Open Access Journals

A little presentation I made for my reference class last semester.

Forgive the poor sound quality.

Me, a Master?

I submitted my master's thesis project from a hotel room in New York in the week hours of the night a few days ago and I just found out that I passed!  Barring any catastrophe with my reference class this semester and its remaining two assignments, I am finished with grad school!!!!

It has been a wonderful program and a great experience.

Yahoo.  

International Librarianship?

I just finished my semester and I'll be honest, it rocked my socks off. I had a class in Young Adult Literature and one in the History of Books and Libraries (I know - THAT'S what heaven looks like). The class about books and libraries got me so jazzed that it's something I'd like to pursue. I've been thinking about getting a second masters when I'm done with this one, and I think I'd like to do it in History and study the history of books and maybe libraries (books first, libraries second). That way I can study a broad range of time (like, all of it) and isolate one common theme - the book. Awesome? yes.

Also, one of my dear professors has taken an interest in our move to Israel and we talked on the phone about possible opportunities I might have in Jerusalem. She said that I should spend a bit of time just getting myself into the library scene. Find out what library students in Israel would do and do it (You know, like "think about what at Maverick would do and then do that"). She said ask for tours of all of the libraries and archives, familiarize yourself with the faculty at the University. She advised not to show up and say "I'm a MLIS student and I'd like an internship" (which was my original plan but now sounds dastardly arrogent), but to get my feet wet and slowly become part of the library scene in Israel. That's right, the library scene! She suggested that I take the International Librarianship class that San Jose State offers in the fall and I think I'll do just that. She suggested I join the Israel chapter and get really involved. I'm really looking forward to the library opportunities this move will offer.

And here is where all the threads meet. If I were to do a Masters in history focusing on books and libraries I have this secret plan to study at all of the Universities where we live. If we live in Syria, I could study the book/library movement in at University of Damascus, or if we live in Egpyt I could study at Cairo. Well, I wouldn't even have to study at the Universities, I could just study the movements in the areas we live in - become an expert. Every region has a book history, and since the actual history of books, language and libraries is in the Middle East I kind of think I'm in for a treat.

Teaching Technology (The Blog Lives)

Sadly, during the most exciting semester of my library career my blog suffered tremendously. I had the most to write about, and I wrote the least!

Anyway, every Thursday night I help teach blogging classes as the local library and I absolutely love it. Today was my first class back from a short break, and it's just the best way to spend an evening. There was a dear elderly woman tonight who just couldn't keep up and I sat with her throughout the class and we worked together to create her blog and make a few posts. She actually typed on one of her practice posts "I am at the library tonight. A very nice young girl is helping me". How sweet is that!?

I had forgotten how much I LOVE teaching technology. It's one of my favorite parts of being a librarian. So, I guess we'll add one more specialization to the growing lists of specializations I'd like to have... archives, special collections, public libraries in general, outreach/programming, technology..... That kind of makes me a plain old generalist doesn't it?

Medieval Manuscripts Ahoy!

These are the clamshell boxes that BYU's conservator made for the Vulgate Bible "Bibila Sacra" and the Breviary - which is a book of religious devotions, prayers, things a religoius person should do and repeat.

This was  page from the Breviary - this is all written and decorated by hand.  It's absolutely stunning.  This letter is called an Historiated Letter.  

This past week I made an appointment with a curator of the BYU special collections to go see a few manuscripts that were created in the 14th and 15th centuries.  I was a little bit nervous too ask if I, a mere mortal, could view such precious items stowed away in the BYU vaults, but I realized "Wait, I am a Masters student in library science - I have some book cred!". 

Anyway, I had an assignment for my "History of Books and Libraries" class (which is blowing my mind) to look at a manuscript prior to 1500 and discuss some things regarding it's physical description, history and context, etc. 

Max can verify that I almost cried several times.  I'm out of control, I know.  It was really an amazing thing.  I'll post more about it later (because I'm slacking on my homework right now) but here is a link to the wiki I made for my assignment. 

Brooke's Manuscript Wiki

 The Mr.  let me take pictures, which was also amazing.  I looked at "Breviary, Toledo 1400", "Polychronicon (1342)", and a Vulgate Bible from the 1300's.  

I told Max afterward that I was pretty sure I wanted to go to book conservatory school.  We'll see how that goes.  

This is the breviary with it's original binding of Moroccan leather.   Amazing.  

What I Did Instead

I'm trying to get back in the swing of things as far as homework goes. This is my second time on campus today - nevermind that the first was only for an hour, an hour in which I met and chatted with two of my friends. I'm waiting for Max to get out of his night class and somehow my studying has turned into this:








Taking pictures of myself with my computer. However, I am taking a web design class and so far I'm really enjoying it...contrary to what these pictures may suggest.

Who Loves Lists?

Well, I guess I do. Who knew? Not only have I turned into a list maniac about Jordan and our Europe plans (you should see the spreadsheets), my school life has turned into listmania too! I have been working on the last big group project for my Information Retrieval class and I'll just tell you a little bit about what we have to do.

My group has to read 15 articles and create a searchable database to house them and records to represent them and vocabularies to search them by. The searchable part is what is difficult. We each read a few articles and then we had to create what are called pre-coordinated vocabularies and post-coordinated vocabularies for the concepts in the articles. The Vocabularies are the terms that you would search for in a library catalog or database. So we have to determine what the concepts of the article are and guess what terms would most likely be searched to put on our record. Each term or term phrase is associated with an article (or sometimes several articles).

The Pre-coordinated terms are the hardest I think because we have to combine several terms that represent the articles. Example: If the article were talking about how to train poodles we would create a subject heading string that looked like this "Dogs-training-poodles". But perhaps several more until we had adequately covered the article We have to anticipate the users search methods and make sure that the terms are enough the same (aggregation) and enough different (discrimination). (There may be many articles about Dogs, but as we start to descriminate the terms, training, poodles, it becomes more specific - make sense?)

Anyway, working as a group has also been challenging. One persons terms say "User Interfaces" and the other says "Patron Interfaces". They may mean exactly the same thing but trying to combine 5 people's different terms that use the same words for the same thing has been a tasky tootle. I volunteered for this part, and it has taken more time than I thought. It's not "hard", but it is time consuming.

All that being said, I have enjoyed them mental excersize of breaking information into its largest concepts on down to its smallest. There is something about disecting information that way that is soothing to me, like those little sand boxes that you rake through with a tiny fork. Call me crazy.

User. Content. Context.

So I started my Master's program today and there is something so invigorating about being in school again. Granted the setting is much different - library full of young republicans looking for dates vs. soft lamp light and my own bed - but pursuing a course of study to a specific end (an A) feels really nice. Today I read a few chapters from "Information Architecture for the World Wide Web" and I think this will be my favorite book this semester. What is Information Architecture I hear you ask. Well, in so many words it is the idea of structuring, organizing, and labeling information in such a way that it is easily findable and manageable.

Example: I organized my closet yesterday for the 90th time, but I really think this one will stick. I have it organized and labeled in ways that make sense to me (white t's, black t's, and colored t's on different shelves) and they are all easily accessible, and not over crowded, so that everything won't end up in a pile on the floor like last time. Think of information architecture like organizing your closet to minimize the time you spend searching for things. I'm excited that this course is focused on the web info with a splash of graphic design. Fun stuff.

Librarian-ness ahoy...part two

Yahoo! I got an email today from the San Jose State graduate school admissions...and they accepted me! I start in January, but I don't have to move to California or anything. I am beyond excited. I feel really blessed and can't wait to start!

Librarian-ness Ahoy!

About a month or so ago I applied for a library class (kind of like professional development) through University of North Texas. They actually have a Masters Program in Library Science and while this isn’t one of the Masters “classes”; it is still an opportunity to learn more about working in libraries, and, let’s be honest, a great resume edition. Well, today I got an email saying I had been accepted to the course! It’s not the hugest deal, but I’m pretty pumped about it. It lasts for a few weeks during October and I start tomorrow!

I should also note that I applied for Grad school at San Jose State. It is their Library and Information Science program. Yikes! I'm pretty excited. I didn't really think about doing it until the second to last day before it was due. One of my co-workers was accepted into the program and she really got me thinking about it. The program didn't require the GRE so I plunked down my 50$ and said "here goes". I would really like to get in, but if not I'll just apply again for Fall semester. woa.