Getting Back To My Homework

After my heinous day on Monday, I decided to take Tuesday off – and get away from both work and school. I did – and it was absolutely wonderful. I had one of those days where I did absolutely nothing but watch my favorite movies, read some of my favorite books and just veg out. It definitely worked. I was much more sane when I went back to work on Wednesday morning – and in a better frame of mind to deal with the roller coaster that is systems librarianship. I also took time to thoroughly re-read my syllabi and class assignments to give me a better sense of where I am in the semester and what I have left to do.

I’m happy to say that I feel better about the semester. I doubt I will ever be really happy with it – one of my classes is just bad, and I doubt that will change. I need to just deal with it, however. I’m also making good progress on my major, semester-long project for ILS530 – Information Systems Analysis & Design. We need to choose one automated library system that “performs a library function.” We need to research the product, how it works, technical details, etc. The final project will be a formal report that describes the package and evaluate several parts of the package, including service plan, information storage and retrieval design, system configuration, service architecture, usefulness, ease of use, flexibility for use in varied environments, cost and documentation. We have a progress report due on Sunday. Although this will not be graded, I think the point is to have a good portion of the project done. In this vein, I am working hard because I have admittedly been laggin a bit behind on this. But, the good news is that I am getting somewhere finally!!!

For more specifics, I have choosen to study the interlibrary loan software package Ariel. I think it is a fascinating program that has revolutionized the world of ILL. In the library where I work, we do almost all of our article delivery through Ariel. However, the program is fraught with bugs, problems and/or technical difficulties. For this reason, I think it will make an interesting source of study.