Tag Archives: information
History of Information Organization
The 2012 Horizon Report is Now Available
As mentioned at Stephen’s Lighthouse. 2012 Horizon Report from EDUCAUSE and New Media Consortium.
Historical publications of the Horizon Report can be found here.
GTA Technology Topics, Tips & Tricks: Top Technology Trends of 2011 Infographic
GTA Technology Topics, Tips & Tricks: Students & Technology Infographic
GTA Technology Topics, Tips & Tricks: Websites & Blogs for Technology-Related Information & News
GTA Technology Tips & Tricks: U of A Microstore/Adobe Products
GTA Technology Tips & Tricks: Why to Use a RSS Feed Reader?
We all have busy, busy lives. Sometimes its hard to keep up to date with current news and events, posts on your favourite blog or website, and bits of information that maybe useful to you sometime in the future. Those who know me, know that I have this obsession with technology…but the thing about technology is that it changes so rapidly…so how do I “stay in the know” about what’s going on in the world (and seem smarter than I really am)? I use a RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed aggregator. My one stop shop for everything I care to know about that gets posted on the Internet.
- Facebook Pages such as SLIS Social at the University of Alberta and Banana Republic to stay up to date with event announcements. (Hint: Look for the “Get Updates via RSS” link on any Facebook Page.) feed://www.facebook.com/feeds/page.php?id=202217855995&format=rss20
- A plethora of favourite author and blogging websites to keep up to date about books, book reviews and issues in bloglandia.
- LIS Blogs such as iLibrarian and Library Journal RSS Feeds on new book releases. http://www.libraryjournal.com/csp/cms/sites/LJ/info/rss.csp
- News feeds from content providers such as Huffington Post, Entertainment Weekly, Gizmodo, Lifehacker and Mashable, etc.
- The FLA Jobline blog to keep up to date with LIS jobs in Western Canada. http://jobline.fla.org/
- I subscribed to ~25 Cataloging blogs when I was taking LIS 532 Cataloging & Classification to gain a better understanding of this area of study and tosupport individual and group assignments.
- NPR (National Public Radio) for current events and book reviews. http://www.npr.org/rss/
- Conference proceedings.
- Study Hacks for study tips when I was in my first year of the MLIS program. http://calnewport.com/blog/
Ever Felt There Was Something You Just Had To Do?
I was an average post-secondary student in university. By average I mean I was depressed, miserable and fearful of failing and had no clue what I was spending all that money for. I was the first child of a large number of cousins to go to university and really my parents were poor so they couldn’t help me out financially. I ended up withdrawing from university for a year due to poor grades and lack of resources and I came back a year later, a bit more mature, as an unclassified student. Pretty much taking the expensive, hard, long way about it. When I graduated it was by default, not actually graduating with the Bachelor’s degree I finally decided on, Computer Science, but a degree based on the fact that I had a large number of electives in it, Psychology. There was one highlight of my university career, I received an A in Library Science 2000. I LOVED that class. It was the first time I actually felt I had a talent for something.
After I graduated I applied to a MLIS program in Ontario and was rejected. I promptly forged ahead and landed with an amazing company, a private boutique bank where I started as a filing assistant and worked my way up to Senior Research Assistant, supervising staff among my main responsibilities of desktop publishing and copy editing research publications. Through working at this company for ~7 years as was able to pay off tens of thousands of dollars in student loans.
It really happened like this. An incident happened at work that broke though my contentment with my job. One day I was happy and the next day I was unhappy and restless. Not too long after that I woke up one morning and realized I HAD to go back to school, which I never thought I would ever do again. I HAD to try again and apply to an MLIS program. Have you ever felt that? Like you have been knocked over the head with a sledgehammer? The decision seemed taken out of my hands, out of my control, a total subconscious realization. From one day to the next my whole axis revolved from one future to another.
Can we talk about scared, confused, angry, nerve racking, exhausted, depressed, hopeful, anxious, numb, excitement, elation and then scared again? These are just some of the emotions I have gone through through in the process of applying to enter graduate school. September 2010 I will be entering a Master’s of Library and Information Studies program at the University of Alberta. I’m going to be focusing on Information Technology.
If you have ever had such a momentus, life-changing event happen to you, I would love to hear about it.


