USF SLIS: East Coast Connection

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1 hour 36 sec

About a month ago I was eagerly anticipating the six weeks I would have off for summer vacation. After three semesters of school, all the while working full-time; I was ready for a break. My goal was to make up for lost time reading. It is alarming to me how many in the profession don't seem to read, or take any interest in cultural happenings. It seems like there are two types of librarians; Those that have a genuine interest in the media their profession deals with, and those who became librarians, because they didn't have anything else to do. Sometimes I feel as if the latter outnumber the former, or maybe the former become the latter. Regardless, I plan to remain entrenched in the camp of the former. I became a librarian because I love literature, film, music, high culture, low culture, and pop culture. Oh yea, and because I didn't have anything better to do. 

I consider myself a pop culture librarian. I enjoy being able to talk to patrons and co-workers about books, music, and movies, from the past and present. I am always trying to fill in the gaps in my knowledge. Before my summer vacation the most glaring gap was my complete ignorance of graphic novels. My mission was to read as many of the classic graphic novels that I could. Because of my limited time frame, I focused on the most well known; Ghost World, Black Hole, From Hell, The Dark Knight Returns, Blankets, 100 Bullets, Fell, and probably a couple more.  Of course I liked some quite a bit, and others not so much, but more than anything I just enjoyed immersing myself in the stories, and pondering what they say about life, current society, and myself.

We are certainly past the point of debate in which we argue whether or not graphic novels belong in the library. That battle has been won, but one battle continues. Each of us have a responsibility to sample the fruits that we are offering the public. We will never read all the books or watch all the movies, but if you are not at all interested in exploring the library's holdings please find another job before it is too late.

Basic Information Sources/Services (6603) is a core class. It's a pre-requisite for many, so it should be one of the first classes taken. Brenenson is actually an FIU librarian, rather than full-time USF faculty, so the classes took place at the Green Library on FIU's campus. This is one of those unfortunate classes that must be taken at least partially in person, because there is no online fully online alternative. I have to admit to being disappointed upon completing this class. I was hoping that it would be an important step on my way to becoming an information wizard, but I don't necessarily feel any more adapt at finding information. I felt that we spent a lot of time focusing on information finding techniques that any undergraduate should know like Boolean logic, and not enough time figuring out how to handle certain types of questions. For example, every week we had an assignment, and the basic premise of the assignment was good. She would give us some sample questions, and we had to look them up, and explain the process. The problem was that I would spend about 30 minutes finding the information, developing the skills I need to become a librarian, and about 6 hours trying to figure out how to explain how I found the information in a way that she would find acceptable, as well as trying to figure out what source she was using to criticize my APA format which was never good enough despite the fact that I was using the APA guide. I recognize the importance of citing my sources, but I think in terms of skills that librarians need, finding information outranks knowing all of the ins and outs of formatting styles. How much energy should I spend trying to figure out if the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians is an encyclopedia or a multi-volume reference work, which are of course cited differently. I think the class is off balance, because it places importance on the wrong skills.

Not that any of this matters. In this program we pretty much need to take the classes when we can get them, and I wouldn't recommend avoiding this class anyway, because I don't know if there is a better alternative. It's just that I really want to learn to become an expert at finding information, and I feel as if this class only mildly improved my information finding skills.

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4 weeks 2 days

School serves many purposes. Arguably the most important of which is to develop the skills needed to be able to perform well on the job, but i think school has a more subtle, and possibly equally important role to play. School is an opportunity for us to develop our ideals and ideas. It forces us into a mindset where we must think about the meaning of our profession, and our potential role in it. For better or worse, I spend a lot of time daydreaming about the library I would like to work in. I like to think about how it would look, how it would function, and what role it would play in the community. The problem is that the library I see didn't exist in the past, doesn't exist now, and won't exist in the future. Sure, aspects of my fantasy library have, do, and will exist, but my utopic vision will never come to fruition. Furthermore, I don't have any desire to fight to make it happen, because it can't. I could use all my intelligence, and all my effort, and the end product will never look like the library that lives in my head. I am both saddened and liberated by this line of thinking. Like the way I feel after reading Kafka or Dostoyevsky. I know this to be true, but the dream refuses to die. Whether I want to or not, every day that perfect library is going to formulate in my head, and every day, I will be jarred back into reality by the screaming ringtone of a cell phone; Left to fantasize about the library that could be.

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8 weeks 2 days

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9 weeks 3 days

I have to admit to being what the annoyed librarian pejoratively calls a twopointopian. I believe that the library is in the midst of an exciting, transitional period. In large part due to new technologies, the library is being redefined as a space, and as a concept. I love this environment of change and experimentation, and I think it is healthy and necessary, but I think it is important incorporate some of the older library traditions into this new library world.

I led my first book discussion the other day. We read The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman. We had a group of about a dozen people, about half of which read the book all the way through, and the rest read enough of it to know what we were talking about. Now, it might have something to do with the controversial nature of the book, but we had a lively discussion about the book, current events, the election, environmentalism, and much more. The book discussion has been a staple of libraries for some time now, and for good reason. I think it is a perfect example of how in many ways the library of the 21st C. won't be that different from the library of the 20th. It is still a place where people come to feed off the ideas of others, digest them, incorporate them into their own, and discuss the changes in their mindset that occurred from this process. I'll just be sure to record the next one, so I can upload it onto youtube.

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9 weeks 5 days

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10 weeks 4 days