Okay, last blog entry for the night, because I’m sure everyone is tired of reading (although if you read this direct from the webpage, it will show up first as you read them reverse-chronologically.) I wanted to talk a bit about my impressions of GSLIS and my first week as a student.

The orientation was pretty good, although I was a little conscious going into it of it being 6 hours long. What could take that long?? It only really went from 9-12, and then had a social hour. The orientation was an introduction to the program, the staff, the school, the university. The “tech staff” came and showed us the intra-net tools available used for classes. (Tech people being swarmy at 9 in the morning? I was impressed. It was funny — they all had their insulated mugs of coffee with them. I understand!)

After the break, the Dean talked and introduced a faculty member, which in turn each introduced the next one. It was neat to hear about their research, and see their personalities as they introduced someone else (neater than them talking about themselves.) Then the RSOs had representatives that talked, and then we broke for pizza and socializing, mostly to meet the RSOs — like a mini-quad day. My impressions?

I was glad that my knowledge of the CU area and bathrooms in the Union could be of service to people new to the area. It’s important to know the Ruebens has moved.

Librarians have a stranger terminology and love for acronyms than computer scientists do (and that’s saying something.) Confused and want to look up a library term? Look no further than the ODLIS.

There’s a lot more handholding in LIS than engineering. So many people care and want to see you succeed; they talk slow and don’t try to overwhelm you with material. I’m sure at some point I will be overwhelmed, but for now I’m really impressed with how personable everyone is (if anything, I wish they’d speed it up, but I understand they’re meeting a common denominator, which right now doesn’t include me.) It doesn’t matter if they’re explaining a course, or research, or how to check the web boards, or anything… This is a really nice group of people, besides doing a bunch of things I don’t fully understand but want to.

I went to training this week for their computer lab, which classifies me as “labstaff” and gives me 24×7 access to the LIS building and LRL lab. Boo for using their own Windows domain instead of using the campus AD, but yay for having a license for FinePrint on each machine and a printer with pre-three-hole-punched paper and a big printing quota. I took a tour of the LIS library in the main library, and even went down into the stacks for the first time!

I didn’t realize that academic librarians are faculty AP positions. I figured librarians fit somewhere in the civil service ranks. No, they can get tenure and have to write grants/bring in money like the rest of the faculty.

After the orientation, training, tour, and interacting with a few of the staff, I am really confident I’m in a good program, and in something that will be interesting and entertaining to me and that I can provide some good back into that community. That’s a pretty rare, special thing to say, and I’m proud to be a part of it.

Class? Class this week was weak, as it was mainly reciting the website and making people know about the resources available. This is going to be one of those “read these 8 papers for next week, and we’ll talk about them” classes, so without the pre-reading (which you wouldn’t have known about, unless you knew where to look online for the syllabus,) there wasn’t much “new” to talk about. I should have known better than to get a big mug of hot coffee, then walk across campus in pants/briefcase in the heat and humidity while sipping hot coffee, and then sitting down in a warmer-than-it-probably-should-have-been lecture hall. I was a little uncomfortable, and the chugging coffee on an empty stomach was making my heat race (the coffee shop in Siebel Center has some good stuff.) The final piece was a hot laptop in my lap, which I opted out of on the first lecture because there wasn’t really teaching. I _was_ very annoyed that I didn’t bring any good pens to my first class. That’s when I vowed to do everything on the tablet anyway, and for good measure, I stuck three pens in the briefcase just in case.

After class, or rather between them since the lecture was short, I walked down to the Center for Children’s Books in the basement of the LIS building. I hope that I can take the storytelling classes, or at least sit in on some of their guild meetings.

Skimming the LIS website writing this post, I ran across the student demographics. I thought the ratio of females:males was better than 1.5:1, but that’s the full program not just the first year people (which looked closer to 6:1 by my guesstimate.) The LIS website is pretty good – I’d recommend checking it out if you have time.

I did 1/3rd of my weekly reading this afternoon, and I have a 500ish word paper to write in response to all of the reading before Friday. This first unit in the class is history of librarianship and understanding information and relationships between it. My lab section was taught by one of the professors, and she seems pretty good. The room in LIS was pretty terrible, but I understand we won’t be using that one anymore.

Next week, I prove my prowess at being a crafty student by attending as many RSO events as possible for the free food. And the interest in the organization and profession, of course. I have to be careful not to overcommit myself, but I figure I can go to informational meetings. (I’m not going to limit myself just to the LIS groups. I’m considering the CS related groups too.)