This week was my first week of assignments being due. The opening weeks of a term always seem a bit lazy; it’s easy to keep up with the reading (most of the time), but difficult to visualize where it’s all going. What it lack in actual workload, it makes up for in the absolute tedium of theory.
Monday, my group turned in our documentation of the presentation we did last week on collection development issues in public libraries. We talked about collection issues involving serials, government documents, electronic materials, and finished with some discussion on particular issues found in bilingual or francophone libraries. The presentation was fun enough, but I’m just glad to have it finished.
On Tuesday, Maya and I handed in an evaluation of a research article. Within our evaluation we had to answer four questions; involving previous research, statements of hypotheses, organization and communication, and problems within the research, including possible solutions. The research article was on transformed gaze conditions in a Collaborative Virtual Environment, particularly focusing on augmented gaze. If that doesn’t mean anything to you … well, you might be better off.
Wednesday I handed in a user needs assessment based upon an interview I did over the weekend. I had to pick someone who represented a user community, and based upon my interview, determine what sorts of information needs that community might have, what information seeking behaviors it exhibited, and possible obstacles the community faced. The interview was fun, and the write-up, once I figured out how to turn an interview into a needs assessment, went pretty smoothly.
Now I’m full swing into the term, with something new due every single week, it seems. It’s nice to have things spaced out a bit, though it means that there’s always a deadline looming, and that I have to stay on top of my work, i.e. I have to try and suppress my procrastinative nature as best I can. I have to prepare a strategic plan for next Friday. After that, we have a week off, and Abigail is coming to visit, so chances are I won’t be very productive. The following week I have a midterm, and then a couple weeks after that the next big collection development and information services and users projects are due.
It’s fun times, for me, despite my occasional proclivity to get involved in hallway conspiracies. But that’s an issue for another day. Things can always be better, but honestly I enjoy the things we’re doing, the multiple aspects of the field I’m in, and the direction I feel like this education is taking me. I admit I may be a bit of an optimist at times, but like Poe said: Man’s real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.