What is your Library School concentration?

People in the library often ask me what my concentration in Library School is and I never really know what to answer. When I started the program, there were a few concentrations available such as digital libraries, school librarian and children's and youth services, but I found some of the courses under the digital library tract (my primary interest)to be ones that I did not wish to take. I have another Master's degree and I took some of those courses, or similar courses previously and I wanted to use the school experience to learn something new. I found out that I did not need to select a concentration and as long as I took the required courses, I could take whatever elective courses I wanted.

We got email today explaining that concentrations would be available in the future--back again, I suppose and I looked at the chart with interest to see based on the courses I have taken and plan to take where I fall in terms of a concentration. And it seems that I fit in most closely with Digital Libraries. I wonder about some of the choices they made, some classes would seem to be a better fit with the concentrations than others but overall with a few exceptions, I seem to fit in the Digital Library track.

A new e-reader

There was a story in the New York Times earlier this week on a new e-reader called the Readius. It is small and can fit into a pocket but the screen folds out which makes it easy to carry and yet provides about 22 linkes of text. It has wireless capability but does not seem to have a keyboard which I would like because I often take notes when I read. I would really like to be able to bookmark sections and annotate while I read. I have never liked writing in books and now that most of my books come from the library that is not possible anyway. I often take notes in a small paper notebook when I am reading but I have found that if I finish the book and pick up the notebook to see what I found interesting about the book, my notes are hard to follow because it lacks the context of the book.

An e-reader that has a keyboard would allow me to take notes and I like the fact that many of the e-readers can hold several books at a time. Imagine going on vacation with one device and not having to tote 10 books along with you.

Typographic Art

I loved the posters from Ork. I bought one for my husband for Christmas--the one of Manhattan. As a former Philadelphian, I am hoping that they will do one of the neighborhoods of Philadelphia.

I heard about the site, Wordle which allows you to create art from tag clouds. I used my resume to create
this wordle.

It is an interesting visual representation of my career to this point. When I look at it, I see many of the activities, places and concepts that are important to me and I think describe the work that I have done.

You can vary the font and color scheme in this program to create your own wordles. It is fun and illuminating at the same time.

Nearing the End--INFO 780

I am 2.5 weeks away from being finished with INFO 780 Special Topics in Digital Reference. There is still a lot to be done. I owe 2 new pathfinders and 1 updated one for the Internet Public Library. And, there is a group project that is due this Sunday. My part has been finished for a while but I missed some things in my draft and revised that this morning. All that is left is putting it together which is work but most of the thought and research work has been finished.

I am developing new Pathfinders for Choosing a Cat or Kitten and Finding Mystery Novels. I have drafts of both of them and am continuing to research the topics. The research is fun as always and I have found some interesting new sites to include.

I have been working this morning on updating the Celtic Culture pathfinder. The pathfinder that exists is good and well organized but many of the links are now dead and new ones need to be found.

We also have a couple of small things due such as an analysis of our own contributions. I find this somewhat difficult to write but have an idea of how to approach it that should work.

We had a discussion post due this week about technological and social changes that we think will affect digital reference in the future. I wrote about the utility of bibliomining for improving digital reference and also suggested that I think that notions of privacy are changing and that will affect digital reference and the services libraries offer. I expect the privacy part to be somewhat controversial and am interested in the comments that I will get.

The Fisher Boy by Stephen Anable

I just finished The Fisher Boy by Stephen Anable. It is set on Cape Code, mostly in Provincetown with some forays to Truro (although as the author notes, not a depiction of Truro that is geographically accurate) and Gloucester, MA. Mark, the main character, is part of a troupe of improvisational actors who are looking for bookings in the summer.

Bad things happen in Provincetown this summer, beginning with a dead dog deposited on the steps of the party that always opens the season and a murder of a friend of Mark that soon follows. Added to the usual crush of summer residents is a group called the Christian Soldiers and young blond-hair people who are pan-handling and claim to be from a Scandinavian ship. Added to this is the opening of an exhibit of the paintings of Thomas Royall that includes information about a utopian community that he founded in Truro and that ended badly.

All of this comes together to make a kind of Cape Cod-gothic novel. I doubt that it really conforms to the true gothic genre but there is something about the baroqueness of the plot that reminded me of gothic novels.

As a lover of Cape Cod and a lover of mystery novels, I enjoyed this book greatly.

Pathfinders

In my current course in Library School, Special Topics in Digital Reference, one of our assignments is creating Pathfinders for the Internet Public Library. Pathfinder is another word for subject guides which help the user find information or resources related to a particular subject.

I have chosen to update one pathfinder on Celtic Culture and develop two new ones: Choosing a cat or kitten and Finding Mystery Novels. I think that the current Celtic Culture pathfinder is well-organized by needs to be updated because many of the links are currently broken or the website has not been updated in the last few years.

The research for "Choosing a cat or kitten" has been pretty straightforward--there are so many good and active organizations that have published guidelines for choosing a cat. I even found one that includes a strategy for choosing a cat from a shelter with pretty specific guidelines for identifying the cat with the personality that you seek.

The mystery pathfinder is great fun to research but organizing it is another issue. There are so many types of mysteries and some many sites to choose from. Right now, I am listing them and annotating the websites but it will be interesting to go back and figure out the best method for organizing it.

Content Representation

I recently finished my 8th course in Library School, Content Representation. It was a truly excellent class. The readings were great, challenging and informative and the professor was superb. When you asked a question or introduced a topic, she was always able to provide more articles to read so that you can learn more about the topic.

The assignments were quite interesting as well. The major deliverable was a prototype mini-thesaurus and there was also a group project which involved indexing images that are currently held at the Free Library of Philadelphia. There were also two papers assigned to discuss the indexing process and the group process in which we set parameters and agreed on consensus indexing terms.

I found the projects fascinating, particularly the group one that involved agreeing on our indexing terms. It was a fairly difficult assignment, not because of complexity but because of the need to come to agreement. There were times when I thought that terms assigned were, in fact, incorrect, but the difficulty was in finding a way to challenge them that was not personal or did not cause greater problems in the group.

I am sure that this is a real problem in working groups so it was interesting to experience it in this setting. This was definitely one of the best courses that I took in the Library Science program so far. I can see myself referring to the readings later in my career.

Last week, we attended the annual Mayan Weekend and one of the first talks was about whose story or whose version is reflected in books, histories or museums. In many ways, content representation is like that--you determine what subjects best describe a book or image and that effects how a item is perceived and how it can be found.