Jefferson's Newspaper

I’ve been told many times since completing my M.L.I.S. that most skills related to library and archival work are developed on the job.  In fact, I realized about halfway through my degree program that my professional training would continue well after grad school. Not unlike other professional-academic hybrid programs, library school provided a sufficient foundation, but the bigger challenges and learning experiences came during my practicum and in my daily work, as well as in…

Collecting Records and Walter Benjamin I recently picked up a copy of Walter Benjamin’s Illuminations. I was completely struck by the first essay, “Unpacking My Library”, where Benjamin discusses book collecting. And while I myself take pride in my ever growing personal library, I almost immediately began to translate all his references to books as pertaining to record collecting. Not only this, but Benjamin’s words somehow summed up, far more eloquently than my own I…

As the dialogue on the emergent (yet increasingly passe?) edupunk movement has begun to penetrate the mainstream press, I’ve been thinking a lot about what the term might mean to my present occupation, and also about what punk rock has meant to me historically (both in terms of my personal history and also my views on History with a capital H). I’ll spare you the many cliched “life experiences” I’ve enjoyed as a result of…

So, I really like the looks of this nifty little flowchart, though I’m not sure it’s logically consistent.  In fact, it kind of reminds me of the inscrutable maintenance manual that came with my Taiwanese scooter.   I’m feeling compelled to take it down and make some revisions, but I think it best to just move on to writing my little article about the challenges inherent in digital history at the institutional level.  So here…