Mondays

May 14, 2013 Personal No comments

I don’t have all that much on my plate nowadays but all of it is piled up on Monday. Part of the problem is that parking is either inconvenient or expensive on campus, and walking home between work and class is an hour round trip, so I end up leaving for work at around 8:30 and don’t get home until 10 PM at night. Good thing we have a library for me to hide in again. It gives me time to do my homework.

Work has been getting more and more interesting. After a year I’m finally moving past basic code monkey stuff and getting deeper and deeper into the workings of the system. When I started I was afraid to change anything in the offchance that it was a vital component that would break the entire site (and I did end up breaking the site once). But now I generally know what things do and why, and am not so timid about making changes without asking permission to change very comma or what have you. I was told that I would probably be able to keep working through the summer, which means I will have something resembling an income as I continue to look for a full time job, which I’m thankful for. I can’t wait to finally end up in a position that lasts for longer than a year though. It feels like every time I’m starting to hit a new level of expertise it’s time to move on to something else. When you’re an undergrad jet-setting across the world you’re not really thinking about developing a history of long term employment, but now I kind of wish I could say I’ve been doing something for more than 2 years at a time.

It’s not that big of a deal though. What I don’t have in terms of length I make up for with a large variety of experience and a lot of adaptability.

Last week had a couple nice breaks from the monotony of daily life. I wrangled one of my good friends Amanda into going to a wind ensemble concert and had a great time. I still prefer wind ensemble to any other form of classical-type music, so it’s nice to have free access to it through the student concerts at DU.

One of the pieces performed was Colonial Song, by Percy Graham.

Not a bad way to spend a night out.

This weekend was a fellow DU student’s birthday. Her house is amazing and includes a common backyard with her next door neighbors in which cats dogs and chickens roam around doing their thing. A good time was had by all and I got to hold an irate chick.

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These birds have been bred so that they literally cannot see past the fluff on their faces. It’s both hilarious and sad all at once.

 

The Academic Commons

April 26, 2013 Library Science No comments
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After almost two years, our campus has a library again! I can’t even explain how happy this makes me. So much seating, so many study carrels, so many outlets! And most of the books have come back from storage!

At first I was skeptical about the move to an “academic commons” platform, but I couldn’t be happier with the setup now. 80% of monographs are on site(iirc), and item requests take less than 2 hours to be delivered from off site. I have to hand it to the library team, the transition out and back in to the building has felt seamless from the user end.

The idea of the academic commons is a relatively new one, and not without some controversy, so I figure a quick digital tour might help explain just what it is that DU is now doing different with it’s library system.

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Here’s the building. Before it was just that beige box section, and the construction made it look a bit less soul crushing by adding that curvy front entrance and the little pillared addition on the left. The bike rack count has doubled, but it’s still not enough. Bike parking remains a problem on campus.

It took 2 years or so for this renovation to be completed, which is almost the entire time that I’ve been enrolled. Not having a physical library sucks, let me tell you. A ballroom was repurposed for study space and computers, but it wasn’t enough.

Why the long wait? There was so much asbestos that once the library decided on a renovation they decided to just go all out and redo everything. While there are some familiar areas of the interior the building was all but gutted and rebuilt from the floor up. The bad part about this was that it took forever. The cool part is they got to do some great things.

A small bit of me gets irate when I see the copper plating, because tuition at DU is high, but most of the weird superfluous things in the library, including the fireplace(?!) were the result of direct donations. Apparently donors were eager to fund these little aesthetic touches but wanted to restrict the number of electric outlets that would be available! Thank goodness librarians know how to argue with facts or this whole thing could have been a disaster. Imagine floors of nothing but study spaces but no where to use a laptop for longer that 2hrs max.

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When I arrived at the official opening this huge touch screen wasn’t properly functioning, but it seems to be working well enough now. It greets you as soon as you come in. They went a little crazy with the tech. Every study room, and there are many, has its own little electronic schedule panel on which you can make reservations. Those weren’t working either when I tested them. Apparently the vendor assured the library that the technology would work with the already existing reservation system for the school and it turned out they lied.

The lesson here is that when adopting new technology, don’t believe it when the salesmen says it does everything under the sun.

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This is the first floor of the library, and look, books! Although a large portion of the collection is off site (like all govdocs and bound periodicals) there are still a lot of books. The first floor is dedicated entirely to new arrivals and is a lot of fun to browse. In the back there is the writing center, and to the right the tech center. While both of these services aren’t under the direct control of the library, it makes sense that they share the same roof. The research center is here also. The idea is to make the commons the one stop shop for all academic support needs. (This includes a full cafe, which is always extremely busy when I stop in.)

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In the old building the archives and special collections got a tiny room in the basement and a few mobile shelves. Now the special collections have pride of place in the basement, and instead of the basement being a sunless dungeon a wall has been knocked out and replaced with full length windows. The display space throughout the library has greatly increased. Basically, the every day book has been packed away and now room is available for the special stuff to come out.

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This is what the general collection looks like now. A good number of books are back, but I rarely see students going through here. Browsing is a bit more of a pain but it is possible, and the library’s estimation of how much study space is needed has been pretty spot on. Besides these shelves and the special collections room the bottom floor is almost entirely dedicated to study carrels, they are almost always busy when I come down to use them.

A nice plus is that you can remotely request a book while you are in the library, and clerks will pull it for you and notify you when it hits the front desk.

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This is the deep quiet room, for people who can’t even suffer the clicking of computer keyboards. The clear windows were added so that one could peek in and see if there was room to study before disrupting people by opening the door. Not a bad idea, but I just bring headphones because…

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These are the most amazing things ever. Almost every part of the library has enough space but when I come down to these carrels there is often only one or two left unoccupied. They are cozy, private, clean, and just look awesome. I have 5 hours between work and class to kill on Mondays, and I spend those hours in one of these. I almost want one for my room.

Out like a what again?

March 24, 2013 Personal No comments

What Denver giveth Denver taketh away. We’ve had a few weeks of excellent spring weather, and last evening the wind picked up and the snow started falling. It is now a mess outside. We were hearing emergency sirens all day long, but the snow has finally stopped falling (for now) and most of the first volley melted, so there isn’t as much on the ground as there might be. If we’re lucky it will warm up right after and everything will be melted by Tuesday.

My roommate and I ended up having to drive through the worst of it, because we were at IKEA when it started, enjoying a traditional Swedish Easter smörgåsbord. We were joking with each other because there were very few people other than families with small children and retirees that seemed to think coming to IKEA for an Easter buffet was the thing to do, but there were piles upon piles of smoked salmon involved, so it was worth it, even if the drive home was a snowy mess.

It was technically spring break last week, but because I had no classes it felt like any other week. The last two classes I need to take for my degree start on Monday, and then at the end of May my schooling will be over! I have no idea what will happen after that, but one thing at a time.

Library Student Day in a Life

March 6, 2013 Library Science, Work 2 comments

Hack Library School is doing a Library Student Day in the Life week, so this is my contribution.

A quick bit about me for those who are not familiar: I’m a student at the University of Denver, and my academic focus is on archives management. It took me an extra year to graduate because I decided to do my practicum in India this past winter, and now I’m expecting to wrap everything up during the spring quarter. DU is on a quarter system, which means we only have 10 weeks per class, and I took winter quarter off, so at the moment I’m not taking any classes.

I work a part time job at the University Tech Services, doing back end work on the university websites, making our analytics system more robust, and cleaning up myweb for an incoming migration to a new system. It’s not exactly library science work, but I did get to enforce some metadata standards with the events tagging we’re doing.

Because it’s apart time job, I get Mondays and Fridays off! This Monday was typical. I slept in, rolled out of bed around 9:30 and cursed the morning with heartfelt passion, grabbed some breakfast and then started working on an Omeka project. Part of the practicum I did in India involved collecting info and images relating to thangka painting to use for a website once I got back to the states, so now I’m working on getting that website up.

Omeka is a deceptive little beast. It looks simple and user friendly unless you want to do something a little different, like, say get the stupid element descriptions to stop being so item type specific, and then suddenly you have to know php! Well, luckily, I know enough php to not blow up the site, but I’m also doing this work on Ubuntu, which is an OS I am still getting used to, and I don’t know enough php to actually know what I’m doing, so it’s been a fun adventure. I spent most of the morning doing some general reading on how omeka files are set up, and reading a lot of forums on the image magick program giving people ulcers, and then started developing my own image magick ulcer as I tried to get it an omeka to communicate.

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After banging my head against that for a while I went off and drove 16 miles to see Les Miserables. I could write a post just about that, and I probably will, so suffice it to say my fear that I would hate it was unfounded and I sobbed like a child in a theater with no one be me and a bunch of older couples in it. That’s what happens when you go to a matinee at a dollar theater. Also Colm Wilkinson suddenly showed up on the screen in all his glory and I had myself a little fit in my chair but seriously I will write a post all about this later.

Since Monday is an off day for me it’s also chore day. That means laundry, groceries, all the dull stuff like that. Luckily for me Denver has a very large asian market, so after the movie my roommate and I drove over and bought enough food to last us the rest of the month. By the time we got home it was seven, and I ended up passing out soon after eating supper. I hadn’t gone to sleep before 2AM the whole week prior, so I needed it.

Today was a work day, so from 9 to 3 I was making spreadsheets and wrestling technology. Right after that I submitted myself to being a human guinea pig at the university psych department. I learned in undergrad that one can make good money playing test subject for a half hour or so. I read fast, so after clicking on a few “Strongly Agree – Strongly Disagree” buttons for thirty minutes I was handed fifteen bucks and sent on my way. It’s the only place I can get paid $30 at the moment!

After that was cartoons to wind down, dinner, and now I’m working on a few personal projects. This blog is one. Working on my resume is another. At the moment I’m a little paralyzed about applying to the Digital Stewardship program in DC, because I don’t feel qualified enough, but all I can do is put my best foot forward and let the selection committee tell me if I’m qualified or not.

 

March 3, 2013 Personal One comment

Rufus had to be put down earlier this week. It was a sudden and unexpected thing. He spent all day being his usually dorky self, and then later that night blood clots had cut off the circulation in his front legs. We rushed him to an emergency vet and left him overnight to be treated and monitored, but the next day Shannon had been advised to let him go. So this week has been rough. He was an atypical little cat, a pleasure to be around when he wasn’t being a bossy jerk, and he is already dearly missed.

 

Busy Busy

February 23, 2013 Library Science, Work No comments

I have so much to do, AAAAAHHHHHGH. My graduation date is creeping up on me, and so my attention is shifting from internship and school related work to the post grad life. On the one hand, it’s more stressful, because student loans will be upping the financial pressure and I will be most likely losing my student job at the same time, but on the other I can’t wait, because opportunity will become that much more free form when I am no longer required to adhere to academic requirements.

One of the hard truths about LIS education is that there is just too much to learn to fit into two years of education, and at the same time the classroom is not always the best way to gain that education. The old joke/adage/lamentation is that Library Science may be a practical field, but Library Science education likes to go for the theoretical. What that basically means is that if you’re serious about getting out of school with a competitive skillset you better be doing something more than going to class on time. This problem becomes obvious when you look at job postings. Two to five years of direct experience for most job, demonstrated skills, etc… How much of our classroom experience counts? On the one hand, we did learn something. On the other, is what we learned what prospective employers want from us? It can be difficult to tell.

Typically when that all important question, “If you had one super power, what would it be,” comes up, my answer is something like indestructibility, but right now I’d be happy with mind reading. If only I could peer into the brains of the people in charge of hiring decisions.

That’s one of the reasons I like Hiring Librarians so much. It takes some of the opacity out of the process by getting hiring librarians to answer questions about the resume and interview process. Some of that information inspires terror (some of the stuff people say matters I never would have considered), but mostly all I feel is relief. If there are so many differing opinions on what the right way to do something is, it’s simply impossible for me to do it perfectly every time, so I can stop sweating the small stuff and get to the meat of the process.

 

Music

February 17, 2013 Personal No comments

Yesterday night I attended St. Martin’s Choir’s Tenebrae concert. It was a small, event, with maybe fifty or so attendees and a choir of 13. It was wonderful, as their concerts always are, but I think I like the larger scale of the usual choir size more. I’m always one of the youngest people at these things. Sometimes there’s a kid that comes with their parents, or someone my age who has an obvious connection with the group, but other than that it often feels like the audience is composed of a bunch of people aged 60+ and then me. Not that I mind. More people my age should take advantage of the classical music in the area. For one, it’s cheaper than a dubstep concert (by about 60 bucks. I know from experience.) And going to a live choral concert is kind of like going to a spiritual massage. It’s a good way to shake off some of the stress that comes from being a student with bills due.

I’ve missed music a lot. It’s one thing to listen to a few good tracks on the computer and another to go through the process of musical creation, which is something I haven’t done in many years. I’ve been playing instruments since fourth grade, maybe sooner if you count the banging I did on the piano at home, and I kept at it until I graduated high school, at which point my participation in the creation of music dropped off entirely. I left my flute and drums at home when I went to college, and besides a random taiko class my freshmen year and my senior year spent playing rock band I’ve been out of it entirely.

For the last few months now I’ve gotten back into it by buying a pennywhistle. It works perfectly because it’s ten dollars and doesn’t take up any room. I’m used to the concert flute, so the limitations of having only 2 octaves and not much in the way of halftones has been a struggle to figure out, and I was appalled when I went to read some music and realized that I couldn’t anymore, but those difficulties have been more or less overcome. I put about thirty minutes a day away for practice, and playing makes for a nice, tactile break from the computer work that takes up most of my day. Traditional Irish music is an oral tradition, and although there are a lot of websites for traditional Irish session music there’s a lot of emphasis  on just listening, watching, and replicating. I was a very good sight reader back in the day, but learning by ear has always been my weak point, so that’s just another challenge to throw onto the pile.

I live in an apartment complex and have two roommates, so although the walls here are mercifully thick, a high pitched wind instrument played by an amateur can only be tolerated so much. Maybe when I get better I’ll start practicing for an hour at a time instead.

Moving In

February 4, 2013 Personal No comments

Welp, I have finally moved house enough to start posting here, after quite a long bout of silence in the old blog. I’ve been back in Colorado for about a month now, and am putting things in order one by one.

Eventually this site is going to have a front page, but that won’t happen until I have a machine that I can do some design work on. My little netbook is a godsend, but there are some things that it should not do, and designing web pages is one of them.

My old laptop failed on me a little before I went to India. First the CD/DVD drive failed, and then the display drivers started shutting the machine down, and finally I found myself spending an hour to boot the computer every time. At that point I just started relying on the netbook. I’m in the process of finding something new, but today I lost patience with working on a 9″ screen and decided to use the old machine as a test bed. Since everything on it was already backed up, reformatting it was conceivably an easy process. The only problem was that I couldn’t use a boot disk and apparently Windows does not provide .iso files for download (or if they do I failed to find them.)

So I decided to have a go at Ubuntu. I can’t say I like the Ubuntu OS all that much. The lack of a (decent)task bar has already put me into a minor rage as I had to alt+tab through 10 different windows to get what I wanted, and I don’t know if I will adapt to having 4 different workstations to flip between. I wouldn’t need the work stations if I had a task bar! The OS runs slow sometimes, but it’s faster than Win 7 was, and I managed to run the machine for over 4 hours without it shutting down on me, whereas it was dying every 10 minutes before.

The DVD drive is still broken, and I don’t think the format was a long term fix, so I will probably need a new machine in the near future, but at least now I have something to work with.

China In Africa

China In Africa

This past Friday I was able to attend Korbel’s annual China Symposium, which, as the little poster above clearly states, was about China-Africa relations. Did you know that China is Africa’s number one trading partner, and Africa is China’s fourth largest? Or that China maintains a political relationship with 50 of the 54 countries on the continent, and Taiwan has an official relationship with the other 4? Back in my undergrad years I had done some study on the aid war between Taiwan and China, where both countries were competing for official recognition by third party states, but the texts I read were focused on Eastern Europe, and anyway a lot changes in politics in a few years.

Most of the hundred or so participants were involved in international relations in some way. Two of the panelists were US Ambassadors (pretty sure I bored the hell out of one of them during the dinner). I ended up telling people half a dozen times that I was a library science student, and the reactions were mixed. A few people were not aware that library science was a thing. A few more went on the “everything is digital now” track. During dinner I was speaking to a lady who started talking about the archive in Timbuktu, and I had the happy task of informing her than a lot of the material had been evacuated prior to the burning of the buildings by the rebels. It was a little awkward, having nothing to do with Korbel or the Air Force Academy, not speaking Chinese, and probably being the only person in the room with a bunch of metal shoved through their ears, but for most of the day all I really had to do was listen.

The symposium lasted almost 12 hours and was like a booster shot history and policy. After having to endure so much idiotic, pandering rhetoric during the election over the nature of the Chinese threat, it was refreshing to be surrounded by people who had a more nuanced view. Even though most of us were interested in China because of US interests (large Air Force Academy presence there) the discourse itself was almost devoid of any acknowledgement of them. I think most people never even have the experience of learning about modern China from such a perspective.