The Semester is Under Way

Oddly enough, I have indeed survived another start to the fall semester. And believe me, I questioned whether or not this would be the case on many occasions over the last couple of weeks. I can definitely say that in terms of work, August is my least favorite time of year.

On another note, the semester is under way, and I am not actually in school. How awesome is that???? I am fully appreciating the feeling of being out of school.

My Library School Experience: The Good

My Library School Experience: A Wrap Up

My Library School Experience: The Great

My Library School Experience: The Good

My Library School Experience: The Bad

My Library School Experience: The Ugly

I have to say that I consider the majority of my library school experiences to be good ones. I do have a couple of notes or caveats about this categorization. Good is a very difficult word to define. I think that people (and I do include myself in this group) use good to mean a variety of things. In this post, good may mean adequate, average, acceptable, fine, ok, or some other comparable word. I have lumped many experiences into the category. To men, this means that these experiences were as I expected them to be. They were at the very least acceptable. Some might have been better than others also labeled as good, but they were all good experiences. Even more so, they were all positive experiences.

The second point that I want to make is with my claim that the majority of the experiences were good. By majority, I do not mean that over 50% were good. Rather, I mean that of the four categories I am using (excellent, good, bad and ugly) to evaluate my overall experience, more of those experiences fell into the good category than the others. This is by no means scientific. Admittedly, I don’t intend to write about every aspect of my time at library school or to quantify these. My notion that the majority of my experiences were good is a personal judgement.

So on to the good:

The Classes and the Curriculum

Overall, I generally liked the curriculum in SCSU’s MLS program. I did find he four introductory classes to be rather basic. However, when I started the program, I had been working as a professional librarian for over five years. The curriculum in those classes was appropriate for people learning to be a librarian. It centered around customer service, patron-centered service, ethical concerns and library history. I probably should have looked at a program that would have given me credit for work experience. I would have found it more useful to be able to take other classes instead of these. Side Note: most of these classes were not a loss. I did learn things in most of them.

My favorite classes in the program were the management ones. I made a conscious efforts to take as many as I could (which comes to three – Library Management, College and University Libraries and Library Personnel Management) because I know that management is one of my weakest areas even as it is an important component to my current job. Not only were these classes especially helpful, some of the assignments in these classeswere my favorites. Some of these included an in-basket exercise where we had to sort through several emails waiting for a library director on a Monday morning and decide how to deal with them; a statistical analysis of a library using National Center for Education Statistics data to compare data to that of peer libraries; an exercise to write an employee handbook for all employees of a specific type of library; and an assignment to design a performance management system for a library staff. These assignments were all very practical in nature and required thought and attention rather than extensive research. I learned a great deal from these more practical-type assignments.

While I do not think that I can adequately (or impartially) assess the level of technology in the curriculum (due to the fact that technology is my area of expertise in the library field), I did take two technology-related classes: Digital Libraries and Information Architecture. Each class was well worth taking – and very important to learning about and understanding the library landscape. I would have loved to have taken several other technology-related classes, but they did not fit into my schedule.

While there has been some debate about the state of library education, I am overall happy with the curriculum. I think that the practicalities of technology need to be included in greater depth, but I’m not sure how to accomplish that. Personally, I believe that technical competencies are critical to the survival of libraries, but am starting to believe that this is something that may need to be imparted on the job.

Administrative People at SCSU – including Library Staff at the Buley Library

As a distance student, one of the more difficult things to figure out was who to go to when I had a problem. Fortunately, the people that I had to contact to resolve issues or to ask questions were always responsive – and better yet, always gave me the right answers. Specifically, I had a couple of issue for which I had to deal with the people in the Registrar’s Office. In one case, no none I spoke to knew what the problem was. However, one wonderful woman in the Registrar’s Office (who deals with graduate students with the last names starting with M-Z) figured everything out for me.

Also, the women who worked in the MLS office as administrative assistants warrant mention. There were two women who worked in the office during my time at SCSU, and they were so helpful. I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t have been able to graduate if they hadn’t been willing to help me figure out what I needed to do – especially when applying to the program and when trying to figure out how to actually graduate.

One of the other seemless services was that offered by the Buley Library. While I never had to set foot in the library, I did use their collection and their services. ILL was easy. Using the library’s electronic collections was also easy. I admit that I already knew how to use their proxy server to access their databases (since the library where I work uses the same service via the same integrated library system), but I never had any problems getting to the databases that I needed to use.

The Majority of the Faculty

While I had some awful experiences with some of the professors at SCSU, I took classes with 6 different professors. One of them was excellent – far beyond the others. Three were very good (and yes, they get put in the good). And two? I can’t discuss them quite yet. As a whole, the faculty were intelligent people who cared about the education of their students – who cared about the world of libraries and imparted that care to their students. Faculty, in my opinion, can make or break an education. For a while, I did think that my awful experiences would outweigh the positive ones. However, that was not the case. I do think that some of the faculty had problems or issues teaching in the online environment, but that may have more to do with the issues surrounding distance education itself rather than specific deficits on their part. The bottom line is that I am happy with the majority of professors with whom I studied.

So, the good was good. And overall, I would say that my education at SCSU was a good one – and I can live with that!

I Almost Made it to SCSU!

Thinking back, I’m pretty sure that during the 2 1/2 years that I attended Southern Connecticut State University, I never actually set foot in the state of Connecticut – never mind made it to New Haven. So, I find if fairly ironic that I’m writing much of my library school recap while in a hotel in Hamden, CT. I’m currently attending a training class on load profiles for my library system at another university – which if Google Maps is correct is only about 16 miles away. I actually came close to SCSU when I was out looking for something to have for dinner. Someday, I’m going to have to actually make it to campus.

As a side note, I’m very appreciative of the free internet access at the hotel. While I was in Seattle and Vancouver a couple of weeks ago, I refused to pay for internet access because I thought it was way too expensive. Internet access makes me happy!

My Library School Experience: The Great

My Library School Experience: A Wrap Up

My Library School Experience: The Great

My Library School Experience: The Good

My Library School Experience: The Bad

My Library School Experience: The Ugly

A Wonderful Sense of Accomplishment & Personal Fulfillment:

One of the things that prompted me to write this post now is my own reaction to receiving my diploma in the mail last week. I was utterly surprised by the overwhelming feeling of accomplishment that I felt when I saw the actual piece of paper for the first time. Regardless of the worth of the program, the value of the MLS, the positive experiences or the negative ones, I am deeply proud of myself for going to graduate school and completing the MLS program at SCSU. It wasn’t easy. I learned a great deal. There were many challenges, and I think that I met them in a appropriate manner. Personally, I got something important and fulfilling out of my graduate school experience – and this is worth a great deal to me.

Also, I was going through this blog last week, reading some of the posts about my negative experiences at SCSU. More about some of these will come when I get to the Ugly post. However, I was reminded about something my mom said to me once when I was talking to her about a particularly awful class that I had when I was in college. My mom told me that she agreed with me about the quality of the class (it was a dogmatic ethics class based in theology where there was no room for discussion or disagreement – something with which I was quite uncomfortable), but she thought I should try to look at the experience in a different light. From her perspective, she saw the hours and hours that I spent talking about the class with her and my dad - discussing my thoughts about the course material; arguing why the professor’s logic was faulty; developing my own sense of what it meant to be ethical. Possibly without meaning to, that professor made me think more than most others. My mom was right. There is something critical to be learned from bad experiences. I can’t change the bad experiences, the bad classes, the bad professors, but I can take something positive from them and try to learn from them. As I thought back to this discussion with my mom, I realized that I did learn something from each bad experience at SCSU. These experiences did not ruin my education. They changed the direction that my education took. Would I pay for some of the classes that I took again? Absolutely NOT! Despite this fact, I did use the bad experiences to make the rest of my journey a more fulfilling one. I gave more of myself to my remaining classes because it was important that I not let myself get mired in negativity.

My Advisor – Dr. James Kusack:

The unsung hero of my graduate school experience is my advisor, Dr. James Kusack (I did ask if I could mention him by name). I feel truly lucky to have worked with him and even luckier to have studied with him. He is a wonderful teacher – and way by far the best teacher from my time at SCSU in the online environment. He was engaged in each class that I took with him; he participated actively in online discussion; he was incredibly responsive to student inquiries; he graded assignments with tremendous speed, yet in such a way that revealed he had indeed taken time to read the submissions; he gave tremendous feedback at every opportunity; and he seemed to truly enjoy teaching. I agonized over many of his assignments – mostly since many of his management exercises seemed to overlap with the reality of daily life in an academic library. However, I learned a great deal from them.

I’m not sure that I was able to appropriately than Dr. Kusack. I came close to leaving the program last summer – mostly because there were several months where I really believed that many of the ILS administrators at SCSU had little regard for the distance ILS program and its students. Dr. Kusack reminded me that there were people at SCSU that did care, and I am extremely grateful for this. I do wish that I could have taken a face-to-face class with Dr. Kusack. It is very strange to get to know people without ever having met them in the physical world. Regardless, Dr. Kusack was one of the best experiences from my time at SCSU.

ILS680 – Evaluation & Research & The Research Project:

The thing that surprised and shocked me the most was ILS680-Evaluation & Research. I can tell you that I was petrified about taking this class. Students talked about how difficult this class was – and I got too caught up in that. Additionally, I wasn’t entirely sure how valuable a research class would actually be. After all, I was a history major in college – and had written many, many research papers in my day. This meant that I was expecting the class to be lots and lots of work with little reward. Boy, was I wrong. ILS680 ended up being my favorite class. It was extremely difficult. There was so much work to do in a short amount of time. However, the professor had a suggested timeline. I admit that I got sidetracked a couple of times, but I was able to get myself back on track.

Additionally, writing the paper for this class was extremely fulfilling. I was so utterly amazed – and happy - with the end result. As I think I have mentioned before, this was the perfect ending to my MLS experience. It really served as a capstone experience for which I was able to pull together much of what I had learned.

So really, I did have some great experiences!

My Library School Experience: A Wrap-Up

I’ve been meaning to do some wrap-up posts about library school for several months. I specifically made myself wait a bit because I felt that some time away would help me put the experience in perspective – in a more balanced perspective. This was a good decision on my part, because I think that I’ve been able to look back at both the good and the bad experiences with a little less emotion (ok, a lot less emotion).

So, I’m working on a review of sorts of my educational experience. The first part is broken down into four sections: the great, the good, the bad and the ugly. I can be specific because these posts are mostly written – or at the very least outlined in my head. I have some vague future plans to then write some posts (maybe only one) about the curriculum itself, a post about how the MLS program relates to (or doesn’t relate to) practicing librarianship and then a post about my overall reaction to distance education.

I’m not entirely sure how long it will take. It is August already and the misery of getting ready for back to school at my place of work has begun. I expect to overwhelmed and overworked as usual. At least I don’t have to worry about going back to school myself. Yeah!

A Diploma Arrives

My diploma from SCSU

Look what I found in my front door this morning! I wasn’t expecting this for at least two more months, so I was pleasantly surprised when I opened the envelope. It is a bit funny that this envelope had been in my front door for several days. I remember seeing it several days ago when I got home from work, but kept forgetting to actually open the front door and get it. Fortunately, it survived two days of heavy, heavy downpours. Thank goodness that the mail person had put it in a bag!!

Anyway, I was very excited to actually have the piece of paper in hand. It definitely feels much more official now. Cool!

Library Day in the Life: Friday

8:30AM: I am taking today off as a vacation day. I still have so much to do to put things away from the our trip to Seattle. I call in and talk to someone in circulation. The person who works for me is also out today. I check to make sure things are going ok. There are no problems. I tell the person that I am available by cell phone. I also ask her to do the backup of our library system.

There were no incidents during the rest of the day. Yeah!!!

Library Day in the Life: Thursday

8:45AM: Make it in to work. My sleep cycles may be finally getting back to normal. Read email, get ready for the day.

9:00AM: Started working on our website redesign project. I began entering content into a page built from our new library template in order to figure out how the new page behaves. I will work on this all day when not working on something else.

10:30AM: IT meeting. Although I am not technically part of the IT department, I do go to their weekly meetings. A majority of the work that I do relies upon (and affects) the IT department  – enough that I need to have an extremely close relationship with the department. We discuss the external DNS entry that I need. Consensus seems to be that this is okto go ahead with. I need to speak to our network administrator later.

12:10PM: Return to the library from the IT meeting. Wade through email and listen to voice mail (which were all telemarketer type calls).

12:30PM: Go to lunch!

1:30PM: Return from lunch. Email waiting from government documents that there are several frozen records in our integrated library system. I free the records and email the requester. She had another record that needed to be freed. I freed this record also.

1:45PM: The acquisitions librarian emailed me that she could not get into her vacation log. The file is kept on a computer in my office. I realize that the computer is off. We had a power outage last night when several thunderstorms went through the area. I turned the computer on and emailed the requester. All seemed to work fine.

2:00PM: Left a message asking the network administrator to give me a call.

2:05PM: Read through performance management goals. I need to set goals for the person who works for me for this coming fiscal year. The goals are due by the end of July. I have started on the goals, but need to do more.

3:10PM: The network administrator calls. We go over what I need done. He will assign the server an external IP address and call our ISP in order to request that the external DNS entry is mapped to the IP address.

4:00PM: Work on adding 15 lists in Word document form to our website for our government document librarian. This task is rather time consuming and I haven’t been able to get to it this week so far. I had added these lists to our website in June, but they got overwritten when the college went live with its new website on June 30th. ARGH!!! I absolutely hate having to redo work, especially when I should have realized that these pages would have been overwritten.

5:00PM: Head home.

Pictures from Seattle

The Space Needle

Originally uploaded by ScruffyNerf.

My husband and I bought a new camera on the day that we flew to Seattle. As such, we were definitely a bit picture happy. In all, we (between the two of us) took 1242 pictures over a 7 day span. Wow!! I’m having a very nasty time trying to go through the all to choose the ones that I want printed out. It might take me a month to actually go through them all. But, I will say that this picture of the Space Needle that my husband took is my favorite picture. Very cool!

Library Day in the Life: Wednesday

Day 3 of what my daily work life as a systems librarian is like.

8:00AM: Waking up today is easier!

9:00AM: I arrive at work. I get everything settled and read my email. Fortunately, there isn’t much waiting for me.

9:20AM: I get an email from the person that works for me that someone in circulation cannot delete an item record from our library system. She is getting an error message that the item cannot be deleted because it is on reserve. I log into the system and check the item in question. The systems indicates that it is not on reserve. I cannot delete it either. I need to get the vendor to fix the error. The vendor is in California, and I generally try not to call before 10AM EST. I decide to open a call from their tech support website. I generally don’t like to do this because it seems that it takes much longer for them to respond. However, it has been a while, so I decide to try again. I fill out the form and get a confirmation.

10:10AM: While using the washroom in our staff room, I hear the phone ringing. I get a sense that someone might be looking for me, so I hurry to wrap things up and return to my office. There is indeed a message waiting for me. I call the person back. She has an error message when opening Outlook. She also says that her machine is running very slowly. The person in question has an old computer that is ready for replacement. I walk her through the error messages. Her email opens. I ask her to keep me apprised. I explain that I would prefer not to reinstall Office (or even her operating system) because she is in line for a new computer as soon as I can get my hands on one. I make a note to discuss new computers at the weekly IT meeting on Thursday.

10:25AM: I go back to working on web page stuff. I remote desktop to the CMS server in order to copy the relevant XML, XSL and CSS files.

10:30AM: I get a call from another IT tech. He needs to get a data connection to a card swipe on a vending machine in the library hooked up. He doesn’t have his keys to the data closets nor does he have any patch cords. I tell him that I have both and will meet with him when he gets to the library. The new data jack for the vending machine was not patched in, so we took care of that issue.

11:30AM: I go through my email to find the URL for the admin site for one of our ebook databases. Our acquisitions librarian is interested in looking at usage statisics. I find the URL and log in to look at the stats for myself. I am surprised with the usage. I email the information to the acquisitions librarian.

11:55PM: I search for some books on XSLT and Xpath that may help me learn what I need to know to be able to work on coding new templates for the library in the new CMS. I find 4 books on Amazon and email the titles (with ISBNs) to our acquisitions librarian.

12:30PM: Lunch!

1:30PM: Back to work. I go back to working on web page stuff.

3:00PM: I start to work on adding several lists (in Word doc format) onto our website. Our government documents librarian puts the lists of needs and offers on our website. I put these lists up back in June, but am guessing that these lists got overwritten when we made substanative changes to our website to conform to the college’s new look and feel on July 1st. Yuck! I hate having to redo work, especially when I should have known this would happen. I don’t actually finish. There are 15 lists, and it is labor intensive to put these lists up.

3:30PM: The college archivist calls me to ask some questions about budget amounts for technology for a grant that she is writing. I mention to her how grateful I am to the person who works for her for his help with the digital imaging project. I tell her that I nominated him for the employee recognition program. We talk about website issues. I mention that I think we should meet to discuss her website needs. I need to include the archives site with the library site in any plans that I make for development. She agrees that we will talk next week.

3:45PM: Back to work on website stuff. I’m starting to suffer from code coma.

4:00PM: The head of HR sends out an email about a tornado warning that is in effect for our county. I look outside, and it is indeed getting dark and dangerous looking. I continue to work on website stuff, printing out the XML that our new home page template generates. I also print out the new XSL pages that control the page.

4:30PM: The head of HR sends out another email that the tornado warning has expired. We are, however, in the middle of a nasty thunderstorm. I decide that I don’t want to leave work until the storm abates. I work on cleaning off my desk.

4:55PM: While the sky has lightened a bit, it is still pouring buckets out. I decide to leave anyway. I haven’t heard back from the vendor about the call that I opened this morning. I guess calls opened through the website are still given lower priority. If I don’t hear back by mid-afternoon tomorrow, I’m going to have to call. ARGH!