Spring Semester Reflections

As of Friday of last week, I have completed my Spring semester at Syracuse in pursuit of my MSLIS. I have Summer and Fall to go, and I plan on completing my degree in December. Honestly, you probably already knew that, so let’s get right down to it - what was my semester like now that it has passed?

This was the busiest academic semester I have ever had, frankly. I don’t want to whine and moan about it, but I will tell you why in the course of this post. If you’ll allow me to toot my own horn a bit, I will share that I earned a 4.0 this semester, and have received very positive feedback on all my assignments this semester. Of course, I am still just a fledgling librarian, but I cannot say that doing well in my classes is injurious to my career.

That said, what did I take this semester?

Well, my final two required courses are out of the way now - the first of these required courses was IST 616 - Information Resources, Organization and Access. I called this class “basic cataloging and classification.” The course explored cataloging standards and formats (aka metadata) as well as looked broadly at classification schemes. I really enjoyed the broad view used in this class - I was exposed to many different standards and practices, making me a much more adaptable librarian. Here is a pretty good example of the “stuff” I did this semester:

















http://www.scribd.com/doc/30301737/Social-Tagging-Library-of-Congress%E2%80%99-Subject-Headings-and-Library-Catalogs
















The other required class was IST 613 - Library Planning, Marketing, and Assessment. The workload in this class was among the heaviest I have had, but in the end I produced a comprehensive project plan for a local library. As I know more, I will share it on here, but I have been asked to implement the plan. Fun! The course provided me with real-world project planning experience, which is very useful in my career.

And finally, what might have been my favorite class thus far, IST 604 - Cataloging of Information Resources. This class was an in-depth look at metadata creation, specifically with AACR2 and MARC. The class was very congenial, and it became more of a seminar type class rather than a normal class, with students and professor all working together and discussing.

Overall, I feel that I have really matured as a student and as a professional this semester, and have integrated many new concepts into my knowledge schema.