Probably a ramble

    Late again this week for my blog, sorry about that. I had no idea what I would be writing about when I started this so I will probably be rambling, apologies.
    I guess one thing that has been on my mind this week, again, has been where I am going with this degree. I know I want to work in a library, and that is all I wanted to do when I first came here. I just wanted to be a librarian, and I kind of still want to be a librarian.  Now though I have found myself deciding between cataloger (apparently the weird guys among the weird guys that are librarians), public library, or Cultural Heritage and Preservation.  Working on the Digital Library Wiki for Jill Hurst-Wall has added another interest to me. It would be pretty cool to work on a digital library, though I would be afraid to lose that physical contact with people that a digital library wouldn't give me. The more I talk about this, the more I am leaning towards public librarian working in children's or youth services. So you are helping me out a little bit this week.

Filtering: Good, Bad, or don't know what to do?

            A lot of people from this weeks 511 class are probably going to be talking about filters in the library; either that or I am a week behind on this subject. Not filters you put in the coffee maker mind you, internet filters.  As a librarian do you allow people to go wherever they want using your internet, or do you use filters? Senator John McCain pushed through a law that required libraries to put in place internet filters in order to continue receiving federal funding.  The law was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2006, to the celebration of McCain.

            This is a tricky and highly controversial subject. First, because it involves money, many libraries, especially small public libraries, depend on federal funding and grants in order to continue operations and pay for things such as computers and books, and would be severely curtailed if they couldn’t get that funding. Filters can be good in that they block people from being able to look at X-rated material in the middle of the library, ten feet away from children and other adults. (You have to have some sort of mental disability if you can look at stuff like that in a public place.) On the other hand, these filters might block sites that people might need to reach, that have nothing to do with such material.  Plus there are also ways to get around these filters, granted some of the people will not know anything about how to do that, but there will always be that one guy.

            If your all for open access, then you don’t really care for filters. I for one am one of those undecided people who is teetering between opting for filters and not having them at all. Eventually I will probably have to make a choice, but I feel this takes more research. Yay, research!

            Also, something having nothing to do with filtering:

         

Musings

                Not really sure what to write about this week, nothing has really popped out at me this week. Well not much anyway. In 605 we learned about and created QR codes (in essence a square of code that can hold more information than the barcode you see on the products you buy at the store every week). As a nerd, I found them to be very cool, and fun to create and decode…if you have a smartphone.  I definitely think there are many uses for them, especially in a library, in fact we talked about several uses for them such as placing them on books and linking them to similar books, books the reader might find enjoyable, or the author’s biography or personal website. However, there is on big downside to them. They require a smartphone to read and decode them. If you don’t have a smartphone, you are out of luck. Also, it requires you to know what the heck these things are to know how to decode them.  I had not heard of them until I came to Syracuse and now after Thursday I am seeing them everywhere. Unfortunately, I do not have a smartphone, which is annoying when I want to nerd out and scan these fun little squares of data.

            On another note, I went to see Stephen Abram talk this week.  He is a very approachable person. Unfortunately I don’t remember what he talked about when he was actually answering questions, I will have to go watch the video again when I have the time.  What I do remember is him talking to us about how at conferences you can pick out what a librarian does from how they are dressed. One of my friends was apparently wearing a jacket that made her look like a library director, and I, wearing jeans and a t-shirt (I think the same one I am wearing now—relax I did laundry last night), apparently was wearing cataloger. Which is funny, because that is one of the directions I am considering going.

            That does bring me to another point, I am bad at making decisions (but I can say I made a great one deciding to come to Syracuse for LIS). One decision I am struggling with right now is which direction I want to go in with my LIS.  My first job in my internship for my undergrad at Treat Memorial Library in Livermore Falls, Maine (no, that isn’t Canada) was working in their catalog fixing the Dewey Decimal classifications (they were attempting to scare me as much as possible to test to see if I really wanted to do this, I think I passed that test) and in my oddness I actually kind of enjoyed working on cataloging, while everyone else seems to despise it. I am the weird nerd among the weird nerds, if that makes sense. I suppose if you are a weird nerd it does (side note: weird and nerd are compliments, not insults, it always confused me how calling someone different and/or smart was an insult). I am also considering taking the Certificate of Advanced Study in Cultural Heritage. CASs are cool programs that give you more training in a specific area of librarianship, they offer the CH, Digital Libraries (kind of speaks for itself), and eScience (no clue what the heck it is all about, and apparently neither do they as they have kind of put a generic name on it—at least for those in the information field, to those outside the web you could just as well call it “shiny stuff” and it would probably give them the same level of understanding—but I guess it is really cool). I am also very interested in Public Libraries, in which case I could go any number of ways, children’s services, young adult (or if you prefer teenagers or anyone of our generation that wants to reminisce or grab an easy read), or adult services (keep your mind out of the gutter please). I met with my advisor, and I am nowhere nearer to figuring out what the heck I am going to do with the next year and a half of courses.

I apologize for all of the asides, I write as I think.