Well Monday morning was the first "real" day of this whole thing. I walked down to campus (a fun and brisk walk since it's all downhill on Bigelow; I can't say the same for the walks back uphill, but at least it's good exercise), got great coffee from Crazy Mocha and an OK breakfast sandwich from Bruegger's Bagels and schlepped up to Allen. After Sunday, me and Jenny had both decided that it would be ludicrous to drive there given how close each of our hotels were to campus. And besides, we both like walking. Anyway, after getting our pictures taken and after the LIS 2600 presentation by Dr. Tomer, we got to have lunch on our own. I am thankful to Dr. Alman for many reasons, but one of them is listing Food for Thought in her "places to eat in Oakland" guide. This place makes a seriously great corned beef sandwich. "Really good" is an understatement. Do not miss this place if you're in Pittsburgh and into that sort of thing. Afterwards, I dragged Ian B. (who also accompanied me for lunch) to Wicked Discs, one of the record stores on S. Craig St.(one of the shopping strips in Oakland), where in the limited amount of time we had to browse there, I got a vinyl copy of Government Issue's You Lp. Overall, the store was small and cool, though a bit pricey.
After hustling back to Allen and getting in a few minutes late (sorry), we got to attend the "Introduction to the Profession" seminar. I must say that I really enjoyed this part of the learning experience and I think I learned quite a lot from the librarians in various fields. I think I've decided that I'd like to at least take the Introduction to Archives class as an elective, though I don't think I can commit to the entire track. I don't wanna place all of my eggs in one basket, especially not before I try out of the classes. I also think that school librarianship is probably not for me, though Joe Prince had what was by far the most memorable presentation due to Hamburgheruesa (I hope I'm spelling that correctly), a toy llama that he uses in his library at North Allegheny Middle School that even has its own e-mail address (I distinctly remember hamburgheruesarules@gmail.com). Although it's not my field of interest, Joe seems tailor-made for it (as a former English teacher) and he knows how to market his library and the profession itself quite effectively. Amy Watson's presentation interested me as well and later, I found out that we have a mutual friend who works for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in lower Manhattan. As she said, the world of libraries is quite small! And I don't think anyone in Cohort 9 will forget Barbara Epstein's presentation. I don't wanna mention it because it's so grizzly, but it's certainly memorable! Of the different tracks, I can see myself in academic, public, special libraries and maybe archiving as well and all for different reasons. It's tough to decide so early on, especially with only a little bit of experience (all volunteer) in my chosen field.
After our walk to SIS, we got to meet Elizabeth Mahoney and another member of the SIS faculty along with several library employees. I wasn't sure where to go for dinner afterwards and eventually settled on Ali Baba's on S. Craig St. It was pretty good, but not great. It was an absolutely gorgeous evening (slightly cool with virtually no humidity and mostly clear), so I found a bench somewhere on 5th Avenue and read Viral Spiral (an excellent book which may be my favorite of everything we've had to read for LIS 2000, but again more on that later). After that, I hoofed it back to the hotel, where I worked on my bullet points for the book discussion for Viral Spiral and Everything is Miscellaneous while somehow managing to watch the season premiere of No Reservations. I also worked on some stuff for our group presentation as well. Fortunately, we managed to finish most of the work for our group presentation before we arrived on campus, but there was still work to be done (annotated bibiliographies, et al.) along with, as ever, more reading before submitting my thoughts on our readings into Course Documents.
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