Keep Trying

Okay I guess I will continue to try. I am doing very well in LIS 2600 so hopefully I will keep a B average and not get kicked of the program. If I have to take LIS 2000 again then that is what I will do. I am hoping that the professors will either curve the final grade or give me an option to redo the essay that I received a zero on. I decided that this is what I want to do and I deserve to try to get the degree in anyway I can. I will keep trying until I have no choice but to give up and move on.

I don't know...

I am not as angry as I was yesterday. I am still considering quiting the program. I applied tot he program because I was looking for a career that is like the museum director and my used book store that makes me happy and pays the bills. From the classes I am finding that paper media are going to be replaced by electronic media. I hate computers, and always have. I love paper media. The fact that libraries are going more and more towards electronic media makes me depressed. The fact that I am hearing that libraries are loosing funding left in right in my classes means that I might not be able to earn enough to survive in the field. The fact that all the librarians on the panel on Fast Track weekend said that you need experience to get a job does not bode well for me. I have experience in a museum, a used bookstore and software support but not in a traditional library setting. I need to pay bills and I don't think I will be able to find a library job that will pay enough to quit my current job. I am currently on disability leave from my current job so I don't even know if I will be able to enter the workforce at all for awhile. I am having difficulty with my medical issues, and I don't know if I should bother with a program that is causing me this much anger and may never lead to a career that can pay the bills. Especially when the this degree is costing me a ton of money. I don't know...

Angry

So my grades are in for the essay and the exam for LIS 200. The grading was unreasonable. I know others have had the same the teaching assistants grading. I think I may drop out of the program. I am working my butt off. I have been off work since May because I have been experiencing random left side paralysis. I am doing the best I can. I was getting 100% on everything up until these last two grades. These last two grades are so ridiculous that if the other classes are going to be graded like this I will drop out. There is no point in busting my butt trying to get a good grade just to get a zero on a project that I worked 2 weeks on. The other day when I went out to look for used books I couldn't find any enjoyment. This was one of my favorite things. Not anymore. These classes have sucked the enjoyment I had out of books. All I can say is these courses have made me miserable and I don't need that in my life.

The Beach

So I am at the beach and so far everything is going well. I took the quiz without any problems. So far so good. I checked my group discussion which I am leading this week and no one has responded. I hope I get some comments before Wednesday otherwise the paper I have to write for the discussion will be hard. Oh well. I am going to lay on the beach and think about it.

Beach

So tomorrow I am leaving for the beach. I have purchased a Verizon broadband card to ensure I can do my quiz for 2600 and keep up with my online discussion. I am really hoping all works well. I am really looking forward to this vacation and I hope nothing bad happens with school to ruin it. Wish me luck!

I am nervous about the Fast Track weekend. I have spent the morning mapping out the locations of the buildings on campus and trying to figure out where I am going to park. I live about 1/2 hour from Oakland but I have only driven to it twice and that was only to go to UPMC Presbyterian. I realized I don't have any pencils so I have to go out and get some. I have no cash for parking and lunch. I don't know where to eat lunch. I don't know a lot of things. I shouldn't be worried about this. I have a test to study for, a paper to write, a project to work on, and my group leader discussion to prepare. I think I am beginning to become stressed. I am trying to keep myself calm. This will be over soon enough.

Why Are All The Idiots in Power

Reading about copyright laws makes me angry, sad and gives me a strong desire to get into politics or law. Of course if I went into politics or law I would have to deal with nit-wits. However I deal with those people on a daily basis and could potentially deal with them longer. I would I admit be quite angry on a daily basis, and the dream of making a difference may never become a reality. It is sad but I think I prefer a life of quiet among stacks of books to fighting for rights most of the public doesn't know they should have. I wonder if this is why all the idiots are in power.

Deep Breaths

I am spending my fourth of July weekend doing homework. This is kind of depressing but working full time and trying to get a Masters degree is hard. I feel like I flip flop between feeling like there is no way I can handle this and I should drop out of the program, and feeling like I am absolutely capable of doing this.

I just finished the Koha assignment after spending a couple days trying to get in. After finally breaking down and emailing Dr. Tomer I found out I had the wrong password the whole time. That would have been nice to know days ago. Now I am on to studying and reading and trying balance my life with school. I just keep reminding myself that it is only 2 years and it will all be worth it when I have a job I enjoy. Deep breaths.

Open Source Libraries

I believe that a global user database for libraries would be a wonderful idea. Making the information housed in the private libraries open to all the public, and not just the members of the institution, would allow all libraries to compete with the Internet. I know that when I was doing research for my undergraduate thesis I was unable to obtain the information I needed in a timely manner because it was housed in a private institute. I ended up finding the books on a online used books store and received the books in 2 days. I had to spend about $20 but it was worth it for the amount of time I saved. Also I now own the resource and can refer to it whenever I want to. If libraries are going to compete with the instant gratification the Internet provides they need to be more open and accessible to the common man. Libraries should become more open source and less proprietary

My Thesis Research

When I was an undergrad history student working on my thesis I remember trying to use the library but ending up buying most of my major resources. The topic was Women's Roles in Tudor England. I had a decent collection of books to start off with but not enough to write 50 pages. I went to my college library and was unable to find much to supplement my research. I found through the interlibrary catalog that West Virginia University Library had a excellent collection of works I coulc use. I got up early one Saturday morning and traveled to the hour to Morgantown to check out the collection. The collection was awesome. I found many so many sources I could use. I was so happy until I found out that I could not check them out. Not because the library did not allow you to check out books, but because I was not a WVU student or staff member. I was so upset. I did my best to photocopy the best material and wrote down some titles and authors of others. I knew I would probably not be able to make the trip to Morgantown again before the thesis was due and was very upset. When I got home I did a search on the titles I did not photocopy on the Internet and I found that the majority of them on used book websites, especially alibris and abebooks. So I purchased them for around 5 dollars a piece. For me the price was worth the hassle of travelling to Morgantown and photocopying at the library.

If this is how I felt I can imagine many others who are doing research feel the same way. If the books are available to be purchased and used at your leisure but are not available to be lent through the library it makes sense to purchase the books. If WVU had opened up there lending policy I would have become a frequent patron to there library. It was a wonderful library and had what I needed, but because I could not use the material in a way that I needed I did not return.

Well I found out that the google search library database already exorcists. In the version of WorldCat at www.worldcat.org. The only thing it is lacking in my opinion is the amount of eResources. It is well worth checking out and I think I will use it in the future and recommend it to my fellow library users.

Librarians Go Gaga Video

I thought I would share this with all my MLIS followers

The Children's Section

In one of my classes I was informed that the majority of public library users are parents with school age children. This seems to be a true statement to me. As a small child my mother took me and my 2 siblings to the public library once a week. Every week we would get out books from the wonderland of shelves that was the children's section. My brother and I would always try to guess how many goldfish were in the 100 gallon fish tank just outside the children's section. Now that me and my siblings have grown up my mother no longer goes to the library. It is sad but fits the statistics.

Library Google Search

I am going to share with you the response from my friend Kurt who is a programmer and website developer for Q-Industries in Washington DC to my question of whether a library collection could be search in a google-type way, however this blog will not let me cut and paste. So essentially he said it is possible and would be extremely useful to the academic community. That the best case scenario would be to digitize as much of the full text as possible. He also said a number of projects are already digitizing books and put on the web and that these could be used.

I really like the idea and can envision a situation where several prominent universities get together to create a google-type search hub for academic material in there collections and on the web. I believe this would be a huge step in the right direction for academic research on every level.

Zotero Presentation

I spent today trying to figure out how to use Jing to do my Zotero presentation. I used Jing to narrate a few lolcat photos before deciding to attempt the download presentation. I feel like an idiot and I think I should stupid but it is done.

The presentation is in the link below

http://www.screencast.com/users/MOmewitt/folders/Jing/media/0c4199f7-935a-41e9-83f7-072b1b84f02d

Medieval Manuscripts

My dream position within the library spectrum is to be a Medieval Manuscript archivist or preservationist. Looking over my book collection that have been accumulating for years I realize I have been collecting books in that vein. I have Anglo-Saxon/English dictionary, volumes of spectrum journal. hundreds of English and European Medieval and Renaissance history books. I have copies of Everyman, Piers Plowman, copies of original manuscripts dealing with Medieval and Renaissance woman's history, including letters from Elizabeth I. I have books on the Medieval and Renaissance art and books on books collecting and repair. These books make up over a third of my extensive collection. I have read most and never get sick of learning from them. I am not sure if I will ever hold the position I dream about, but either way it will be a great journey.

Will Libraries Survive

Yesterday my physical therapist asked "Do you think libraries will survive?" when I told him I was in the MLIS program. I told him I thought they would if they learn to adapt to the new technologies available. He replied with "But you can already find everything on the Internet. Why would anyone go to the library."

This I believe is a commonly held opinion. While this opinion dismays me I do not believe it to be true. There is much that has been published that is not available on the Internet. There are great works that people who do not read flip through books will never know about. This along with recent discussion I have had led me to contact my programmer friends. I am hoping that they might have a solution on how to make the library books easier to search. It would be great if we could come up with a google or bing for libraries but at the very least it will get a conversation started.

Knowledge = power = energy = matter = mass

"The truth is that even big collections of ordinary books distort space, as can readily proved by anyone who has been around a really old-fashioned secondhand bookshop, one of those that look as though they were designed by M.Escher on a bad day and has more staircases than storeys and those rows of shelves which end in little doors that are surely too small for a full sized human to enter. The relevant equation is:Knowledge=power=energy=matter=mass; a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Holethat knows how to read"-Terry Pratchett

This is one of my favorite quotes. It reminds me of my used bookstore with 100,000 books of varying types and conditions. I loved my bookstore and I loved the books. I loved every inch of the "knowledge=power=energy=matter=mass" that I called my own. I enjoyed passing it on to others and I felt that I was fulfilling a purpose. When the bookstore closed I felt like I had lost that purpose.

I entered the MLIS program in the hopes of recapturing that feeling of purpose. I am saddened by the focus on technology in my first two classes. Where I respect technology I do not believe that it in itself makes for a library or for that matter knowledge. I am hopeful that as I progress I will find that these classes are not the norm and that there will be more focus on the actual printed material and the maintenance, cataloguing, preservation and conservation of it. I am hopeful that I am not wasting my time on a degree that will be just as mind numbing and as tediously consumed by computers as my current career in software support.

The Invasion of the Nook

Yesterday I walked into my favorite Barnes and Nobles and was saddened. Immediately upon entering the door I was confronted with a kiosk for the Nook. Now I understand that Barnes and Nobles is trying to compete with the Ipad and Kindle but really do they have to place the kiosk right when you enter the door? The growing popularity of eReader and eBooks saddens me. For me a book is not just about the words but about an experience. I thoroughly enjoy holding a book in my hands. I love the smell of the paper, the way the spine cracks, the texture of the boards in my hands and the imprint of the ink. I love the cover art the summary on the dust jackets. I love the peace I get whenever I sit down and open a book to begin a new adventure. I understand publishing is expensive, and that publishing houses are struggling to compete with Internet for readers. Technology has it's place and I respect that. I just fear that technology will eventually destroy one of the few things that gives me complete joy in life.