Journal Entry 1

Video assignment

Randy Paush begins his lecture with a few CAT scans thus introducing the elephant in the room. He quickly moves onto his childhood dreams; it is an impressive list especially the giant stuffed animals. He speaks of brick walls and how most people let them stop them. The truly determined and creative people find a way to overcome this obstacle.

"Introduction to the Information Profession" is my brick wall. We are in an information age. The magnitude of information is high on the Richter scale. Databases, catalogs and indexes are the most efficient way to maneuver through this glut of information. When I decided to become a librarian, I was determined to get more children and teens into reading. To help them find the right book, the book that would help them be turned onto reading. Two and half years later, I understand a little more about the library profession and that it so much more than just books and reading. Searching for answers that will complete an assignment, searching for answers that will satisfy that itch in the brain, and finally searching for the book or magazine that allow one to escape and dream.

This term I plan on finding a way to overcome the brick wall before me. Maybe I will be thrown a line, maybe I will find a handhold, or maybe just maybe I will find that the wall isn't nearly so high and I step over it. Some final thoughts form Randy Paush's lecture that I will keep near at hand: "anybody can get chewed on"; "show gratitude"; "don't complain, just work harder"; "be good at something"; "work hard"; "find the best in everyone"; "and be prepared." As I have all ready learned over the last year, luck happens "where preparation meets opportunity."

Paush, R. (2007). Last lecture: really achieving your childhood dreams. Carnegie Mellon University. Given September 18, 2007.

In class reading

Michael Gorman begins the introduction with a reflection on Middlemarch. The 1820s were a time for change in England: "superstition was giving way to science" and "hand implements for factories and machinery"(Gorman, 2003). He writes next of World War I as the next defining moment - the break "between the Victorian age and modern times." He marches on through time to our current age with its fear of "unknown future changes." We are now in the information age. The advent of microfilm, videotapes, DVD, and the internet have changed the library into "resource centers." There are now virtual libraries on the internet that provide all the traditional programming of homework help, reader advisory, and reference questions; moreover, these internet libraries allow the patrons to actively shape the programs and create new ones (Czarnecki, 2007). The part of Gorman's introduction that struck the strongest chord is "belief's that's one own time is unique is a hindrance to clear thinking." It is difficult to see tomorrow. Technology is changing or being upgraded at faster and faster rates. How best to incorporate technology into one's own time and allow room for further growth is one of the many challenges librarians face today.

Czarneck, K. & Gullet, M. (2007). Meet the new you: In teen second life, librarians can leap tall building in a single bound and save kids from boring assignments--all before lunch. School Library Journal, 53(1), 36-39.

Gorman, M. (2003). The enduring librarian: technology, tradition and the quest for balance. American Library Association: Chicago, IL.

Text assignment

Chapter 6 of the textbooks covers issues and techniques of information organization. "Information has an entropic character: it does not organize itself, rather, it has a tendency toward randomness" (Rubin, 2004). Rubin further writes that "existing in its unorganized state, it is, for all intents and purposes, impossible to access except by accident."

This point is well illustrated in The People of Sparks (a novel). To summarize, it is two hundred years since the Disaster (a combination of war followed by multiple waves of disease) and the survivors currently live in a preindustrial state. One group of survivors lived in city underground (Ember) and finally make their way to the surface and to the town of Sparks. One young boy walks into a large building that the town people have been using as a warehouse and finds piles of books haphazardly on the shelves. The books are dusty, but he grabs a few random books to satisfy his thirst for knowledge. Sparks doesn't have a librarian, but the city of Ember did. The Ember librarian sets about organizing the books "millimeters" at a time. He sets aside books that might be useful to the boy. A book on electricity is found. A magnet is found the rubble of an old house; other bits and pieces are savaged. Finally, a gift of intact light bulbs comes from a roamer. Electricity is rediscovered.

How much more information was lost because the books that survived were unorganized and unused? Could the townspeople of Sparks have achieved prosperity sooner with the aid of a librarian? Without a librarian to organize and retrieve the commodity of information, the town people constantly struggled and had to reinvent things.

Returning to the text, chapter 6 outlines the various ways to organize information: systems such as Dewey and Library of Congress; bibliographies, indexes, and abstracts; electronic organization fields (MARC); and the internet. The goal of all this organization is one thing: retrieval. Without being able to retrieve information, it is lost whether due to disaster, careless cataloging or broken links. Librarians are many things including information retrieval specialists.

DuPrau, J. (2204). The people of sparks. Yearling: New York.

Rubin, R. (2004). Foundations of library and information science. Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc.: New York.