Two Weeks

Well, I have officially made it through my first two weeks as an MLIS student!!!

For the most part, I am enjoying this program. The cohort concept is great; I love reading all of the responses from my peers to the various topics. Each individual's personal experience is always apparent and I like how the different viewpoints bring unique ideas to the same question. I still feel a bit intimidated by how many of my fellow students already have library experience, but so far I am keeping up. I feel like I've already learned a lot and continue to find everything interesting.

I do have a few frustrations with the program as well.

Primarily, the information continues to come from so many sources - emails, announcements, original syllabi, discussion boards. I live in fear that I am going to forget or totally miss something.

Related to that, a lot of assignments particularly reading material and video clips tend to show up on the announcements pages mid-week, once I have already planned how to allocate my time. And the last-minute reading assignments can be quite lengthy. Not to be a whiner, but it's hard to manage my time when new assignments are continually being added - I'd prefer if all of the readings were included in the original syllabus.

A smaller issue is I feel that our "Hot Topics" group is too large. A group of 4 or 5 could easily handle the workload and everyone would get more out of it and the presentation would be more cohesive than with a team of 13.

Overall rating: A- :)

And just as a test, I'm going to attempt to post a photo....

Literacy Advocacy

Today while researching the topic of "Library Advocacy" for my small group presentation, I was distracted by a link on the Friends of Libraries website about the 50th birthday of The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss. For this milestone, Random House is teaming with a literacy group, called First Book. For every birthday e-card sent to the infamous Cat via this link, Random House is donating one book to the First Book organization.
http://www.seussville.com/CITH_50th/

I of course sent Mr. Cat a card, and then emailed some friends and family urging them to do the same. It's really important to me to dedicate a significant part of my future career as a library science professional to promoting literacy for children. Adults also, but the earlier that you can introduce literacy in a person's life, obviously the more they can benefit. Looking at this website, and sending my little e-card contribution got me thinking - "why can't I start now?" Juggling a full-time job, a Masters program, and keeping up with my house, pets, husband, friends and family is certainly time-consuming, but I want to start looking for little ways that I can become more involved in the literacy movement.

I started by searching for national literacy groups, but decided instead to start with my own public library. I sent an e-mail to the coordinator of youth services....we will see what happens!

Associations

This week our hot topic for discussion is library associations.

In doing some research for my response, I've decided I would like to apply for membership to:

ALA http://www.ala.org/ala/ourassociation/membership/membership.htm
PSLA http://www.psla.org/association/memapp.php3

Within the ALA, there are 11 divisions. Given my interest in becoming a school librarian, I'd really like to be involved in the Association for Library Service to Children and the Young Adult Library Services Association. Members of both of these divisions are involved in programs advocating literacy programs for children and adults, an issue I am personally passionate about.

Crawling out from my cave...

I am actually amazed at how quickly I am picking up on some of the new technologies I am learning about in this program. I really consider myself a "late adopter" of technology - I'm usually the last to have the newest thing, but in a week of my MLIS program I have established accounts on numerous websites, downloaded more applications than I can count to my laptop, and in the past 30 minutes have gone from ZERO knowledge of RSS Feeds to adding subscriptions to both my Bloglines and Google Reader accounts. My friends would be impressed. ;) This is definitely good for me.

I am having some problems keeping up with the reading for both of my classes. After taking on Kuhn's Stucture of Scientific Revolutions, I couldn't bring myself to delve into the Discovering Computers 2008 text. I plan to catch up on the 200+ pages I am behind over Memorial Weekend.

I'm really looking forward to the on-campus weekend in July. I feel like that weekend will really give me more of a sense that I am "in school." My peers all seem like really fascinating people, and it's always interesting to see people in person. I tend to do a very bad job at guessing what a person will look like in real life. I've met many of my co-workers after years of working with them over the phone/email and been totally shocked by their real life persona. I'm sure it will be similar with this program.

Fleshmet

I enjoyed this vocab word from the OCLC article, "Content, Not Containers."

Fleshmet And old but revived term. Fleshmet is the past tense of fleshmeet, which means to meet a person in the flesh rather than virtually. As in, "Have we fleshmet?" Gartner predicts that by 2012 "70% of the populations of developed countries will spend 10 times longer per day interacting with people in the e-world than in the physical one."

I have a group of friends from around the US that I met online when I was planning my wedding on the weddingchannel.com. We've kept in touch and spend quite a lot of time online keeping in touch. Now that I am also doing my Masters program online, and I telecommute for my job 100% of the time, I definitely fit into the group that spends 10 times longer per day interacting with people in the e-world! SO I guess I am at the forefront of the trend. :)

Thomas Kuhn's - The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

I finally finished The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and amazingly by completion I managed to appreciate Kuhn's work. I listened to Steve Fuller's lecture on the work before I finished the book and while I know it is an understatement to say Fuller has done considerably more research of Kuhn than I, I still came away from my reading with very different ideas.

For my review due tomorrow, I am going to focus on how Kuhn's ideas on revolution relate to the article we read from OCLC on trends in information formats. Notes for me on similarities I observed:
- importance of debates/diverging opinions
- cyclical pattern
- new vocabularies/equipment
- anomalies spawning new ideas
- specialization

My First Week

Some late Sunday night thoughts on this first week of classes:

I do feel overwhelmed by the quantity of assignments, length of reading materials, and all of the various sources of information, such as the main discussion boards, individual course discussion boards, individual course group discussion boards, the announcements pages for each class, syllabi, etc. I tried getting organized today so that I have all my assignments in one place, but it does seem like new things continually pop-up. I guess my biggest fear is that I will flat out forget to do something or not realize I was supposed to do something. I'm also intimidated by the amount of time I will have to get everything done in addition to my full time job, but as long as I'm aware I am supposed to do something, I know I will take my best crack at completing the work.

On the bright side, everything I've read or listened to so far, I have found very interesting. Even though I work for a globally dominant IT company, I feel rather ignorant about emerging technologies, and if nothing else, I know these two classes will help bring me out of my cave. :)

My classmates seem like super cool people. People from all different states and countries, educational backgrounds, age groups, careers...

Assignments I've been able to absorb so far:
- NPR Broadcast on Digital Libraries
- Content, not Containers Article
- Why the Internet is the Way it Is
- Future of Blogging
- LIS2600 Installments 1 & 2

Things I need to catch-up on:
- Kuhn. Ugh. On page 4. I'm sure this is an interesting and relevant book or it wouldn't be part of the curriculum, but I really can't stand books that insist on using such ostentatious vocabulary.
- Listen to the Lecture on Kuhn, once I make more headway in reading.
- Still waiting for my "Discovering Computers 2008" text to arrive from B&N.
- Also, was unable to get Real Player to work during the online office hours tonight, which is wierd because I used Real Player all day for other webcasts.

Unfortunately, my head is throbbing right now, so no Kuhn tonight. Need to take a hot shower, lots of Advil and hit the sack.

Good night!

Purpose

This blog is for me to capture my thoughts, observations, comments and other thoughts during my first semester as a graduate student in a Master of Library Sciences program.