First day of school

That time is once again upon us. Today is my first day of classes for the semester. I woke up this morning and there was a little bit of light in my room and I remember thinking that it couldn't possibly already be late enough to be light out and that if it was then I was late for work. Luckily that's why I have a clock, so that when I wake up at 4:30 in the morning and I can be comforted in the fact that it is indeed not time to get up. The light coming in my window was just light pollution from the fact that it was snowing. When I got up at a more humane hour I was pleasantly surprised to find it snowing outside and the world nicely blanketed in white. The morning commute wasn't too bad, though I'm glad I left myself a little extra time to get to work, I needed it. With the new semester comes a slight variation in my work schedule, since my class today is a night one. Hopefully classes this semester will be good.

1 down, 2 to go

Today was the last session of my technology class. It is over! finally! And it was a pretty easy day. We each had to give a short (3 min) presentation of the websites we created. It was fun to see what everyone had done with their websites. And rambling about a website for 3 minutes is a cinch. I don't think a single person in class really prepared and everyone did just fine.

Now I just have two more days of school until I'm free for approximately a month. One thing I love about grad school: long Christmas vacations.

An online portfolio

I am sure I have a nice long-winded post about how awesome my thanksgiving was, but for the moment I need your help.

I'm working on developing a website (ok, actually I've developed it, it just needs some finishing touches)  for my technology class this semester. The assignment was to create a personal website (with a variety of constraints, like the presence of 20 pages). I decided to create an online portfolio that I could show to a prospective employer.

What I'm looking for from you is feedback. What works and what doesn't? Where did my editing skills fail me? What do you wish was there that isn't?

http://folioleaves.wordpress.com/

I really appreciate your feedback. It will help me a lot. Hope your Monday has shaped up well.

Crazy homework assignments

Have you ever wondered how librarians came to know so many random facts? Or how they came to be such a wealth of information (some of it seemingly useless)? Well, I'll tell you. They give us homework assignments in school to purposefully find out random information. I'm in the midst of working on my first set of "sample reference questions" that are designed to teach me more about searching for answers and the possibilities that different sources provide. This sounds like a fun assignment right? Well, it's difficulty is precluding it from being much fun. I've been working on it all day and I still have about 4 of 15 questions left. But I have learned all kinds of interesting stuff today:

• Did you know that that holiday we celebrate in February isn't actually called President's Day? When Congress passed Uniform Monday Holiday Bill in 1968, they debated changing the name to President's Day from Washington's Birthday, but the proposal was rejected. Even though we popularly call it President's Day, its official name is still Washington's Birthday. Also, with the Uniform Monday Holiday Bill it was arranged so that this holiday will never actually fall on Washington's birthday, it is always the week before. (and yes, I'm sending you to Wikipedia for more info, but the Encyclopedia Brittanica, didn't have as good an article about the bill.)
• Did you know that Labor day was the original Monday holiday?
• Did you know that the first ice cream cones were served at the World's Fair in St. Louis in 1904?
• Did you know that there is an association for people who collect political ephemera and memorabilia?

What I did over summer vacation

Well, summer is drawing to a close, classes started up again last week and I feel like it's time for my "what I did over summer vacation essay." Unfortunately for you  (or not??) I don't feel the need to write an essay per se. How do you feel about a bullet list instead?

• Spent 230 hours in class
• Made 9 books
• Ate a lot of pizza, biscotti, and pastry
• Saw the Tall Ships
• Saw the Queen Mary 2!
• Commuted about 250 miles on my bike
• Only had one flat!
• Worked two jobs
• Quit one of those jobs!
• Had only two weeks of actual summer 
• Went to Old Sturbridge Village
• Visited The Cape
• Got really sunburned
• Museum hopped
• Moved
• Watched several documentaries about plastics

Old Sturbridge Village!

The Cape. It was a gorgeous day for the beach.

The USCGC Eagle

Some of the Naval boats. A US one and a German one I think.

The Queen Mary 2. Maybe as close as I'll ever be to cruising on it.

Ethiopian binding, and three varieties of Italian paper bindings

End of class

Today class ended. I'm actually pretty bummed about it. The class was awesome. I made some new friends and met some great people. And I learned a ton. I forget how wonderful it is to work with my hands. I love bookbinding. I'm already looking forward to the next class that I can take. Sadly, it won't be for a while, but hopefully I can take some more classes while I'm here in Boston.

Wellesley

Remember the movie Mona Lisa Smile? And how it was about a conservative college for women--Wellesley? Today, for our last official day of class we took the commuter rail out there and visited the special collections, conservation lab, and book arts lab.

Wellesley is I think the most beautiful campus I have ever seen. There could be more beautiful college campuses out there, but I haven't them yet. I kept having to remind myself that this was a college, not a park. So gorgeous. And the architecture is fantastic. Such beautiful buildings. The insides were great too. The special collections and the labs we saw were stunning, very elegant. I can totally understand why women would want to go to school here.

We also had the opportunity to have lunch on campus. On Thursdays they have lunch for some staff group in the faculty club. It was a nice buffet, with nice dishes, that we enjoyed on the patio overlooking the beautiful lake. And the humidity managed to burn off a bit so that it was wonderfully pleasant to be outside.

It was a great day. Besides, we got to handle some pretty awesome books. There was one that was mid-nineteenth century prints of Italian countryside dedicated to Prince Albert, with some spectacular endpapers and endbands. We saw an awesome Parisian study bible that I think dated to the thirteenth century. And we got to handle a pretty nice incunable, and so many other great things. I do love field trips.

And the conservation lab and the book arts lab had windows! I know that sounds funny, but it is amazing what windows will do. It really says something about an institution that it cares enough about conservation to put the lab in a space with windows. And it is truly a beautiful lab. And I've never seen anything like their book arts lab. It's a far cry from the ex-grocery store/warehouse I learned the trade in.

I felt like such a tourist as I took pictures today. But I confess that I don't know when I'll have time to upload them. In the mean time, enjoy this picture I found online:

Class time is here again

This morning started my final course for the summer. It is a five week, intense, bookbinding workshop at North Bennet Street School. While it is located at NBSS it is actually taught by a woman from the Winterthur program at the University of Delaware. There are three other people in my class. Two kids from the art conservation program at Buffalo State University and one from the art conservation program at the University of Delaware. Which leaves me as the only non-conservation student. All three of the other people seem really nice, and one girl was actually in my other class this summer. I think it will be a fun five weeks.

I rode my bike down to the North End this morning. It was a delightful almost 7 mile ride. I know it sounds a bit pathetic, but it was the longest ride I'd been on yet. I looked pretty gross when I got there, but I think my classmates (and my colleagues at work later in the day) will just have to get used to me looking pretty awful.  My about 3.5 mile ride to work after class was pretty good, though if it hadn't rained for about half of it I would have liked that better. c'est la vie.

2 Week Intensive

Well my 2 week class is finally over! It only took 4 weeks to complete. But my last paper is turned in and everything should be all done.

It really was a fantastic class, I enjoyed it immensely. I'll admit that the readings were a bit numerous, but they were good ones and I feel like I learned things that I needed to know by reading them. And I didn't like the way our teacher gave us our first assignment a week before class started and made our last one due a week after class ended, but it's all done now so whatever. This course has given me much to think about and I'm glad that I took it. 

Auto Correct

I love Word's grammar check. This was my favorite one from the paper I wrote today:

..."would we be serving"...

green squiggly underline

suggestion:

..."would we are serving"...

Yeah, because that makes more sense.

By the way, my sentence had something to do with "would we be serving people better by doing such and such?"

Field trips--part 2

And then Monday came and we had more field trips! We went on three field trips: to NEDCC, to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and to the main branch of BPL. How my professor managed to get lucky enough to squeeze three field trips into one day I'll never know. We also had a very relaxing lunch outside as a class. 

NEDCC stands for the Northeast Document Conservation Center. You wonder how the E got there? Well, in the old days it had a different name: New England Document Conservation Center. The acronym makes more sense doesn't it? But when they expanded to include non-New England states they had to change the name, but they didn't want to change their acronym since that's what everyone calls it by, so we got Northeast. Anyways, NEDCC is a pretty awesome conservation center. They have a fantastic lab, and some really awesome imaging equipment. They do very high end conservation work here for clients all over the world. It's really an amazing facility.

Lab at NEDCC courtesy of NEDCC's Flickr account

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is right next door to Simmons and as a Simmons student I actually get in free, and yet I had never been until today. I have been missing out! And I feel a little absurd that I know so little about the history of the museum or of Isabella Stewart Gardner, whose home the museum is in, or about the big theft there a few years ago. It's kind cool how they have left the empty frames hanging on the wall from where the paintings where stolen. It is such a cool house. I want my house to look like this one when I'm filthy rich (which as a librarian will be never). Also, I have re-fallen in love with wallpaper. I want my house to be hung in wallpaper (at least in one or two rooms). And maybe in the nice wallpapers that are actually fabric. I was wondering today why we call it wallpaper exactly. I realize that wallpaper is indeed paper you paste on your wall, but that hasn't always been the case. I was talking to a classmate and she imagines that wallpaper probably originated with hanging tapestries on your wall, which eventually morphed into wallpaper that was made of cloth, which in turn became wallpaper as we know it. So, why don't we call it wallfabric? or wallcloth? But I digress. Anyways, the Gardner museum was cool. We went to look at the way that they exhibit books and papers and things--they have some interesting practices...

Courtyard of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

And then we finished off the day at BPL where we looked at some different exhibition practices, and also looked at the differences in conservation practices between places like NEDCC and public libraries. It's a pretty stark difference--libraries typically don't worry about long term conservation as much with their circulating collections.

Basically, I love field trips. It was super nice to have a conversation over lunch about ways to exhibit items and then to walk over to the Gardner and see  how they exhibit stuff and then a short train ride takes us to BPL to see what they do. It is a fantastic way to learn. And it works so well with our small class. I admit that I was pretty nervous about a class of 4 people, but I'm feeling really good about it now. Let's hope that the last few days of class end as pleasantly as these last few have been.

Field trip!

One thing that I really like about school are the field trips. Somehow it makes the day go by faster and it makes everything that you've talked about come together in a very different way. Last Friday we went on a field trip to the Harvard Depository.

The Harvard Depository is a pretty nifty place. It is a high-density storage site for Harvard where they keep millions of their lower use books and periodicals. They store the books on shelving units that are about 30 feet high and are arranged in aisles about 200 feet long. I wish I could give you some kind of comparison to illustrate how very big that is, but this picture will kind of give you an idea. They also store their books in a highly climate controlled environment so the books are kept at around 45 degrees Fahrenheit at about 30% relative humidity. Though they do have one aisle of stacks that are kept colder, at more 40 degrees (this is where they store many of their films and other things that need the colder environment. It is a very fascinating operation.

30 foot high stacks in the Harvard Depository

Transferrable knowledge

I love it when you're sitting in class listening to lecture and trying to figure out how in the world you are ever going to remember all this information because it's information that you actually want to remember. In class this morning we've been talking about cost analysis and contracting and it has been really satisfying to sit in a class learning about something that I legitimately can see myself doing in the future. I can see there being a time in my life that I may have to deal with writing a contract for something and sending out for bids or dealing with vendors. In all reality, I have kind of felt like this all week in my class. I feel like I'm truly learning some of what it takes to effectively manage a preservation program in an academic institution (we've mostly focused on academic because that is what our professor's background is, and really that's where a lot of preservation programs are). For one of the first times in my life I feel like I'm learning things that will translate into skills and knowledge that I will really use in my life. And it's a great feeling.

Preservation Management

Well, I am officially one third of the way through my Simmons summer class. So far the first three days have been pretty good. And not nearly as long as I might have imagined them to be. A class that meets from 9:30 to 4 everyday certainly has the potential to be very long. Luckily our professor is very engaging and the subject matter is super interesting. Even the many many readings have been useful, informative, and worthwhile. Though I certainly would prefer if there weren't so many, but at least they are well chosen.

Already I have been given lots to think about and some new ideas about directions that I could head in my life. So far, I'd say that this has been a success, but we'll see what the next week and a half bring--I do miss sleeping at night...

Procrastination

Harvard Depository

I don't have any life changing stories for today. I'm sitting here putting off doing my homework. It feels weird to have homework (and a mountain of it at that) when I don't actually start my class till Monday. But the professor sent out the syllabus  this week and we have sixteen readings for the first day of class. And about 6-8 readings for each of the days following. Now you know what I'll be doing in my "spare" time for the next two and a half weeks.

International Children's Digital Library

So another cool website that we talked about in LIS 415 this week was the International Children's Digital Library. From what I understand this website was created by the University of Maryland in concert with the Internet Archive. But what makes it really awesome is that they also involved a team of 6 children (ages 7-11) that helped design the website in a way that makes sense to children.

Look,  I found Alice's Adventures in Wonderland without typing a thing.

The basic concept is that children often remember books based on what they look like (come to think of it I do too. I can't tell you how many times all I can remember is that the book was green and had a cool picture on the cover...) So the search interface allows a user to search based on features of the book such as color, or length, or if it is make-believe or true, etc. It allows you to select different things and then it filters the results similar to an AND Boolean search. And it lets you do all this without typing a single thing.

Tag Galaxy

Yesterday was my last day of LIS 415--Information Organization. For reasons I don't quite understand that class ended this week (though I have two assignments for it due next week), but my other class still has two weeks left. I don't understand and I don't actually really care either--that's the funny thing about grad school: I find that I just don't care a lot about the random workings of the school or it's idiosyncrasies.

But, so in our class we had our final lecture and we talked about all kinds of cool things and so I want to highlight some of them here. My favorite website we saw is a way to visualize information and really has no discernible purpose other than to be incredibly pretty. Somebody obviously had way too much time on their hands, but that doesn't change the fact that it is really cool.

In case you're curious, these are pictures of Devon+Sea+Landscape. I think it captures Devon's beauty pretty well, don't you?

So play around with this website; it's called Tag Galaxy.