Fast Track Weekend/On Campus Learning Experience (part 4)

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!

Fast Track Weekend/On Campus Learning Experience (Part 2)

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.