And so we come to the last day of the on-campus learning experience for Cohort 9. The first hour, from 9 AM to 10 AM, was spent discussing Everything is Miscellaneous and Viral Spiral. For this exercise, Dr. Alman divided us up into groups that were different from the groups that we were already in for our presentation.
And then, from 10 AM to noon, we did our presentations. Or at least that's what the schedule said. Luckily, our group didn't go first. That's always a terrifying proposition. If you go at any point afterwards, you get to observe how the other groups put together their presentations and you can take pointers. It's not that there's a competitive element to this at all, though. One of the things that I absolutely love about this program (and I guess, the library profession, from the limited amount of exposure I've had to it at this early juncture) is that everyone supports each other and everyone is (generally speaking) nice to each other. We're all in this together. With all that said, I did want to put together a good presentation and to get a good grade. I must say that I really enjoyed the Censorship & Banned Books presentation. This is perhaps a personal bias. If it wasn't for the copyright/fair use/file-sharing group that I was a part of, this is the group I would've been in. I liked finding out which books were banned somewhere and which ones were challenged.
Then it came time for our presentation. I thought that the other members of my group did a fantastic job. I must especially thank Jen Gould for putting it all together on PowerPoint. The slides looked fantastic! As for my own segment on file-sharing, I thought that my presentation was OK, but I forgot to list some pros and cons. After I got to my points, there just wasn't any more time (not that I was watching the clock) and yeah, I just forgot. Sorry! I did allude to them more than once, though. I hope that all of you who were there enjoyed it (but maybe that's asking too much).
I love how our presentation topics (copyright, fair use and file-sharing) and the current readings we're doing for LIS 2000 are so perfectly tied in together. I absolutely can't wait to get to Lawrence Lessig's books. I'm in the middle of Digital Copyright now and it seems like a logical extension of Viral Spiral, which I loved.
By the time of the last presentation (The Future of Librarianship), we had run out of time. It was 12:15 and one more presenter (Apryl Gillis) had yet to make her points. However, because several faculty members had arrived just for the occasion, the presentation was delayed in favor of said faculty members making points about the archives and other programs. My advisor, Dr. Courier, was there and ideally I would've liked to stick around to ask him some questions. However, I know that he's also available by e-mail and that I may get to see him in October when we come back to Pittsburgh. It's not really an issue now since I know what I'm taking in the fall (I'm finishing up my required courses before going on to the electives). So after the Future of Librarianship group finally got to finish their presentation, we were done! Well not quite yet. Amiya wanted to take a class picture so we went to the stairway on Allen and had our picture taken there. I'll be honest here. I hate getting my picture taken and it was the 3rd time over the past 4 days that it had happened. However, I didn't mind it this time as I enjoyed meeting everyone and I'm a really big fan of the program so far.
After all was said and done, a bunch of us (me, Ian, Jenny P., Becky and Nathaniel) went to lunch at Food for Thought. This time I had the reuben, which was just as great as the corned beef sandwich I'd had there a few days before. After lunch, I said my goodbyes to everyone except Jenny (since we drove back to Philadelphia together) and Nathaniel, who walked back to the hotel with me. After getting my luggage (which the hotel held for me during the morning after I checked out), Jenny picked me a few minutes later and we were on the road. The drive back, I'm happy to report, was about as quick as the drive there. By the time we got to the Philly suburbs (which are very heavy traffic-wise around rush hour on I-76), it was a bit past 7, so we avoided most of the evening rush. Thanks again to Jenny for driving me there and back (5 hours each way).
As for my final thoughts, well I had a blast. It's nice to be in a totally new city for 4-5 days, though it's nice to be home, too. Pittsburgh is a lovely, walkable, interesting town (and boy do they love their burgers/sandwiches) and I can't wait to go back in October. I hope to see the Warhol Museum, Phipps Conservatory, Carnegie Library, the Pirates' stadium (if we don't go during the All-Star break next summer like we did this time around) and other sites that I missed this time around, though I'll have to take what I can get with our workload!
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