Last night was my first day of library school.
The classes I’m taking this semester are Introduction to Information Professions and Knowledge Organization. Last night was the Information Professions class, which will be an overview of the different professions available in library and information sciences, ethics and core values, as well as background on the way different libraries and info centers work. All of that is excellent for me as I have zero knowledge about this.
There’s lots of reading, a few papers, some field observation (which is esentially going to a library or info center and noting what works and what doesn’t work), and two presentations. Not bad, I guess.
One of our assignments is to find a library blog or wiki or listserv, monitor its activity for six weeks, and for each of those six weeks, post an article or whatever on the class blog. Luckily through my blog buds is just how I got the idea of pursuing library science so finding a library blog should be no problem. The only challenge is finding one that’s right for me.
As with every class, there are a few dumbasses. For instance there’s this old bat whom I first saw when waiting in line to get my student ID over the weekend. Someone was saying that a Barnes & Noble is closing in Chelsea. The old bat said, “Is it reopening?”
“No, it’s closing down completely.”
The old bat: “Well, what will we do? Where will we go?”
“Well, there’s another Barnes & Noble in Union Square.”
Yeah, and on every other frigging block.
As an ice breaker for class, we went around the room, said our names, and the last good book we read. The old bat’s response?
“I’m not such a big reader. Not of books anyway.”
Um, you understand this is library school? You know, the library? The place where they keep all the BOOKS?
The only book yours truly could think of was Baise-Moi. If you know French and/or the book/movie, you know exactly what I’m talking about, and why it probably wasn’t a good idea to cite that book the very first time I opened my mouth to the class. Of course afterwards I realized I’ve read like three books since that one.
So far I like the professor. She’s very knowledgeable in both the traditional library sense, as well as technology-wise. She didn’t hand out any syllabi or copies of her presentation. Instead she pointed as to a website she made, where we can download everything.
The old bat had a very hard time grasping this concept. “You mean I can get all of this out of a computer?” Then she thought it was just the computer in the classroom, till the professor very patiently explained that you see, there’s this thing called the Internet?
Yikes.
Knowledge Organization is on Thursday.
As for the weekend, it was good. Saturday was my orientation/registration, which was fine. I was a bit nervous because I had turned in my immunization papers so late, but my account was clear.
Afterwards I met up with MB. He needed something for his guitar while I wanted to check out a different size for a fancy schmancy dress I bought for the fancy schmancy dinner we were having that night, which was sort of part of his annual bonus.
The dinner was very nice. It was fun to get all dressed up, though MB did get mistaken for a waiter, and the food was very good, especially the dessert, a chocolate souffle with three kinds of gelato. But P*ong was actually better overall. More unusual bang for the buck.
Sunday we had lunch with SB and Ellie. Ellie was very well-behaved. No tantrums in the diner. I think this was partly cuz MB was giving her lots of attention, helping her play with this puzzle she had brought along.
Over the weekend, we also rented a couple of movies, Casshern and The Host. Casshern was gorgeous to look at though extremely trippy, even more so since I was half asleep. The Host was very good, both funnier and more serious than I expected.
Our team meeting was canceled today! Woohoo! Now I have just two meetings, which should be relatively painless.
