adventure

In which I tell a story.

Library HeatherLeave a comment

This semester in library school I’m taking the class IST 646: Storytelling for Information Professionals. For my first assignment – Exercise #1 – I’ve been tasked to tell an audio story… either a folktale, a family story, or a personal story. I chose a personal story which I’m calling “Missouri Loves Company” about a trip that my husband and I took in 2007, because it contains a bit of humor and a bit of suspense and – now that it’s in the past – is one of my favorites travel adventures to share with a willing audience. 

For some reason, WordPress won’t allow me to embed the audio file in this post, so if you want to listen to it, you’ll have to CLICK THIS LINK HERE.

This is my first time recording a verbal tale to share with others. Please feel free to give me any comments or feedback about what I did well while telling this story. I’m also very open to suggestions for how I can improve my storytelling in the future. (Go ahead, you won’t hurt my feelings. I want to learn.)

Thanks for listening to my story and stay tuned for more examples of different kinds of storytelling as I progress through this class.

Missouri

In which I start a new semester and am already swamped.

Library Heather11 Comments

I faithfully promised myself that I’d post at least once a se’nnight* during the semester, even though this blog is no longer part of a class assignment. Since my first class was last Wednesday morning, I’m hitting “Publish” just in time.

One week into the new semester and I already feel like I’m a week behind. OK, technically, I’m not behind, but am only on-time by a hair’s breadth, and certainly not ahead of schedule. This, in spite of my best organizational and time management efforts. (I even skipped Downton Abbey in favor of studying on Sunday night. Skipped Downton Abbey! Do you see how seriously I take this grad school adventure? Anna and Mr. Bates will have to wait patiently on my DVR until Spring Break.)

3d man with a stack of papers
Surrounded by coursework.

I only have enough time left to report that I’m taking the following interesting classes:
IST 600 – Library Advocacy (my very first online class)
IST 613 – Library Planning, Marketing, and Assessment
IST 614 – Management Principles for Information Professionals

I’ll provide more details on them later, but for now I must get back to work!

*se’nnight = a somewhat archaic English term for seven nights & seven days, or a week. I faithfully promised myself that I would use it in a sentence as often as I thought I could get away with it.

In which I learn a new skill.

Library HeatherLeave a comment

Today at work, I did something very exciting. Although I’ve been a Wikipedia user for many years, today I became a… *insert trumpet fanfare*… Wikipedia editor. I even got a whole page of shiny badges to show for it. Granted, I did so by completing a fairly simple, step-by-step tutorial. But a new skill is a new skill, and I’d argue that learning how to write and edit Wikipedia articles is a somewhat valuable skill. I really love learning how to do new stuff. I must not let this new-found power go to my head.

Badges? We don't need no stinking badges! (But it's nice to have them anyhow.)
Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges! (But it’s nice to have them anyhow.)

In which I start a blog.

Library Heather3 Comments

Welcome to the Adventures of Library Heather. I’m a brand-spanking-new Master of Library and Information Science student at the Syracuse University School of Information Studies. Having survived my first week of grad school (after a 14 year hiatus from academia, mind you) without running mad or fainting, I decided that the infant steps of my new career would be an excellent topic for a blog, even if I’m the only one who reads it.

I may eventually submit this blog as a Maker Activity project for my IST 511 class, but honestly, it’s something I was already planning to do, and my intention is to continue it through grad school and into my career as a librarian.

This way to librarian adventures.
This way to librarian adventures.

(What is a Maker Activity, you might be asking? That’s what I also asked when I started exploring graduate programs and started following librarians on Twitter. Librarians these days are all about maker spaces – and I say that in an awe-filled and enthusiastic tone. The short answer: places to create knowledge, ideally, sometimes with physical objects to show for it. The Fayetteville Free Library has three makerspaces. I’ll be checking them out in a few weeks.)

In which I explain my blog post titles
Being a voracious reader, I’ve always pictured my life as an adventure with myself as the protagonist. I try to live by Nora Ephron’s advice, “Above all, be the heroine of your own life, not the victim.” As a fan of 18th- and 19th-century English novels, I enjoy reading about the thrilling changes of fortune and often unbelievable circumstances found in novels like The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe and The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens. I especially like the old-fashioned literary trope of using a descriptive title to summarize the whole chapter, usually styled as “In which the hero(ine) does such-and-such.” Although I trust my library career will follow an upward trajectory, unmarred by wicked schoolmasters or bigamous marriages, I believe it will still be an exciting and occasionally amusing quest for knowledge, both for me and anyone who kindly reads this blog.

Please join me on the journey.