habitually probing generalist

It really should be current and future classes, but that doesn’t have quite the literary ring to it.

Current classes

Advanced cataloging is going well.  We’re working our way through several of the SCCTP‘s Basic Serials workshop sections with our local trainer.  My final project is going well as you can see from my post Monday night.  I have several more articles to read and abstract/annotate, but I have a month basically.

In Indexing & Abstracting, I received my BOTBI in the mail yesterday and I was very pleasantly surprised.  It’s kind of funny and I would say that I’d laugh at myself, but I remember how utterly distressed I was this time last week.  Some of the sections I thought I had least indexed got some very nice comments.  And a few other things I did that I thought were just normal also received nice comments.  Of course, I dropped a locator or two accidentally and I had one blind reference, and could have collapsed a See reference or two or turned a few into double entries.  The first few were due to no time left for proofing and the last few were choices I made.  The main comment was that I did very deep indexing.  But then I thought that was (and it was) the assignment.  Maybe my "deep" is just different and deeper than others "deep."  Leave it to a philosophy major….

Today I need to finish writing up my decisions on indexing another format, which is this blog, and maybe go back and index the personal and blog names from the first post or two that I did before I had decided how to do those.  There’s just one or two small assignments after this, and I have one to make up still.

In Metadata we’re currently learning about OAI-PMH and working on our static repository page.  I’ll be using DC simple (required) and MODS.  I’m going to see Tim Cole, one of our co-instructors for this part, tomorrow.  I think I have a good understanding of the concepts of OAI-PMH, the assignment requirements, and how to encode my bib citations in MODS.  I have to take a closer look at the assignment because we have to crosswalk our "advanced" format into DC.  I don’t think I can just construct my DC records. 

But what I’m going to see him for now—you have to promise not to laugh—is for help in getting the appropriate xsd(s) and namespaces into oXygen so it’ll do the heavy lifting for me.  That was my biggest problem with the 1st assignment.  I’m pretty sure that I know which xsd(s) and namespaces to use, but that all important practical stuff is what we really blew through, or more accurately past, in the first week of class.  Once I get all that worked out, I’m thinking this assignment might not be too awful for me.

Then there’s one more major assignment in Metadata.

Future classes

It seems I don’t have a time ticket for registration for either summer or fall since I’m graduating.  I turned in my CAS paperwork with my advisor’s signature Monday, but it will take the University a few weeks to get it together.  So, I’ll really be pushing it to get registered for Thesaurus Construction in Summer I.  The Fall classes I want could possibly fill up, too, before I get to register but I’m keeping calm. 

I went and talked to someone yesterday to verify my hypothesis about not having a time ticket and she will be getting chocolate and/or flowers soon.  No details required, but I’ll be getting my Summer I class assuming the University doesn’t seriously dork me around.

I also sent an email yesterday to lobby for the advisor that I want for my CAS program, and I was told that it was a go.  The really nice thing about our program, and our professors, is that you can really talk to any of them; so I do.  I actively talk to a small handful regularly and another half dozen when the need or mood strikes.

So, I want to give a quick shout-out to Dr. Carole Palmer, my MS Advisor extraordinaire!  As I said in my email to the powers-that-be, I have no doubt that I will continue to discuss my educational and career plans with her during my CAS and into the future on a regular basis.  But I’m happy to announce that Kathryn La Barre will be my CAS Advisor; it just makes sense based on my focus on information organization.  I had already "adopted" her as an advisor when I first started considering applying for the CAS, anyway.

On to Fall semester….  I’ve already talked with Carole and Kathryn.  I talked with Dave Dubin Friday night at Symposium, and I have an email out to Jerry McDonough asking about a new course (more in a minute).  I need to track down Allen Renear and verify what a few of the others have told me, and then there is the issue of the "missing" time ticket so that I can actually enroll.  That all said, here’s my current list and thinking:

• 526LE  Searching Online Info Systems with Lynn Hanson
• 590EPL  Electronic Publishing & Info Processing Standards with Julia Flanders
• 590FO  Applied Ontologies in the Natural Sciences (new) with Allen Renear
• 590IML  Information Modeling with Allen Renear
• 590TML  Topic Maps: Theory and Practice (new) with ???
• 590TR  Information Transfer and Collaboration in Science (new) with Carole Palmer

I know that I really need to taking Searching, someday.  My understanding is that it may also be changing very soon.  It has been a pretty much completely DIALOG-based class for years.  Supposedly by learning such a powerful, structured system we will acquire powerful, transferrable search skills.  Yes.  Maybe.  I have my doubts as to how transferrable.  If (most) other systems aren’t near as powerful then what good did it do to learn so many DIALOG specific commands, etc.?  There must be ways to teach important, and deep, searching skills with other search "systems;" ones more likely to actually be used nowadays.  So I’ll wait and see what happens.  Besides, just look at the rest of that list, would you?

Electronic Publishing is somewhat peripheral to my main interests, although an interest, but then I realized it’s being taught by Julia Flanders who I really enjoyed in the TEI workshop earlier this fall.  But, it will be a distance ed class, and it is secondary.  I have secured permission to enroll though.

I have been meaning to take Info Modeling with Allen for a while now, and I have secured permission to enroll in it also.  (On-campus students need permission to enroll in distance ed classes.)  But both Dave Dubin and Kathryn La Barre have told me to take Ontologies.  I think I’m agreeing with them, but I want to pop in and see what Allen says.

Topic Maps.  Dave Dubin told me to take it.  I forget who is teaching it, but someone BIG.  This is the class I have an email out to Jerry on.  He is not the instructor but he has some insight into it.  I’m also going to do a bit of research into the topic and see where topic maps currently sit in the world of info organization.  I’ve heard of them, but not really payed them any attention.  I think it fits my focus well, but then it sort of depends on where the class itself is focused.  Have secured permission for this one too.

Then there’s Carole’s new class on info transfer in the sciences.  Yes, it is peripheral to my main focus.  But it is a huge interest of mine:  Inter-, trans-, and multidiscplinarity, scholarly communication, info transfer, knowledge construction, and so on.  I really enjoyed 590CD2 Current Topics in Collection Development with her, and this, this is her specialty.

You know what?  Carole’s class isn’t the slightest bit peripheral.  I just have to think of it as part of the user-based portion of my education.  I have read enough of her work to be worried that all of the info organizing we’re doing might not actually be helping scholarly users.  If they find and use information in ways different, or at least orthogonal, from how we are organizing and classifying it then we are doing them a serious disservice and even hampering "progress."

So many important decisions.  And no time ticket to register.  I’m not really too worried though, because I’m fairly sure I will be let in the on-campus classes and one of the distance ed classes no matter what.

There’s also the question of how many classes I will have to, or will, take based on what kind of employment I secure.  If I get an hourly job (or two) I can do whatever I want; and that is 2 classes, or possibly 2.5 (which there really is no such thing).  But if I get an assistantship then that will determine what I "have" to do.  I may well take 3 anyway based on what is being offered. 

I am so excited about my adventure!  I am a lifelong education geek.  So be it.