Adventures in Library School

The end of the semester has come once again. This one just flew by, and since I didn’t have an final exams, just final projects and final bits of discussion, I’m kind of left feeling that it hasn’t really quite ended yet. One nice thing about final exams - you do get a wonderful sense of closure when you’re done. It’s been an… interesting… semester. I think it’s going to wind up being one I remember more for stuff that happened outside of my classes than for the classes themselves. That’s not to say the classes were bad or anything (although one of them was so good that it made the other two look bad in comparison). But when I look back at some of the other stuff that happened this semester: Internet Librarian, the Symposium here in Tucson, the fact that our Library Student Organization had a pretty active membership this semester, the classes kind of take a back seat. I’m still trying to decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
And now after two days of mad rushing to finish up projects at work (school may be finished, but when I’m the graduate assistant for a winter session course and work continues throughout the break - at least I can do all of it virtually for now) and at home, I’m just about to head off to Colorado for the holidays to see family, friends, pine trees, Pikes Peak, mountain air, and with any luck, snow.

I can feel my stress level dropping already.

I like to think of myself as a computer geek and an internet geek. I’ve built computers and installed many different flavors of many different operating systems over the years. I’ve been on the internet so long that I remember what it was like before the web and all the pretty pictures (no, I’m not really that old - I’ve just been on the net since I was in my teens). I’m down with all the Web 2.0 social software goodness (although I do my best to stay away from YouTube - too much of a timesink). Heck, I’ve even annexed myself a computer science degree. But even with all that geek cred, I must confess that there is one huge, gaping, and increasingly embarrassing gap in my knowledge:

Instant Messaging

I don’t IM, I never have. I’ve blithely ignored this entire sector of the internet. The last time I did real time chat on the net was back in the bad old days of IRC (which, as far as I can remember, was just plain painful over dial-up, even back in the day before everybody was online). I just never really saw the point (particularly since I’ve now got free long distance on my cell phone and can call family to keep in touch).

However, it’s come home to me in the last couple of months that this is a bit of ignorance that I need to correct. However, I really kind of feel like I’ve missed the boat when it comes to IM, and I’m not even really sure where to start to learn a little more.

So, here’s my request to any of the IMing folks who are reading this (particularly the library folk): if any of you know of a good “IM for Newbies” kind of website, article, etc. could you please let me know about it? I don’t necessarily need info on how to choose and use software (I’m pretty good at figuring that out myself), but I’d love to find a basic guide to IM etiquette.

Oh, and if you’re feeling brave enough to tutor an IM noob, I can be AIM’d at advinlib.

Thanks.

For it is the day after Thanksgiving, and Talk of the Nation Science Friday broadcasts the highlights of this year’s Ig Nobel Prizes!

Ira! Ira! Ira!

You know, this is probably a sign that I shouldn’t be left alone with a bottle of wine, an internet connection, and a day off. For reasons that are no longer entirely clear to me, I decided to redecorate “Adventures in Library School” this afternoon. Fresher theme, nicer banner. Oh, and widgets. Mmm, widgets (gotta go see what other ones are out there one of these days).

At some point I do intend to do my own theme, but of course, I’ve been saying that since May. And there’s something slightly goofy going on with the banner image (at least on my computer). For the moment, though, I’m kinda liking this new look.

Let me know what you think, and if you notice that anything’s broken.

To all my family and all my friends (old and new), I wish you the best this Thanksgiving.

Enjoy the day, enjoy the food, enjoy the football if that’s your thing. If you’re spending the day with family and friends, enjoy the company. If you’re flying solo, enjoy the solitude. Relax, laugh, play.

Oh, and to my fellow SIRLS students, for heaven’s sake, put the homework away and take the day off. I am, and if I can do it, so can you.

Peace.

Our second annual graduate student symposium was a rousing success. Although attendance was down from last year, we still had a pretty good sized group of people show up, and the folks who came were all interested and enthusiastic about the presentations. Speaking of presentations, the slides will be up on the LSO website soon, when they are, I’ll post a link.

All of the presentations I attended were great! Even though this was a smaller group this year, I actually think the overall quality of the presentations was a bit better than last year - not that last year’s were bad, they weren’t - but this year’s were really good. Here’s a brief recap of the presentations I saw:

Shana Harrington’s presentation, “Are Irish Public Libraries Similar and/or Different than American Public Libraries?” was great. Shana did an internship at a public library in Dublin this past summer and got some first-hand experience in the similarities and differences between public libraries here and there. Really interesting stuff - there are a lot of commonalities, but a few surprising differences. Maybe one of the most surprising is the fact that the public libraries in Dublin rotate their staff through different positions (and different libraries) every 5 years - they have a policy of not wanting people to get too specialized in their jobs.

Jeff Collins’ presentation, “Digitization Projects” was also great. Jeff talked about projects like Google Print and Yahoo’s Open Content Alliance project. Google Print (I think they’re calling it Google Book Search now) has made a lot of news, and I’ve been following that story sporadically, but I haven’t followed news about the Open Content Alliance much at all, so it was great to hear a bit of an overview of what they’re up to. I really must spend some time learning about that soon. It was also interesting to hear some of the other worries that people have about such digitization projects beyond copyright issues. Copyright infringement issues make headlines, but issues such as how accurate the scanning is (and how much data might be lost in the scanning process) and how the constantly changing electronic formats are affecting preservation are just as important.

Wendy Begay’s presentation, “Digital Divide in Navajoland” was a real eye-opener. Having grown up in the southwest, I thought I was reasonably aware of the Digital Divide issues Native Americans still face, but it was sobering to realize just how big the divide still is. Wendy talked about a program that got funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation to provide computers and internet access to a number of Native American tribes in the southwestern US, and how the program worked out for the Navajo Nation. It was fascinating to hear about the issues - both technical and cultural - involved with this program, and since Wendy is Navajo herself, she has a great perspective on this subject.

Oh, and my presentation went well too. This was the first big presentation I’ve ever done, and I was a little nervous. However, I maintained my outward cool, the technology I was using behaved itself, and everyone I talked to afterward said they learned something. All good things, I think. I actually enjoyed myself quite a lot. I’m going to have to do this sort of thing more often.

Michael Stephens‘ keynote, “Library 2.0: Planning, People and Participation” was awesome. It was just the thing to get us all charged up about the profession at a point in the semester when the deadlines are coming up behind us fast and enthusiasm is starting to flag just a bit in the face of end-of-semester homework. It’s great to see some of the cool stuff that’s happening in libraries now. We’ve still got a ways to go in convincing everybody that we’re about a lot more than just books these days, but I’m looking forward to being involved in the changes that are coming. So, Michael, thanks for making the jaunt down to Tucson to talk to us!

The post-symposium reception was also great. I got to see some folks I haven’t seen in awhile, including Andrea Lemeiux, the past LSO president who was the primary force behind getting the symposium started last year (she’s now a public librarian in Los Angeles County). She came for the state library conference and stayed on in AZ a couple of days so she could come to the symposium, too. Very cool. As seems to be the case with professional development activities like this, the after-session get-togethers are usually as interesting and informative as the sessions themselves, and this was no exception. A splendid time was had by all (well, at least by me), and conversation continued on into the evening.

Not a bad way to spend a Saturday.

More photos can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/adventuresinlibrarianship/sets/72157603061383766/.

I expect that most of the Tucson locals reading this already know about the SIRLS Graduate Student Symposium that’s happening tomorrow, but I thought I’d give one last invite. The details about the symposium can be found here: http://www.sir.arizona.edu/lso/symposium06/schedule.htm, and if you’re in town tomorrow, stop by and see us. You don’t have to register, and the more the merrier.

The symposium gives us grad students a chance to make presentations in a lower-stress atmosphere than a conference might be, and it also gives us a chance to hear about what our fellow student are up to.

This year we’ve got people talking about: Internships in Ireland, Google Print and Other Digitization Projects, The Digital Divide in Navajo Land, Ethical Dilemmas in Reference, and more. (And wish me luck tomorrow morning: I’m presenting on RSS and I’m a wee bit nervous.) Our keynote speaker is Michael Stephens of Tame the Web, who will be talking about Library 2.0.

There will be a reception at Gentle Ben’s on University afterwards.

Last year’s inaugural symposium was a rousing success and a really great time, so come by and help make this year’s even better!

I probably shouldn’t have done it - I have a mountain of stuff to do this week that’s roughly the height of K2. But Monday was just one of those gorgeous, perfect days that occasionally comes ’round to Tucson: clear skies, temps in the 70s, light breeze, and it was just too nice to be cooped up indoors.So I played hookey from my mountain of work (and one of the nice things about taking all virtual classes is that I wasn’t really missing anything), and headed for one of my favorite places in Tucson, the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, which despite just having museum in the name is really a sort of combination of natural history museum, zoo, and botanic gardens. It also happens to be one of the very best places in the area to get out of the city for a little while and enjoy the wonderful weather.

I have to remember more frequently that the occasional break from school can recharge the batteries, and I think this one was needed (I may think differently during the next couple of days as deadlines loom, but probably not). It wasn’t really even a total time-waster slacker activity either. I got a chance to take shiny new Canon Digital Rebel camera out for a bit of practice - something I desperately need, my last SLR camera was a 20 or so year old Minolta that didn’t have such advances as auto-focus, and I haven’t had a lot of time to learn all the bells and whistles on my new toy (sad thing is, it ain’t all that new anymore - I got it in June, I just haven’t had a lot of time to use it).

And although my primary love when it comes to digital photography is still landscapes, I also got a chance to practice photographing animals, and I think I’m getting a little better at that. Not good enough to go looking for a job at National Geographic, but better. The trick, of course, is to be patient (stop laughing, Mom, I can be patient when I want to). Of course, I think the other trick is really knowing your gear inside-out - I took a lot of really strange pics yesterday before I realized that I had somehow managed to get it set to a fairly slow shutter speed - not the best of settings for recording moving animals. But even some of the mistakes came out interesting, like this one of an ocelot:

The best of the photos are up on Flickr at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/adventuresinlibrarianship/sets/72157600433239241/ if anybody wants to take a look.

If you’re not a football fan you might want to skip this post. And if you’re a Cal fan, you definitely want to skip this post. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.

The Arizona Wildcats have not done a great deal to win me over as a fan in the year and a half I’ve been at UA (I’m still first and foremost a Colorado fan when it comes to college ball). But every so often they manage to pull off something amazing.

Like today.

When they handed a loss to 8th ranked California on national television for their homecoming game.

Alas, I was not at the game (one thing I don’t like about grad school is that it’s kept me too busy to even contemplate attending sporting events - I still haven’t ever been to game), but I did get to watch it.

The first half was pretty shaky, and I feared the worst (the Cats haven’t had the best of seasons so far), but whatever pep talk Mike Stoops gave the guys at halftime worked wonders. They battled back from trailing by 14 to leading by 7 (a lead which eventually dropped to 4). They had some very lucky breaks: there was a very bad pass interference call on a Cal interception that broke their way and saved their bacon, and they also got lucky when the Cal touchdown that would have cost them the lead got called back on review because the receiver had stepped out of bounds.

But those two interceptions that won them the game? Oh, those were sweet. So very sweet.

Damn, I love this game.

GO WILDCATS!

It’s weird sometimes how one topic can pop up in a bunch of different places at once. There’s been a debate going on in my library management class right now about library education, and the real value of the MLS degree. A few of my fellow students (and I’ll admit, I include myself in this group) are frustrated that our classes are focused a lot on theory and that we’re not getting very much practical experience (or that any practical experience we might have is discounted because we don’t yet have our degrees). Then I come across two very thoughtful blog posts from folks about the current state of library education and the value of the MLS degree, and some of the issues that arise from a degree that’s focused more on theory than practice. So, please, before you read on and hear my thoughts, go read this post by Josh Neff and this post by Nicole Engard. I’ll wait.

Josh made the point that as the new grad, his more experienced colleagues are fond of joking whenever some sticky situation comes up, that “I bet you didn’t learn about this in library school.” To which I only have one thing to say: Why in the name of God aren’t we learning how to handle real-life situations in library school?!?!?! We’re getting a degree that is to prepare us for professional practice, so why on Earth is it assumed that we don’t need anything more than a theoretical background to enter professional practice?

Nicole mentioned, “We need to require on the job training like they do for teachers (student teaching). The professors instructing us (most of the time) haven’t been in a library in a while and don’t know about the real changes that are going on - by making students work while they go to school we can hope that they’ll get more out of their education.” To which I say I absolutely agree!

To make my point a little clearer, let me offer a couple of other examples from still other professions. When you go to Medical school you have to learn theory, but to get your MD, you also have to get practical experience with, you know, real patients. When you get your nursing degree, you have to learn theory, but you are also required to to get practical, clinical experience. In my opinion, this does a lot to engender my respect for those professions. I know that even if my doctor is just out of med school or the nurse assisting with some medical procedure is just out of nursing school, I am *not* the first patient they have ever interacted with. This gives me some confidence that even if they’re new, they have some experience behind them and they know what they’re doing.

So, why do we send MLS grads out into the world thinking that the theoretical background we get in library school is enough? I do *not* (I emphatically do *NOT*) dispute the need for MLS grads to have the theoretical background we get - part of the point of getting an advanced degree is that it’s supposed to give you that deeper, advanced theoretical background. But I think we do ourselves a disservice as a profession that we don’t also see the need to give people entering the profession the same kind of practical experience that is part and parcel of the training in other professions.

It’s not that we don’t need the theory and the understanding of the role of librarianship that we’re getting in our library education programs. We do. But if the point of being a professional, is the ability to apply theory to practice, then we’re getting only half an education if all we’re learning is the theory. Medicine, nursing, and education are three professions that understand the value of practical training as an integral part of the educational experience. I sincerely hope that librarianship will learn this same lesson soon and start beefing up their requirements for practical training (making internships a requirement of graduation, instead of just an optional course would be a good start) as part of library science education.