"Stay out of the shadows."

When the Doctor advised Donna Noble of this in "Silence in the Library" in series four of the 2005 revival of the long-running show Doctor Who, it was very good advice, indeed. (Rarely does the Doctor dole out anything but the best of recommendations.) The Vashta Nerada, "piranhas of the air", are flesh-eating swarms, microscopic in size, and resemble shadows. They make shadows very scary places to be.

However, for someone who considers herself socially awkward, shadows are only dangerous insomuch as they tempt her to stay hidden, to avoid the light, and the nerve-twisting, misery-inducing experience of social interaction. What this results in are days on end of inaction, of sitting on the couch watching Doctor Who marathons, of failing to grow and to express herself.

I certainly love my time spent with the Doctor and his companions in the impossible TARDIS. I also love to write, and I love to talk, both expressive qualities. But most of my great conversations are those I've had with myself, and most of my great prose has been for my eyes only. It's boring, this attempt at becoming an island.

So, I'll heed the good Doctor's advice and stay out of the shadows (I really don't want the flesh gnawed off my bones, you know). A blog may be no big step towards becoming more out-going and a go-getter, because with a laptop I'm still on that couch, but it's a step.

Finally, "Silence in the Library" and the second part of the episode, "The Forest of the Dead", are two of my favorite installments of Doctor Who. They feature a planet-sized library (presumably a public library), centuries in the future, that still has books. As a recent library school grad who has heard the assertion by some library users that libraries are nothing more than Internet cafes, and that books are obsolete because of the World Wide Web, it is lovely to see that, at least in episode writer Steven Moffat's mind, books are still integral parts of the libraries of the future.

Photo by elmindreda (License: Creative Commons Attribution)

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.