As usual, I have overestimated the amount of things I can do at one time. Now that I'm starting my teaching job and my MLIS (masters in library and information science for those who haven't been paying attention), I don't think I'm going to have a lot of time for language learning, and hence, blogging about language learning. However, I will definitely blog about that when I do it. For the moment, let's talk about information science.
Being the--I hesitate to say over-achiever so,--early-achiever that I am, I've already read 4 of my textbooks for this semester. I hope they aren't representative of the whole thing because, while they were interesting, I found the information fairly repetitive. The possibility exists that I am, actually, over-achieving and don't have to read the entirety of all these books. In which case, I guess it's my own fault for reading repetitive things. So far, I've read This Book is Overdue, Glut, Everything is Miscellaneous, and I'm about halfway through Ambient Findability (thank you, Kindle editions!). The first three (and to a small extent, the fourth), dealt a lot with the history of information and information management, which was interesting the first time, but less so the second and third. They all seem to use the same anecdotes as well. There's one about Borges making up a ridiculous system of categories for a Chinese emperor, which, I suppose, is used to illustrate the point that categories are only useful to us if things that make sense are grouped together and if the categories are functional. This feels self evident to me. In fact, a lot of it felt self evident to me. I guess it's because I've grown up as a "technological native," but long discussions of the usefulness of tagging or that information is no longer limited by physical space just make me say, "duh."
I am, however, hopeful that the MLIS program will be interesting. I really like information and I am looking forward to learning how to manage it. I just hope that things get more challenging soon!
Hi Lindsey,
ReplyDeleteYour comments about the textbooks being too repetitive and too easy may just apply to the core classes. Once you get to choose your classes, you can choose the classes that you will find challenging and fascinating. Have you checked out the SLIS student Yahoo group? It has a professor database with reviews written by SLIS students, and it will help you select the classes that will suit you.
Ann (203 Mentor)
I agree, I'm sure that once I get past the introductory courses, everything will be more interesting. It's just slow right now. I haven't looked at the Yahoo group, but I did solicit some opinions from reddit.com/r/libraries and the redditors there gave me some good suggestions.
ReplyDelete