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.