When I applied for my 2nd LIS degree program—CAS—one the things I had in mind was the opportunity to gain more and differing experiences. It was not simply a ploy to get more classroom time.
There are multiple ways to become educated and I wanted more of several, but especially the “big two.” Somehow since then, I keep seeming to temporarily forget the experiental part of my education.
It seems I have inadvertently taken care of that for myself. I have a 25% GA-ship as the Serials Cataloging GA, which I sincerely adore so far. I definitely hope to keep this job for the remainder of my time here; unless they want to employ me doing something even more exciting.
I’ve taken on some extra hourly work helping with the new Tech Services web pages. These pages are badly needed and is only a couple hours/wk for a limited time period. Just need to get busy on it.
I’m down to broadcasting one LEEP class a week now. That leaves 7.5 hours/wk more that I “could” make up in ITD. Matt says there is some Webby stuff that could be done, from home even. That might be nice seeing how with the way the semester started I never did get used to coming in any more than the minimum hours required for my broadcasts.
I have just joined an LSTA grant-funded project at the IFSI: “In Memory of Our Heroes: Developing a Digital Image Collection of Illinois Firefighter Line of Duty Deaths (IFLODD)” [scroll down]. For now, I will be working a few hours/wk, primarily on their thesaurus, FireTalk. It needs some basic clean-up work, along with some serious expansion to handle the line of duty deaths topic. After I get trained I’ll be able to do much of it from “home,” also.
Beginning next semester, it will morph into a 25% GA-ship (most likely) and will include a few other duties as the project moves into its 2nd phase. My job will still supposedly consist mostly of cataloging and thesaurus work. I hope so, as the other, while “good for me,” is not stuff I care much to do.
I now seem to have the experiential locked up for the rest of my time here. This doesn’t mean that the right small opportunity can’t be embraced, but that basically I’ve got the main roads mapped out.
I managed to catch up with my advisor to let her know about the newest job update. She agrees that it is a good move for me. Instead of just doing more theoretical thesaurus work, I’ll be able to work on a production thesaurus and also learn how it is then linked with the catalog and this digital library project. More “bridge” preparation for me. She is definitely seeing me as a “bridge worker,” too.
She also asked me to help with a presentation she was asked to give in a few weeks to Dr. Weech’s Global Perspectives in LIS class. She wants me to pull a few of my slides on internationalization from my “Free the Authorities!” presentation I gave last week. I believe it’ll be on the morning of Halloween.
Kathryn and I joked that I wouldn’t really have to do anything extra but pull those few slides and talk about them. But we really both know better. I could do that, possibly. But that was a small part of my presentation and was only addressed at a fairly superficial level. Also, there were good deep questions that I was unable to answer. So am I going to do a bit more before speaking to a class on international librarianship?
These are the sorts of things I need to be doing, as stressful as they may be. It’s only a matter of time before I’m down to two jobs that are exactly the sorts of experiential learning that I was hoping for when I decided to stay for this degree. And the fact that there are so many linkings between these experiences and my intellectual interests is so sweet!
For some higher level discussion of LIS education, see this and the things Jennifer Macaulay, of Life As I Know It, points to. I have seen these pieces, and others in the past, that I would love to engage with. I somehow don’t seem to have anything to add. But I know that cannot be right. I mean, in essence, I’m getting 2 MSLIS in a row. I should have much to contribute to a conversation on LIS education. I think my conundrum is that I don’t have much to add in this medium. A nice long conversation, some essay length “discussions” back and forth, and so on. The best I could say in a reasonable length blog post is that it is a very complicated issue. *Sigh* Oh well, I generally agree with these folks. The practical is, well, practical. And where the hell is my theory (and history) and intellectual rigor?
