The fiction we read as children, pre-adolescents, adolescents, and possibly even as adults has a lot to do with who we become. I can directly map the books I read (and a little bit of TV and movies) into the person I am, and as a geek feminist and a…
Due to a confluence of events, I’ve come to realize that I have become part of the problem, at my library, when I initially set out to be part of the solution. That’s a short, trite, and unfair characterization of what’s going on, but that’s why I’m blogging about this,…
I’m fortunate enough to work in a library that has a pretty active new-, future-, and experienced-but-interested-in-new-librarians’ issues group (was that a parallelism win or fail? who can say?), Future Librarians and Information science Professionals, or FLIP, which was definitely one of the things that I found attractive about the…
One project stands between me and full librarian status! (Unless you’re one of those sticklers who thinks you have to have some number of years in the field, first. But my title, once I start work, will be both Assistant Professor of Library Science and Web Services Librarian–I hope I…
I make no secret of my loathing for summer classes. It isn’t the standard “I’d rather have a break,” though I suppose that factors in. Rather, it’s the inherent lack of balance. The summer semester at Pitt is 3-4 weeks (depending how you count) shorter than the other two, and…
I’m officially finished with my second semester of library school. It was an inauspicious ending, with my final project for the reference class cut short by travel to my partner’s grandmother’s funeral. (Family comes first, even at the end of the semester.) I got fine grades in my other two…
I’ve changed my summer course schedule twice, now. On the bright side, all of this fiddling has left me with courses I’m excited to be taking! INFSCI 2955: Special Topics: Systems – “Web Engineering†(Monday nights) LIS 2850: Library’s Role in Teaching and Learning, aka Library Instruction (Four weekends, Friday…
The argument over whether the MLIS is useful/relevant/necessary to library work, particularly in academic libraries, has raged on for years. I admit, having been through roughly 2/3 of an MLIS program myself, now, I’m a little more on the “no” side than the “yes.” I’m centrist enough to see both…
I was in a bit of a tizzy last night, and cooler heads have reminded me that sometimes rebuttals happen. Still, the rebuttal (which made a few sweeping statements of its own, I thought) was pre-economic-downturn. The special libraries that decreased the size of the applicant pool are no longer…
