Hiya

Let's face it: I'm late to the game here. Blogging is at least ten years old. For someone who enjoys writing so well, I'm surprised that I haven't ventured into virtual self-revelation before. On the other hand, considering I still drive a car with a cassette player, my idea of making mix tapes has only just advanced to ripping tracks off my CDs and burning CD-Rs (iPod? Huh?), and I still have a VCR and a large assortment of VHS tapes onto which I still record shows (how does that TiVo thing work again?), maybe it shouldn't surprise me. I really am a late adopter.

But, I do adopt, or adapt, sooner or later. Since enrolling in library school in 2007 that has shifted more to sooner. Everyday I learned about how libraries and archives implement technology to make their collections more accessible to users. The more I learned, the less intimidating it all was, and the more interested I became.

I am a traditionalist at heart. I prefer books to Kindle. I like to write in whole words and complete sentences (I have accepted Web acronyms into my vocabulary, but very reluctantly). And I still believe in the importance of actual, physical human contact. I'm just no longer a technophobe.

And this is just a long-winded way of saying, "Hi. Welcome to my blog."

I made the decision to finally start a blog after my first professional conference two weeks ago. It was held in Bloomington, IN for graduate students and recent professionals in the archival field, which was my concentration in library school. For the first time I had the opportunity to meet with my peers beyond the classroom. I certainly had a little envy for the recent graduates who had jobs, but I was more interested in what they were doing in those jobs, and I started to imagine myself contributing to similar projects. I left the conference with newfound motivation to become more than just someone with a degree. I have no prior experience and no participation in professional organizations, but I love the information field and frankly, I can't worry about the past. I can only move forward.

I want to keep that motivation moving me in that forward direction. Since my immediate future consists of the daunting task of finding that first job, it won't be easy. So I need to talk about it. I'll document the process, what I do right, what I do wrong, my misplaced optimism, my fantasies about the ideal job in the ideal location, and my down time when I just get too discouraged to submit another resume. I'll use this blog to brainstorm ideas for creating opportunities for experience, chew on archival and library issues in the news, and anything else that strikes my fancy. I'm eclectic, so that really could be anything, starting with the next post, which outlines a more personal reason for this blog.