IST 511, Day Five, The End

I am happy to be finished with my first three-credit course for my MLIS. I had a fabulous time, but it was also intense, so it's nice to be back home and able to decompress.

The week culminated in a poster session, where our groups presented posters on issues in librarianship. Our group researched virtual reference--providing reference services by email, Internet chat, text message, etc. as opposed to the more traditional in-person and telephone reference services--and here we are with our poster. Shout out to Laura, Lisa, Jesse, and Jason!



What I really enjoyed about the poster session, much more than I'd expected, was speaking to presenters from other groups about their topics, such as the Dewey Decimal system vs. other classification systems in public libraries and allowing potentially controversial outside groups to use public library space. Since the poster session was an hour and a half and each group member presented for half that time, I didn't get to visit every poster--and unfortunately I only had time for a quick drive-by of the winning group's poster, which was about e-books. The winning group can submit their poster to the ALA conference, and if it's accepted the iSchool will pay for some of their travel expenses, so I'm very happy for them and I hope perhaps I'll see their poster again soon, and for more than a few seconds!

After completing my residency, I'm really glad I decided to go to Syracuse, and I'm looking forward to the next two years (or so) of classes. One thing I really appreciated about both 511 and 601, but especially 511 because it related specifically to libraries, was getting an early glimpse of what it's like to be a professional. This probably sounds silly to people who go to school to, you know, get jobs, but from my perspective, as someone who's always loved school just a little too much, graduate programs in the humanities have great appeal to my inner nerd who loves to read books and think deep thoughts, but they never trained me in the same way to be a professional--professor, because that's probably what you're going to be if you get a PhD in religion or classics. I never saw myself as a professor or scholar at the beginning of grad school the way I see myself as a librarian now. It's exciting, and a little frightening at the same time, but mainly exciting.

I have a few weeks' break before I begin classes this fall, but I intend to keep up this blog through my iSchool career and beyond, and I might also comment on a backlog of "fun books" that are waiting for me.