Conference going

This is in response to Librarienne’s post about going to the ALA conference.

I hope the video is far less boring than the conference itself!

Funny stuff

Graduate school

In some weird evolution of life, space and time, I found myself accepted into a library science school as a graduate student. I never expected to be accepted as I applied three weeks late, am in my late thirties with the only library experience coming when I was an undergraduate and I worked in the library re-shelving books and doing other unrelated librarian things.

And I will be honest, I detest the idea of becoming a librarian. Librarian has such an undesirable connotation that it really creeps me out. Intensely! But there is no way around the label since my interests are in archives, conservation and possibly special collections. And these interests might be stretching it because I will be honest, my idea of what people in these areas do might be completely off from actuality. I do know some individuals doing graduate library science course work and they seem so different from me, which is also concerning.

There are also some things I question about information science. I don’t think digital is the end of technology as we know it and we might find ourselves in an information black hole with all the information saved and stored digitally that won’t be compatible with the next newest technological feat. In today’s information age, too much emphasis is placed on information saved requiring a software program to retrieve it and everyone knows software is updated, becomes obsolete, and new software is developed. And with this cycle, information scientist play a huge role in transferring information from one form into another. Are the days of information where no software is required long gone? Will Google pioneer books being online and brick and mortar buildings be a thing of the past? Will tangible items be replaced by merely getting information via a computer screen? This is especially interesting to me because then the tangible items in a conservation or archival sense may not seem valuable to hold, just as all the tangible items destroyed when they were placed on micro fiche.

I also wonder about information being created digitally. Since there is already no tangible form there already exists a dilemma on how to store these items that might become obsolete when digital is old technology. Just like photos taken by my digital camera, created digitally, saved digitally, and not printed into a tangible form. Thus, a black hole created by digital technology once digital become obsolete. The impact could be huge. This is a focus which I think information scientist need to be focusing now.

I also wonder about information science theory concerning meta data being created to make information easily accessible. Many books I have flipped through talk of the theory of how meta data should be performed but no one talks about the theory of meta data itself. Could the theory of meta data itself be a problem? Why jump right to the issues of tagging, lets say, when this all falls under the meta data theory?

I think all this classification of information is important and should be looked at closely. As my friend writing a paper for a final said last night, “why does writing have to be in paragraph form, with periods and commas, when everything I need to say could be said in a bulleted list?” Why do information scientist have to follow the rules of information management? I know it is necessary to create guidelines for information management in order to have an understandable form in which information can be retrieved, but are the guidelines outdated and understandable/fair to all users? I don’t want graduate school to be a lesson of theories based on other theories. Isn’t this the reason why archival items have not been added to catalogs in the first place? There is too much melding of old and new theories and technology that information is not treated the same across the board causing things to lag behind. This is why information scientist are always playing catchup.

Anyway, those are just some of my concerns before I start graduate school. I am rather excited to start classes, get involved with the information science community, and to explore my options in the profession that I currently don’t know about. I love learning new things and I look forward to getting to the nitty gritty of school work.

And dare I say it, I might be able to someday swallow the idea of being a librarian.