There's a light...*

The end of the quarter is virtually in sight. I have a cataloging paper due on Sunday (LCSH!), then a justification of my class participation for my management class, and then the two final papers (case study of IBM and a catalog critique). In a matter of moments I'll be meeting online with my group to hash out how we're going to lead a discussion on the challenges of managing Sandy Berman (certified badass). My diet today has consisted primarily of coffee and doughnuts, so I feel less than sharp. It also doesn't help that I've been watching episodes of the BBC series Who Do You Think You Are? Monstrously emotional journeys as celebs trace out the more snarled bits of their genealogy. A lot of sympathetic crying and not much in the way of tightening my discussion on subject heading choices.

This is not to say that the quarter is a waste - the very opposite in fact. Working on blind authority headings yesterday, I was struck by how much I now understand when looking at an authority or bib record. Searching makes more sense because I now really get what the system is looking at, what the fields in the record actually mean. I keep feeling that a quarter of this program involves relearning stuff I already knew, a fair amount of learning things I never knew or considered, and a fair amount of learning the rhyme and reason behind things I thought I knew. It's all very enlightening, but it often feels like I'm re-indexing my head on a weekly or even daily basis when new information or new links between old ideas are forged. Exhilarating, but exhausting.

Group chat time...


*...shining at the Epcot Center.