IU

I can’t think of an easy way to pick up blogging again after a summer off, but here we go–I’ll just jump right in! I am now in Bloomington, IN, just beginning the third week of my graduate program at the Indiana University School of Library and Information Science. The fact that I am an actual graduate student still seems bizarre… I am entitled to print 2,500 pages over the course of the semester, obtain my very own graduate carrel, and CHECK OUT BOOKS FOR AN ENTIRE SEMESTER. When I realized I would get the complete works of Edna St. Vincent Millay until the end of December I’m pretty sure my jaw dropped. 

This semester I am taking three classes: Reference, Computer-Based Tools, and Representation and Organization of Information. These classes meet only once a week and seem very doable so far. I am mostly concentrating on finding jobs and diversifying my work experience. The coursework, while important, is more like an afterthought. I asked a student involved in the Society of American Archivists student chapter if she had any advice for me as a first-year student. Her response? “Don’t worry about doing your readings. Just get involved.” Happily, I can both do my readings AND get involved. Her comment has been mirrored many times by other students and even faculty. I think it helps that I came to library school with the knowledge that future employers weren’t generally going to care whether I had taken one elective over another. While the MLS is the backbone of my career preparation, it needs a lot of support from actual hands-on experience.

Three weeks in, I feel relatively settled in Bloomington. It is a nice place to be a graduate student because there are so many other grad students from out-of-state who feel the same pain I do: I am talking, of course, about the invisible loan money just flying out of their metaphorical pockets. Despite the scary loans and skyrocketing cost of higher education, I still feel that IU was the right choice for me. While I am proud to have been accepted to the highly selective UW-Madison SLIS, I am glad that I have been granted the opportunity to carve out a fresh new start for myself. The rolling hills and climate are reminiscent of Wisconsin, though the Southern accents serve to remind me that I am now indeed much nearer to the South than I have ever been! 

I have managed to snag three jobs here at IU. After some initial scheduling chaos, my classes and jobs now peacefully coexist. The first job I got is as a Receptionist/Reference Attendant at the Lilly Library. It is a basic public services position within the rare books library that entails answering the Lilly phone, overseeing the exhibition gallery, helping direct staff communications, and overseeing patrons’ usage of Lilly materials.  The Lilly is filled with the mysterious ephemera and miscellany of centuries ago, and this is intoxicating for me, as I know it is for plenty of other starry-eyed SLIS students. I often wonder if the librarians who work there ever lost their sense of amazement about their surroundings… I know they must have begun their careers filled with wonderment. When I first pored over the SLIS specializations, I did consider the Rare Books and Manuscripts specialization, but I’ve since diverged from that path. Instead, I hope to pursue the Archives and Records Management specialization, which overlaps in some areas. 

My second job is working in the Cyberinfrastructure for Network Science Center (located within SLIS). I started working in an administrative capacity last week: printing on the giant plotters, scanning articles, etc. Much of the work is related to the Places & Spaces: Mapping Science ongoing exhibit by SLIS professor Dr. Katy Borner. So far I’ve found that working at the CNS keeps me on my toes–I’m required to utilize a lot of the bare-bones techy skills that I’ve practically forgotten, such as the minutiae of using Excel.  I’ve also begun using the CNS wiki and Launchpad, a Content Management Software that I watched a presentation on at the Wisconsin Association of Academic Librarians conference this past spring. When I was hired I was also told that while CNS currently needs a student worker to assist with basic office tasks, as I became more knowledgeable about the Center I will likely be able to work on specialized projects (!).

And last but certainly not least, I will be working as an Instruction Assistant in the Wells Library Information Commons. While I was at UW-La Crosse, I saw my superb librarian mentor Rachel‘s face light up every time she talked about her tenure as Grad Assistant for the same program. She often expressed her hope that I would be able to meet and even work with her mentor, Carrie. To my delight, now that I am officially a SLIS student, I’ve been accepted into the fold of IAs! For some reason I thought that being an IA involved team-teaching with other students or perhaps assisting a “real” librarian with a class–boy, was I ever wrong. IA’s sign up to teach courses on an online portal, contact the professor and get information on what they’d like covered during the class, craft a lesson plan, and teach. AKA: just me, alone, solo, independent. I am filled with a terrific level of excitement!

Nervous too, obviously. Nervousness is okay, normal, and shows that you care about what you are doing. As long as you don’t let it stop you from acting (or postpone your actions indefinitely!), I think it’s a valuable tool to corral your energy. Also, simply from inhabiting this body and carting this mind around for 21 years, I know that the only reason I feel nervous is because I do not feel prepared. Once I feel prepared–by trying my hand at creating lesson plans, by doing my own research on databases, by exploring IUCat and other resources on my own–I will feel more comfortable and less nervous. Then once I start actually teaching, I imagine that just about all the nervousness will vanish. The only nervousness stems from the anticipation, the unknown. As Carrie said during training, “There is always a reason not to teach, so just jump right in.” Wise words from a wise woman. 

I understand that the IAs are doing the IU Teaching and Learning department a great service because it costs significantly less to pay us to teach classes than it would a whole fleet of professional librarians, but  at the same time it was apparent from the get-go that all the supervising Teaching and Learning librarians are focused on ensuring that their IAs feel comfortable, confident, and experience lots of self-growth. We were told to use the classrooms as our laboratories to try out teaching styles and techniques that intrigued us. We were given free reign to utilize instructional technologies in any capacity. Simply put, we were entrusted with courses under the implicit assumption that we would use our best judgment. (And no, this was not a begrudging entrustment–this was an enthusiastic welcome that made me feel as though, yes, I can teach!)

So, all in all, I thoroughly enjoy Bloomington, IU, and SLIS. I wasn’t sure of what to expect from library school, but now that I’ve been immersed in library-land for a few weeks… I like it immensely! My stack of librarianship-related books is piled dangerously tall, my babbling about library stuff is at an all-time high due to new SLIS friends, and I am building my resume with library-related activities.

I don’t have any complaints. 

Working at the Lilly Library provides a different experience each day.

From my vantage point of the front desk, I observe the amount of activity in the gallery ebb and flow. Staff swap out exhibits, carrying large glass cases back and forth. Patrons’ rubber-soled shoes squeak on the wood floor as they peer into cases. Somber white men (well, one woman; you guessed it, white) gaze stoically from their perches within glossy oil paintings, while muted light from the automobile-sized chandelier in the Lincoln Room gives everything a vaguely unnatural glow. The marble, the wood-paneled walls, the high ceilings: it’s all very patrician. And then there’s me, decked out in a floral print dress and cardigan more often than not, just trying to keep it all together.

My job is to watch people. Follow protocol. Use my best judgment. There are obvious things, and then there are the gray areas, just like real life. (Coats aren’t allowed in the gallery, but what about the thin jackets of early fall?) Often it is calm, allowing me time to read, but when chaos hits, it hits hard. Sudden peaks of activity are intense while they last, though they’re ultimately unsustainable. For instance: 

A pack of visitors with plenty of questions straggles in, while staff are either leaving for lunch (handing me their name badge) or coming back from lunch (requesting their name badge back). Students enrolled in the manuscripts or rare books class enter, trying to break through the pack of curious strangers; meanwhile, the phone rings. The caller has an ambiguous inquiry so you’re not sure who this person should be transferred to. You send it to a staff member who you think will know who should take it, hoping it won’t seem an egregious error on your part. Meanwhile, a member of the staff has shown up near the desk, probably to check if another staff member is in the building, but the visitors are midsentence and you’re trying to be attentive to them, since they were here first…

Out the corner of your eye you spot a student decked out in cap, jeans and boulder-sized backpack dart in through the door. He’s fast, and you know his type: kid who sees the word library and runs in to find a study space, not realizing that we aren’t exactly that sort of library. You know you’ve got to raise your voice a bit: “Excuse me, sir, can I help you?” He looks confused, then annoyed as he tears his earbuds out. “What?” he says, rooted to the spot in the middle of the gallery, unmoving. The crowd of staff and question-asking patrons all watch. You keep your voice pleasant. “We don’t have any study areas here. This is a rare books library, but you’re welcome to look at the exhibits if you put your bag in the free lockers around the corner.” He looks dumbfounded, turns and shuffles out. 

You turn back to your group, which has now grown bigger because a new patron has walked in and she wants to use the Reading Room; this will require you to get her name and fill out a pass for her, which you cannot do because you’re attending to the others, but you smile apologetically in her direction for this inconvenience. The staff member interrupts the group during a pause and asks their question; you check the roster and hope that the person working the desk before you marked it correctly–if not, the staff person will think you were the one who didn’t mark down a colleague’s reentry into the building, they’ll think you’re slacking at your job. The visitors begin chatting again, half directed toward you, half directed at their friends. The visitors’ eyes all stare expectantly at you. 

This is an extreme scenario, obviously, but you get the point: it can be hectic. The combination of managing a ringing phone, patrons who are ignorant of the rules, upkeep of the roster, lockers that fill up causing students to stack their belongings in precarious piles behind the desk, Reading Room passes and buzzer… it has its challenges, but it is doable and most of the time I feel completely capable. However, it’s easy to get tripped up. My point in writing about this? I felt very tripped up yesterday. I’ve been getting accustomed to my jobs at the Lilly: finally remembering to initial the many things that need to be initialed in the Reading Room (for the most part), finally remembering most Lilly staff names, getting better at answering common patron questions… so yesterday felt like a huge step backward. 

Yesterday there were multiple simultaneous classes going on in the morning, as well as a few medium-sized groups of Lilly newbies–i.e., folks who were walking by and saw a big gray building with no other description than “LILLY LIBRARY” and decided to come in since they have some down time. There were about 6 or 7 of them, middle-aged, just wanting to poke around. Women had small purses, no giant bags, so I let them know they could put their purses in the lockers if they wanted to but it wasn’t necessary. I smiled and let them know to ask me if they had any questions.

Most headed toward the Lincoln room, in the back of the gallery space but technically its own room. With a cursory glance and a mindset of there’s nothing to see here, I noticed many members of the small group break away, remaining in the main gallery. However, my eye then suddenly snagged on a man who had been toward the back of the cluster of incoming people, now visible to me as clutching a distinctive cup emblazoned with an ivory and emerald emblem: a Starbucks cup.

Needless to say, beverages are not allowed in the exhibition spaces. By the time I spotted the poor fellow and his (unbeknownst to him) contraband item, he was sliding out of my line of sight (I cannot see into the Lincoln room from the front desk, and I must remain planted at the desk). Just as I was about to raise my voice significantly and practically yell to get his attention–that’s what the amount of room between myself and the visitor would now require–a professor teaching a class intercepted him and let him know that beverages were not allowed in the galleries. I was immediately grateful, but after a moment of relief I felt a wave of embarrassment overtake me. It would appear that I couldn’t do my job, that I was lazy or inattentive or just didn’t realize the gravity of the situation. To make matters worse, I have a lot of respect for the professor in question. Though I’m not in any of his classes he often smiles at me and will stop to ask how my semester is going–unnecessary kindnesses from a busy and important man. 

I realize that I care, that I pay attention, that I do my job to the best of my ability at all times; if asked, I would have explained the complexities of the situation. But I felt ashamed to think that others might label me just another student worker. From the coffee incident on, my day just felt off. It didn’t help that in the afternoon I was chastised (lightly) by a librarian based on a decision another librarian had made and supported. That is definitely not fun, because it was a small enough issue that I didn’t want to be the tattle-tale. I felt every bit the incompetent, never-going-to-fit-in fool. I am not beating myself up over this and I wouldn’t even label my day a bad day, though it had plenty of unfortunate elements (a department accepting applications for a spring GAship stopping the process early and causing me to be absolutely crestfallen, waiting for several entities to respond to me via email who are WELL past the appropriate time to reply, having a backpack jam into my face on the bus when we hit a bumpy spot and someone wasn’t holding on–yes, it was that sort of a day). But I feel better today. So it goes.

Even though my time at the Lilly yesterday was a long five hours, there were the Australian and South African accents of two patrons, which was nice, and I did sit next to both the Oscar statuette that John Ford won for The Grapes of Wrath in 1940 and a brooch containing a lock of Edgar Allan Poe’s hair… I cannot complain too much; the Lilly always has its unexpected wonders.

Hello blog friends! It’s been awhile.

These days I haven’t been doing a lot of blogging–though, if you haven’t seen it already, I did co-write a post on digital humanities courses with Barbarajean Majewski at HackLibSchool recently. Beyond that, I’ve been steadily attacking the growing pile of work that’s in front of me. With only FIVE weeks until the semester ends (how did that happen?) it’s time to ward off thoughts of making quilts like this and instead reroute my brain back toward academic motivation. Today I thought I’d do a little catch-up and share some of the projects that have consumed my time lately.

Society of Indiana Archivists Annual Meeting Panel Presentation – On Saturday, April 28th, I will be doing a panel presentation with three of my dearest friends. The theme of the meeting is outreach. Initially I wasn’t sure what my topic would be, but finally I decided to focus on my experience starting a Twitter account for the Society of American Archivists-Student Chapter and using it to promote our conference in early March. It was a fine experience but there are a LOT of things I will do differently the next time around. I found that while I was familiar with Twitter from having a personal account, I had absolutely no idea how to use it for promotion purposes. At the meeting I’ll be able to share some of the practical tips I’ve picked up with archivists interested in using Twitter for outreach purposes.

It’s a 50 minute session, so my fellow presenters and I will each have 10 minutes to talk. To conclude our session we’ll chat for an additional 10 minutes about the results of a survey we are currently in the process of sending out through the SLIS listserv. The survey asks questions about use of outreach tactics and student use of various social media sites. It’s a 6-question survey, but we still have to jump through the hoops of getting exempt from IRB, getting an advisor on board, all that. And ugh, the clock is ticking. 

LOEX Poster Presentation – My poster proposal for this year’s LOEX conference was accepted, so I’m headed to Columbus, Ohio, the first week of May! Char Booth (who I ran into at the hotel elevator then later had a beer with at last year’s Wisconsin Association of Academic Librarians conference) is the keynote speaker. I love that LOEX is happening one year after WAAL, my very first library conference, at which she was also the keynote speaker! Fate, I tell you!

Now that my abstract is on the LOEX website (along with my fellow Instruction Assistant Sara’s abstract! Go IU!) it’s starting to feel real. My poster, which will focus on ways to incorporate Google and Wikipedia into one-shot library instruction sessions, is, um, a work in progress. Here’s a confession: I keep doubting these ideas I’m going to be pitching! I’m plagued by thoughts that my instruction ideas are silly, useless, or have already been done. I know it’s just a poster session, I know that instruction librarians surpass the enthusiasm of any other group of librarians I’ve ever met (and are therefore encouraging and open and kind), and I know it will be quick and painless. I get it. But so far my poster isn’t tangible, it’s just ideas. I think I’ll probably feel better when it’s arranged according to the high standards I try to set for myself. 

Brown County Public Library Website – For the final project of my Information Architecture for the Web course, we are expected to work with a client and create a website for them. I chose to build a website for the public library located in nearby Nashville, Indiana. The current website looks outdated, but even worse is that it’s hardly functional… and libraries NEED a usable, engaging website, however basic. These days I daresay this is vital to their survival, so I’m happy to help out in whatever way I can.

My professor for this class has emphasized over and over the importance of gaining real-world experience working with clients and developing project management skills. It has been a bit of a rocky road thus far, given that halfway through the semester I discovered both that I was expected to use a Content Management System AND that the library director, my primary contact, was retiring. As of right now I’m working with WordPress to develop the website; I’m brand new to using it as a CMS, but it’s going okay so far. It is certainly easier than using Joomla or Drupal. The new BCPL director has now become involved in the process; she has been great at giving me information and keeping in touch. At this point, I need tweak my theme to better implement my design, create my sandbox, and work with the director to refine content. I’ll be sure to share the end results! 

Henry Miller/Eve McClure Correspondence Omeka Exhibit – A requirement of my Digital Humanities course is a final project of our choosing, and I have opted to curate an online exhibit that features select correspondence between Henry Miller and his soon-to-be fourth wife, Eve McClure. I’ve always been fascinated by letters and journals, so before I chose my topic for the exhibit I explored some of the Lilly’s other wondrous collections. At only one box, the Miller mss. II was a lot more manageable to sift through than the Edith Wharton correspondence or even the amusing repartees exchanged between Dashiell Hammett and his secretary. The chronology of the Miller-McClure letters begins in the fall of 1951 with 28-year-old Eve’s starstruck letters to the well-known 60-year-old author, though over the subsequent two years the flirtation becomes mutual and the formerly introductory letters turn into gushing love letters. The letters from 1953 lead up to their marriage in December, at which point the Lilly’s collection of letters between the two lovers ends.

I don’t view my interest in/work on these letters as innovative by any means. Eve McClure was Henry Miller’s fourth wife and not even his last; they divorced in 1960, so there isn’t any long-lasting fairytale about their union. Henry’s tumultuous relationship with his second wife, June Miller, has been explored in great detail and I’m not sure poor Eve will ever get quite the attention she did from Henry Miller fans. And Henry’s love letters, while in my opinion very good, aren’t groundbreaking documents because so much of his correspondence has already been snatched up and published. (Of particular note is A Literate Passion, which includes his correspondence with-then lover Anais Nin.) Still, love notes are nice to read, don’t you think? I’m enjoying my topic whether or not it spurs wide interest.

Besides curating the small online exhibit, I am also going to use TEI on a group of the letters… more for my own ability to practice text encoding than anything else. At this point, I’ve uploaded my images, just about finished contributing metadata, and I’ll just need to add descriptions.

Beyond those projects, I’ve been finishing up other assignments as needed and of course working. In one of my last posts I mentioned that I’d gotten a job at the Kinsey Institute Digitization Lab; since beginning that job in February I’ve learned a LOT about digital images and the digitization process. I’m also currently being trained to take over a position in the SLIS Career Center starting this summer, so each week I’ve been putting in a few hours either doing research on my own or observing the current Career Analysts at work. The ALA Reaccreditation Board visited SLIS last Monday, and now that it’s over the faculty and staff seem to have all breathed a synchronous sigh of relief. However, I can already tell that the career services we offer will be expanding significantly given the Board’s comments, so the pressure will be on in my future role! 

I’ve also determined my summer plans. In an exciting and petrifying turn of events, I’ll be doing an internship at the Digital Library Program here at IU! Because I’m doing the digital libraries specialization through SLIS, an internship through the DLP is required. The DLP usually has interns working either in usability, metadata, TEI or digitization. I always thought I’d wait until next summer and complete the standard metadata internship, but about a month ago an email came through the listserv that the DLP was looking for a “map-based discovery services intern.” The description noted that the intern would be responsible for assessing location-related metadata for the DLP image collections, developing processing script/s, experimenting with mapping results using the Google Static Map API (applied programming interface) and SIMILE timeline, and other related duties. I was very excited, applied right away… and got it! All year I’ve had a growing interest in maps and visualizations; I think part of this is due to working for CNS and being literally surrounded by them all day. I also signed up for the Geographic Information Systems and the Humanities course I’ll be attending in June at DHSI way back in November, which means I’ve done quite a bit of reading on deep maps and the spatial humanities in the meantime. Now that I’ll also be completing this internship, I’m intrigued to see what direction it will take me. 

Despite my excitement, I’m definitely intimidated by the DLP. These librarians are the ones who I’ve gone to the Digital Library Brown Bag Lunches to see, the ones whose jobs I have coveted. Obviously I have a lot of fears: that I’m not qualified, that I’ll stumble through this internship and embarrass myself, that they’ll come to the conclusion that I’m not inherently techy enough, just a wannabe former English major. AND THEN I’LL NEVER GET A JOB WORKING WITH DIGITAL PROJECTS! That’s pretty much the succession of doomsday thoughts that my brain produces when insecure. But I know better than to listen and put off the internship until the last semester. After all, this is what I want to do, so the more experience working with digital projects the more I’ll be able to ensure that A) it’s what I actually want and B) keep myself competitive for my future job hunt. Plus, I’m hoping to develop relationships with librarians in the DLP and gain as much experience there as I can, whether through an additional internship or working there. I’m totally a DLP fangirl, and thus eagerly awaiting proving myself!

I won’t lie, the past month has been absolutely crazy. I’ve been getting by but I can tell that I’m somewhere near burnout, hanging out in the gray area. Telling myself I don’t believe in it works a little. I find that it’s an accumulation of little extras that I don’t take on that make me feel guilty, rather than larger projects that I keep on the forefront of my mind. For instance, on occasion I’ll hop on Twitter and scroll through tweets, but I’m certainly not contributing. I’m in absolute awe of the library people out there who are able to maintain a vibrant web/social media presence, because I often have this guilt about my failure to keep up. (I try very much not to, because I have SO much else going on, but it can be tricky to turn off the perfectionist brain.) After a long day spent staring at a computer screen, the last thing I want to do is read blogs or tweets or heaven forbid create content of my own. Rather, I watch vacuous shows streaming on Netflix to decompress (a vital component of my weekly workflow). I leave piles of dresses/papers/books on pretty much any empty surface and dishes in the sink. The free Natural Language Processing course I signed up for? Haven’t done a thing, and probably won’t. My progression through the weekly CodeYear assignments? On hold indefinitely. Given all of these tiny failings, I feel guilty sometimes… but overall, I have to remind myself that my circumstances are good, solid, stable. Just busy for the foreseeable future.

Do you feel grad school guilt? 
How is the end of yet another semester treating you?