historical Commission to fund an oral history project that we have been discussing for a little while. The project will be to interview a small number of 9/11 survivors and rescue workers in New Jersey and learn about not only their experiences on that day but also their recovery and healing process afterwards. While meeting our social work mission, it also looks at the historical context of how New Jersey responded to the 9/11 attacks through the lens of those most directly affected.  Our director of business development handled many of the more tedious tasks of the grant application, such as the budgeting details (he is really really experienced at this) and acquiring the additional materials we need for our submission. I was responsible for the larger grant narrative, including the project definition, goals, and schedule.

I find this to be a pretty incredible job – especially since it is my first professional job after library school. I have a great deal of responsibility and autonomy in my sphere of influence (namely the archives and anything involving information organization). Resources are tight, so I am looking at a lot of open source software options as I develop the archival system (such as Collective Access and Omeka), and having to learn a lot as I go along. It can also be frustrating when I come in with a plan for the day, which gets sidetracked by something that suddenly claims precedence. At the same time, it’s the extremely fulfilling and mentally-challenging environment that I desire.

So on that note, I’m going to bid everyone goodnight. I have no idea what tomorrow will bring (although I do have plans to handle some of the procedure documentation I need to do), so check back and see what I have been up to.

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ALA Midwinter 2012 Reflections–Starting Conversations

January 30, 2012 in Conferences | No comments

ALA_imageAnd I am back! After a rather long hiatus on this blog due to a combination of my new job and school, I am finally able to turn my attention back to it. During the course of the hiatus I had intended (and did) shift the content of Apprentice Librarian to the Drupal site I have developed for the online portfolio I had to produce as a completion requirement for my MLS degree. Since I did that, I found there were reasons of convenience and ease of use that made me decide to return to WordPress for my blog, except that this time it will be in my own hosted webspace.

All of that is not the main purpose of this post though. This past weekend I attended the American Library Association’s Midwinter Meeting in Dallas, Texas. This was a new experience for me, and in some ways different from what I have come to expect when I attended the Annual Conferences in Washington, DC and New Orleans.

Midwinter is a much smaller affair than Annual. Where I saw attendance numbers of 25,000 and 21,000 in DC and New Orleans respectively, this event came in at just around 10,000 including exhibitors. This smaller attendance lends itself to a much different atmosphere than the frantic hustle and bustle of Annual. Much of the focus here is on meetings that help ALA run and organize the upcoming year.

From what I understand, there was a new emphasis at this year’s Midwinter to focus on discussion and conversations. I found myself rather disappointed by the few “discussion groups” I attended. I guess I was expecting something similar to a seminar guided by the organizer of the session. What I got though seemed more like the same sort of panel and information dump programs experienced at ALA Annual. There seemed less participatory discussion and more passive intake of information.

The couple of sessions that did hold up really well in my expectations was ACRL’s Trends in Higher Education and LITA’s Town Hall. The former started off with a panel presenting their perceptions on developing trends in higher education and then allowed for the listeners to ask questions and respond to the presented trends. The discussion eventually included most of the audience, with attendees responding to each others’ comments. Overall it was a session that you left feeling invigorated and with a greater awareness of the viewpoints of the the other attendees.

The LITA Town Hall on Monday morning was a fascinating exercise in democratizing the conversation about the division and its responsibilities to its members. In the past LITA has worked to include its far flung members in the activities by video streaming the Top Tech Trends Panel. At this Town Hall meeting, they did an audio stream of the discussions, inviting the virtual attendees to comment as well.  The audio streams can be found on LITA’s blog. You can hear me in the Values discussion led by David Lee King. The session began with a general introduction, and then the group broke apart into three sections, each with their own discussion topic. The smaller groups made it extremely inviting to engage in the discussion, even with the somewhat intimidating microphone in the middle of the table.

I was also involved with this Midwinter’s NMRT orientation session on Saturday morning as part of my committee membership. Unfortunately much of the planning and preparations occurred during one of my crunch times during the last semester, so I hope to be more involved for the orientations at ALA Annual in Anaheim. The orientation session had a pretty good turnout with about 30 people showing up. The “Conference Attendee Bingo” icebreaker seemed to be quite successful and worked well to encourage conversation. So well that it was a little difficult to restore order when we wanted to continue with the agenda. We had a panel that included a range of people representing ALA, the vendors, and Dallas. ALA President Molly Raphael even took time in her busy meeting schedule to come and say a few words to the newcomers. It was also great to see the orientation attendees at other events and sessions at the conference.

One area I did not spend very much time at was the Exhibit Hall. I know, I know, bad conference attendee! The vendors help make much of it happen. Dealing and speaking to vendors is something that I know I need to improve (it is certainly not a skill taught at library school). Part of the problem is that there is very little the vendors can offer me in my current position. We’re not going to be served by having any database subscriptions, and funding is so tight we have to struggle to just get decent computers at one of our offices. Although I guess I could use the time to try and build relationships that may help me in the future. That should be a goal I should work on for ALA Annual – I’ll hold you all to check up on me there.

Aside from a lot of confusion with the shuttle we took from the airport, it was a stress-free trip. This was my first time in Texas, and I had a great time in the host city of Dallas. Almost all of my time was spent in the Downtown area, with a little exploring into the fringes of the Historic District. I did find time on Friday to go and visit the 6th Floor Museum located in what used to be the Texas School Book Depository where Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Kennedy from. The museum was very well done and took a look at Kennedy’s entire political career and the ramifications of his assassination, although with a large enough crowd it was a little difficult to see some of the exhibits without waiting.

Overall the food was very pleasing with a couple of excellent Tex-Mex places in close proximity to the Convention Center. Librarian Kate and I also found a decent Italian place for dinner one night that had good food and great prices. I understand that there are more and better restaurants in the Uptown part of Dallas, but travel there was a little outside of my means (I’m one of the folks that refuses to takes taxi cabs – if it’s under 2 miles, I can walk it).  I did find an excellent little BBQ Smokehouse in the Historic District called Sonny Bryan’s that had to die for smoked jalapeño sausage. If you’re in the area, I highly recommend checking them out.

In short, this was an excellent and educational conference for me. It allowed me to see a more sober aspect of ALA beyond what I normally find at ALA Annual. It also reinvigorated my desire to get involved with the organization. It was just the week before the conference that I had started to question whether my professional organization memberships were really worth it, since I felt that my job was taking so much of my time and effort. Attending this conference was exactly what I needed to see that ALA really is what you put into it. In order to reap the greatest benefits, you have to get involved. It also helps to have an excellent network of friends and colleagues to help make it great.

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Migration to Greener Lands

August 16, 2011 in Drupal, New Technology | No comments

A lot has happened since January 12, when I last posted here.  Starting an exciting new job, a full semester of classes, a couple of library conferences, and my summer class focused on developing the proposal to my special project.

One of the biggest changes that has just happened is that I am moving my blog. I mentioned back here that I was exploring the use of Drupal for my MLS portfolio as well as my personal/professional presence on the internet.  Well that has progressed quite nicely at frankskornia.com. Progressed nicely enough, that I have now moved my blog there.  So for those of you that have subscribed to Apprentice Librarian, please shift your subscriptions there and I look forward to hearing from you all.

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An Exciting New Beginning

January 12, 2011 in Employment | 2 comments

awesome1Something that has been in the works for a little over a month has finally reached an exciting new culmination today, and marks a new beginning for this Apprentice Librarian.

I mentioned in the post about my Fall 2010 semester that I had taken an extra course on digital archiving.  I talk a lot about this course over at my Memoria Praeteriti blog.  This course worked closely with VOICES of September 11th to build a platform to bring the Living Memorial project’s collection of digitized items closer to an archival standard.  It was a fascinating course that reinvigorated my interest in archival work and the current technological developments in that area.

To get to the point, there was a recent opening at VOICES for their digital archivist position.  With a strong recommendation from both the professor of the course and the current archivist, I interviewed with them.  I found out today that I have been offered the position and will be starting with them on Monday.

It is part-time and flexible, so it will mesh nicely with the internship I am doing this upcoming semester as well as my coursework at SCSU.  In addition, this is going to provide me with an incredible experience beyond the work I have been doing at Buley Library.  I must admit, though, I am a trifle uneasy.  People have a lot of faith in my capabilities and skills, but at times I wonder whether that is a little misplaced.  I consider the fact that I am only halfway done with the MLS and there seems to be tons of stuff still to learn and do.  I know I shouldn’t let it really bother me, and go in with an open mind ready to absorb what I need to understand.  I’m sure everyone has dealt with these niggling questions and doubts when on the precipice of something big and new.  The unease is nicely offset, though, by the excitement that I feel in opening yet another new chapter in my life.

One more thing – during my interview I did ask about whether I would be allowed to comment or write about what I would be doing at VOICES.  I will not discuss the stories of the victims families or survivors and witnesses; nor will I write about anything that is brought up during the organization’s workshops.  I will, though, write about the experiences and challenges I will encounter as a burgeoning archivist for a unique organization and project.

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The Apprentice Librarian and Drupal: In which the Apprentice Librarian finds hosting and begins experimenting

January 11, 2011 in Drupal | No comments

drupal-logo1One of the requirements for my MLS degree from SCSU is that I have to build a present a “capstone portfolio” that demonstrates that during the earning of my degree I have gained an understanding on several foundations of librarianship.  While not a particularly onerous task, I’ve decided to start building my portfolio during the time between sessions, so that when I’m wrapping up my degree I do not feel too pressured.  Simultaneously, I believe this is will provide a good base for me to build a website that I can use to represent myself professionally on the internet.  I am quickly approaching the time when I’m going to begin my job searching in earnest, so it would be nice to have something that is easy to present to people and displays some of the skills I have developed.  With that in mind, I decided that this would also be an opportune time to explore the capabilities of Drupal.  With all those considerations in mind, frankskornia.com was born!

First thing I needed to do was figure out my hosting solution.  After a little digging around, I decided to go with Dreamhost for a few reasons.

  • Their prices were competitive.
    • They were actually below a lot of the competitors, including LISHost
  • They offered a good range of features and capabilities.
    • They easily met the requirements for Drupal, as well as some other web software I want to play around with, like Omeka
    • They offered unlimited space and bandwidth – while I am not intending to be a bandwidth or space hog, it is nice to know that I won’t be concerned by issues like these.
  • They also included free domain registration with their standard practice.
    • Domain registration is not a lot of money ($9.95 a year) but it is nice to get something like for free.

After filling out the pretty standard form and submitting my credit card number, everything was launched and I found myself in possession of the frankskornia.com domain name and the myriad of options and features that awaited me as a new host subscriber.  Now it was time to roll up my sleeves and install Drupal onto my appointed server space.

Right off the bat, Drupal demonstrates its easy power as they have extremely clear and detailed instructions for installation.  In fact, I found I did not need much of the instructions (aside from the steps for creating a MySQL database and noting down the information) as Drupal comes included with an installation script that really makes it easy.  Once the files were decompressed and uploaded to the server space, it was simply a matter of browsing to my address and then clicking a few buttons.  The only stumbling block I encountered was when I tried to associate the database. I kept getting an error about the database not being found, and could not find any step that I had missed in the installation instructions.  Finally I took a closer look at the error message, and realized that I needed to distinctly enter the database’s url. Once I did that, everything went through very smoothly.

At the end of the installation process, I found myself with a very generic looking Drupal website, but there was something very important to note: it was ready for content to be added to it, with no further customizations!  I was floored by the fact that in a few minutes I had a generic, but still nice looking, website that I could start typing stuff into, and this was all done with a very minimal use of my technical knowledge.  I could see then why Drupal is so praised – because it is extremely easy and as I was to start finding out later, incredibly versatile. 

So, my first introduction to working with Drupal was a very positive experience.  I am planning to continue to write about my experiences in working with Drupal as I build my personal site.  Next in the series will be about my spending way too much time figuring out what stuff can do and then my upgrade to Drupal 7 and my impressions on that.

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The Year 2010 in Review: The Origins of an Apprentice Librarian

January 10, 2011 in Uncategorized | No comments

2010 has begun to wane in our rearview mirrors. It is still looming large enough that when we’re writing the date we accidentally put “10” instead of “11”, but quickly vanishing into that place that bygone years go.  For many people (and especially the introspective blog writers out there) this signals a retrospection of what the past year has meant to us:

  • What have we learned?
  • How have we changed?
  • Did we meet the expectations we set for ourselves?
  • What can we do better in the coming year?

I am not immune to this desire to evaluate the past year, so let the navel gazing begin!

Last year probably contained some of the largest changes in my life since I graduated from college in 2004.  I finally escaped from my mostly mind-numbing and absolutely dead-end job as a Staples retail associate.  The catalyst for this move was of course my starting to work on my MLS degree full time at Southern Connecticut State University, a decision I had made in June of 2009.  The most profound personal effect this has had on me is that it has finally given me clearly defined path to tread.  I had been unsure of what I wanted to do after graduating from college, and unsuccessfully pursued employment in a variety of different areas including publishing, insurance, and jobs with the state and federal governments.  It was all very unfocused and uninspired.  So 2010, marked the year that I finally made a concrete decision about my future and took the first steps on that route.

This was also a feet-first jump back into classes, homework, tests, and writing papers (I have writeups for Semester 1 and Semester 2). Fortunately, I seem to have adjusted well.  I am not finding the coursework to be as rigorously demanding as what I did for my undergrad work, and like usual the grading standards seem to be way below what my personal standards are.  For the most part, though, I am enjoying the material thoroughly and feel that I have found an area that intellectually suits my wide ranging interests.

Probably spurred on by five years of sending job applications into a void, I drove myself to try and become as involved as possible in the library world and to expand my network.  This got me involved with the Connecticut Library Association (CLA) and making connections on Twitter.  While doing this, I have found that, for the most part, the library community is pretty incredible – open and extremely inviting to new members.  It makes me feel proud to work on becoming a member of this community and I look forward to when I’m able to contribute even more.

I was able to attend a couple of conferences last year, which were both extremely educational and a ton of fun.  The first was the CLA’s Annual Meeting at the Mohegan Sun casino in April.  I feel this was a very good first experience, because it was a smaller conference so it was not as overwhelming as my ALA experience.  You can read about my thoughts and experiences at the CLA conference at the link above.  The second conference was ALA Annual in Washington DC in June.  This was an incredible experience that I am still reflecting on.  Once again, you can read my thoughts and experiences at the link above.  This upcoming year I plan to continue to attend conferences, hopefully adding the Association for College & Research Libraries one in Philadelphia this year as well as attending CLA and ALA Annual in New Orleans.  I am currently waiting to hear about a scholarship to attend the ACRL conference, as well as a poster session Librarian Kate and I proposed.  So hopefully there will be word here about those soon.

In short, last year was pretty much all about me plunging into the world of libraries and discovering what I was getting into.  This year I hope to refine and focus my goals and start carving a place for myself.  Hopefully, if everything continues as planned, I will have completed my MLS by this time next year and hopefully will have a job (preferably full time, but anything in the library realm would be nice).  I have a somewhat minor role with CLA now, and I am considering how much I want to continue my involvement there, since it’s hard to determine right now how much longer I will be in Connecticut.  On the shorter scale, I am looking forward to my upcoming internship at the Naugatuck Valley Community College library.  I also am working hard on developing my Drupal skills and building a new site over at frankskornia.com.  My goal is to migrate this blog there to be the main content, along with my employment information and capstone portfolio for SCSU.  I am also considering increased involvement in ALA (which would not be affected if I were to move to some random place in the country) and have started looking at the committee volunteer opportunities with the New Member’s Round Table – which I hope it’s not too late to pursue something there.  So yes, I have a mix of easily achievable goals and continue to build my ambitions and images. Let’s hope this year turns out to be as successful as 2010.

2011 here I come!

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Second Semester Finished

January 9, 2011 in Academic Musings | No comments

brilliant_mind_cs2Now that I have had a bit of time to unwind, it is time to reflect on this past semester and the courses I took at Southern Connecticut State University.  I am still trying to wrap my head around the fact that at this point I am more than halfway done with my MLS program.  The four courses I took this semester gave me an additional twelve credits, which brings me to 21 out of 36 credits needed for the degree.  This semester reaffirmed the belief I posted before that I feel I have found a profession that seems like a good fit for me.  Two of my four classes this semester continued my goal of getting the mandatory courses out of the way, leaving me only with my academic library course and the course that begins my special project, but more on that later.

ILS 506: Information Analysis & Organization

This course title is just a fancier way of saying that this is required course in cataloging.  I came into this course not quite knowing the full scope of material that would be covered, but at least having a good idea of what would be involved.  Knowing this, I was not overly concerned that I would have any issues with this class, and I was correct.  I found a lot of the information in this course to be self-explanatory and once I understood how to use certain tools, like the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, and the LoC’s authorities engine, it became very easy.  This course attempted to provide both a theoretical basis for information organization and a practical foundation for making the information accessible to users.  For the former, the professor tried to build a foundation on which the practical matters we learned could be applied to theoretical concepts.  I personally feel that it did not do so well for this, but this was not the fault of the professor.

I feel that this course accentuates some of the struggles that exist as librarianship tries to fit itself within the typical American education system.  Much of the matters that are taught to librarians are practical as much of the focus of ILS students is for practical work in libraries.  There is little need to emphasize on the theoretical beyond a basic understanding that gives meaning to why we do things in a certain way (for example the ways in which we select access points).  Yet, one of the main purposes of the Master’s degree in many disciplines is to emphasize theoretical research and to seek to grow the body of academic knowledge.  The MLS is caught in this limbo of trying to provide training in the knowledge and skills needed to run a library, while also trying to live up with the academic expectations of the Master’s degree in the universities.  This course seemed the same way, and by tying to meet both objectives, it spread its focus thin.

ILS 534: Technology in Libraries

I have really mixed feelings about this class.  It managed to be about split almost exactly halfway between usefulness and a waste of credit hours for me.  From my impressions this course would have been an ideal continuation from the subjects covered in ILS 501: Introduction to Information Technology (which I talked about in my posting about last semester here), and in a perfect world this would have been true.  Instead, half the material in this course overlapped with what was covered in my 501 course, while the other half was new.  As I think more about it, I feel that a reworking of both this course and ILS 501 into a single mandatory course would be the best direction to take it.

The new information covered in this course was interesting, and in my opinion very useful as well.  I loved finding out about library-specific technologies.  Material also covered open source technologies and developing technology plans (back the practical matters discussed above).  In particular, I appreciated the couple of assignments that required us to expand beyond the class required readings and explore topics of our own choosing.  It gave me a chance to brush off my somewhat rusty research skills (because to be perfectly honest, they haven’t really been challenged yet in this program), as well as gain knowledge that I am acutely interested in.  If you want to see what assignments I worked on, they’re all posted here.

Part of my mixed reactions for my experience in this class comes from the confusion that reigned at the beginning.  The usual instructor for this class was on sabbatical this semester, and there were issues setting up the account for the replacement instructor that had been newly hired. This meant that for the first several weeks, we had an interim instructor, who never really took the reins of the course.  It says something about us as students that we dutifully followed the schedule in the syllabus and carried on our own discussions with little instruction input.  Once the new professor took over, there was also a little confusion as she organized the inherited schedule and course materials.  This meant at times that due dates changed, or instructions for assignments disappeared or were modified.  In the end, we all muddled through, but it appeared to be a less than professional effort.

ILS 565: Library Management

From talking to other students in the ILS program who have been studying longer, this course was only very recently returned to the ranks of a mandatory course for the degree.  The story, as I heard it, was that once upon a time it had been required, but as emphasis in libraries shifted in the late 80s and early 90s to increased technology, focus on management skills and training moved to the background.  When there was a rise in concern about library students being unprepared for management duties in their jobs, it became an important item in the curriculum again.  I appreciate this wisdom, because this will most likely be one of the better courses that I will take during the course of acquiring my MLS.  The course actually balanced the theoretical with the practical quite well, with much of the readings focusing on theory, the assignments being primarily practical exercises, and the discussions falling in between.

One of the most notable lessons I learned during this course, was not from the readings or exercises, but rather the discussion that rose from one of the assignments.  This assignment – the final of the semester – involved us taking the role of a library director at a fabricated library and handling our in-box of issues.  The assignment was a fun exercise in applying what we studied and our own decision-making skills, but what was revealing was when discussion was opened in the class about our decisions.  It was fascinating to see so many different approaches to the same material.  Some people focused on information that did not seem important to others, or made decisions that baffled the other students.  One issue that cropped up that I feel may signal a pending crisis in librarianship, was the situation that involved a library employee that reported about finding pornographic links in a public computer’s browsing history and suggested filtering.  Many of my fellow students in the class approved the idea of filtering and made decisions to pursue this direction.  I personally was horrified to see this, as the idea of internet filtering should be fought tooth and nail, not willingly accepted by the rising classes of librarians.  Oh well, enough on this, I’m sure I will have plenty of opportunities to fight this fight in the future.

While I don’t feel that this course fully prepared me to be an excellent manager (is there even a course that can do this?), I feel that I at least have an idea of some of the responsibilities and pitfalls of being a library manager.  I will also have a better idea of what resources to explore when I’m in the position to need additional support.

ILS 599: Methods for Creating Digital Archives using Open Source Software

Wow, that is quite a mouthful.  I’m not going to go in depth too much with this course, since much of my thoughts and experienced are chronicled over at the blog I created for this class: Memoria Praeteriti.  This was an extra course that was funded by a large education grant to the VOICES of September 11th project.  It provided an excellent introduction to digital archiving and using the Omeka software to build a digital archive.  Please check out my linked blog for more of what I learned, and browse the other blogs of the class and my other classmates.  I must admit, though, this class did a lot to damage the decision I made early last year to turn away from archival work in the interest of ultimately being more employable.  I really enjoyed what I did in this class, and it made me realize how much I actually enjoy this area. I feel that ultimately, it will be the area that I end up in.

In the End

This was a fulfilling semester.  Despite some stumbling blocks the material was interesting and helped me dig deeper into what makes a librarian.  This upcoming semester (which starts in two weeks!) my schedule is going to be a little different.  I am only taking two traditional classes.  One will be on academic libraries, and the other will be about instructional design.  I had originally intended to start my special project course this semester, but the sections for that filled up very quickly.  I then decided that I will take this course during the summer, which allow me to focus better on my courses for the spring semester, as well as better focus on the special project in the summer.  For my third course, I will actually be doing an internship at the library at Naugatuck Valley Community College working on increasing my experience in the reference and instruction areas.  I will definitely be reporting more on that in the near future.  Until then, cheerio!

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Amazon Kindle 3 3G Review

December 16, 2010 in E-Books, New Technology | 1 comment

I have had my new Kindle for about three months now, so maybe it’s about time I actually wrote about what I thought, hmm?  This is not my first Kindle, since I owned the first generation one for about twenty months, so probably much of my review is going to be based on my comparisons with the earlier model.  This will be a very long post, so I’ll just put a split here to not overwhelm my front page.

Read the rest of this entry »

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A long time gone, but the roads I have wandered…

November 15, 2010 in Experiences | No comments

misty roadThis happened to me last semester.  I set up this blog, made a couple of posts, and then promptly vanished as the duties of school swallowed me whole.  It seemed to happen a lot quicker this semester; while I felt stirrings of guilt for leaving Apprentice Librarian neglected, they were not enough to counter the feelings of lassitude I felt during my few spare moments.  Finally as the semester is winding down (to go out with an explosive flurry of activity I’m sure) I have stolen some precious moments of times to come here and provide an update.

So far classes have been going really well this semester.  I have really enjoyed the subjects I’m learning and feel that they are valuable assets to my capabilities as an apprentice librarian.  Of course, two of them are mandatory courses, so I would hope that they would be useful.  I’m intending to do a wrap up of my courses at the end of the semester, like I did last time.  I will instead focus on some of the changes from last post.

One of the biggest changes is that I added an additional course to my curriculum for the semester.  This was Methods for Creating Digital Archives using Open Source Software, which meets all day on Saturdays and is primarily hands-on experience using Omeka to build a digital archive.  More on my experiences and thoughts in this course can be read at my class blog, Memoria Praeteriti.  One great thing that possibly will come from this is that I may be volunteering some of my time to the VOICES of September 11th project which is working to continue the memory of all those involved in the attacks on September 11, 2001.  This would not only be a great cause to devote my time to, but also provide me with additional digital archiving experience.

I continue to be involved with CLA and the New Member’s Round Table – or Interest Group, I’m still rather uncertain about whether we’re officially changing the terminology.  Unfortunately, my driving initiative here was stifled by the pressures of my classwork, I plan to retake up the mantle again once this semester eases.  This has become a constant refrain lately, “I’ll get to it once the semester ends.”

My volunteer work at the Guilford Free Library has continued.  I feel that I have been promoted slightly from a provisional volunteer that can shelve books and collect items for interlibrary loan to assisting in their digitization efforts.  I find it interesting how these things sometimes seem to happen at the same time, since the shift happened right about the same time as when I was starting my digital archive course.  I don’t think that played a factor in the shift, although it has helped afterwards, but rather the fact that I had studied history and was technically proficient.  Right now their project is in its infancy, spurred into motion by the Connecticut State Library’s digitization project, Treasures of Connecticut Libraries.  It has progressed in fits and spurts by different librarians, based on whether they have the available time to spare.  I’ve been enjoying this work so far and would love to become more involved than I am now.

One thing that all this recent experience in archival work has made me consider is that I really enjoy doing it.  It was my primary interest in pursuing my MLS, but I decided to set it aside in favor of trying to gain broader skills from library school to better qualify for open positions when I am job seeking.  Now I’m reconsidering that choice and where my path forward once seemed really clear, I’m conflicted over two paths.  It is important for me to make a decision in this regards, since I only have two planned semesters left, and a limited number of class slots to fill.  I’m sure it will all become clear though.

I believe that is about it now.  I am planning on finding time to blog more (especially since the semester is ending).  I have a couple of posts planned, including my somewhat tardy review of my new Kindle 3 I owe The Librarian Kate.  Most likely that will be worked on tonight (to the backdrop of Natalie Merchant) to be posted in the near future. Until then, happy trails!

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