Reflection of LIS 561: Storytelling

I must say I was amazed that Storytelling was offered as one of my on-line courses through the ischool. When I applied to the online program I had excepted it would have been one of the courses only offered to residential students.
I'm very glad I took this course, I not only learned and practiced live storytelling, but dabbled in how storytelling can look in an asynchronous online format.

For this course I borrowed a ukulele from a co-worker and wrote a three-chord song for the Very Hungry Caterpillar. Since then I have purchased my own ukulele and have dabbled with it. I use it in storytime at my library, and whenever I'm asked to preform for groups of children.
Linked here is the blog that each of us kept throughout the course. You will see my written assignments, as well as links to audio versions of my stories created for this course.

Reflection of LIS 580: Managment

I am thrilled that the iSchool requires LIS 580 to help us learn not only to be competent information professionals, but also leaders in our field. To be taking classes from so many brilliant and top-notch instructors, and to be able to work with diverse and intelligent classmates enhances my education.

In LIS 580 we studied Management. More specifically, management of projects and people. Working in groups we played out scenarios such as the example if we were the manager during a re-model of an academic library, in which the library building would be inaccessible for 2 years but still had to be open for business. So much has to go into such projects, like defining what “open for business” means and what aspects are dependent on other aspects happening first (like moving in desks before moving in computers).

We studied different management styles, and how management has been viewed in the past. The most interesting discussion for me was the differences between a manger and a leader. These roles may be played by the same person, but they are, in fact very different. Nancy described the differences as the leader “has their eye on the horizon” where as the manager “has their eye on the bottom line.”

Our final project for LIS 580 was compiling a case study of an organization. I chose to focus on American Girl (that company that makes dolls, books, clothing, and magazines for girls ages 8-12), and how management handled a situation in which some customers were not pleased with who American Girl chose to partner with. It is attached here. Enjoy!

Reflection of INFX 542: XML

I had been a little worried about fulfilling the technology requirement for my MLIS. In fact I and one of my friends continued to put it off in hopes that the requirement would change. We took the class together to support each other though it. She helped me often but checking in, and I helped her understand what was needed, and we both learned from each other’s mistakes. I was greatly surprised to discover that taking Information structures of XML with Bob Boiko was not the struggle I had anticipated.

He gave us a choice between more technical and less technical tracks, so we had greater control over the speed and difficulty of the materials. While I may not end up working directly with creating XML in my work, I have come away from this course with a much stronger understanding of the separation between format and content, and how one can manipulate content with out affecting format, or vise versa. Using the program Oxygen we created XML pages from scratch inputting data, as well as created schemas to better understand the content needed, and transforms to crate formatted and human-readable materials.

The concept and activity I most struggled with in this course was that of the schema—as I began the course I didn’t see the point in having one, as it didn’t DO anything- it didn’t’ hold data like the XML page and it didn’t make the data readable as per the transform. After working through several projects and lectures I now understand that the schema is important in knowing what you need in an XML page—what information you’re looking for and how that information is arranged within a hierarchy of information. To be able to see how XML is used in my library catalog, government websites, and even restaurant menus allows me to have a greater understanding of the storage and presentation of information that we use everyday in my work with the public and information.

Welcome

Welcome to my Digital Repository or Working Portfolio! In this blog I will collect the work I've done throughout my MLIS studies so that in the winter of 2011 I can crate a professional portfolio as a capstone to my masters of Library and Information Science.

As this blog is continually a work in progress and specifically created for the preparatory work for LIS 596 it will not be written for the entertainment or education of the general public, or even those interested in libraries, but instead for the students and instructors of LIS 596 in winter of 2011.