Related Blogger : Oxford University Library Trainee

My interests with working in an academic library, preferably a university library, coincides with another blogger entitled, "Library Trainee in Oxford". A beneficial factor about this blogger's website is that she listed "Library Day in the Life" posts with an hour by hour detailed lists of her experiences. One is as following:

"5.45 – Get up and get ready.
7.00 – Go for bus to get to work.
8.05 – Arrive at work, set up laptop, get Mocha coffee and check emails.
8.10 – Network and Internet not working. Brilliant. Try restarting laptop to see if that shakes anything up (ah, the old fashioned way of fixing computer errors!)
...
8.54 – Import into RefWorks has worked for me this morning, so have emailed ACF and told him to try again. This happened a few times to me in December, where I would either import or export references, and RefWorks would not download all the references (for some odd reason of its own!) As it is, it has worked for me this morning, so I have advised the ACF to delete the references from his “Systematic Reviews” folder, and re-import the file.
9.06 –OULS training starts up again today (trainee scheme run through the university library services), and we are visiting Oxford Brookes Library this afternoon. Print off programme for the visit, and directions on how to get there. For once, this is easier for me to get to. I work in the John Radcliffe Hospital, so it should only mean a 20-25 minute walk for me; whereas usually I have to get the bus into town, and then walk along to where our training sessions are held (about 15-20 minute walk).
...
10.00 – Going for a catch-up meeting with supervisor now.
10.55 – Back from meeting: very useful! We discussed various projects we are getting on with (AEUs, newsletter and so on). We also discussed my placement in Cairns Library for a while, which might work out as being five days over a few weeks, and shadowing another librarian in different areas (e.g. reader services, clinical librarian). The Cairns library train their librarians for a substantial amount of time before letting them run loose on their own due to their different obligations (general library, university and the NHS), and thus responsibilities; and it seemed more logical that I should shadow someone to get a feel for the ‘physical’ aspect of a library.
We also discussed my project which I have to do as part of my traineeship with Oxford University. Instead of focusing on one major assignment, I am going to complete and oversee a variety of smaller tasks with the aim of studying and helping ‘user engagement with the collection’. So far, this includes tweeting on twitter about the collection; creating a podcast for an ongoing department project on eclampsia and pre-eclampsia in low resource countries; and looking into producing a video about the collection to put on YouTube.
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13.15 – Going to get ready to leave now to get to Brookes on time. Hopefully it doesn’t rain while I’m walking…
19.28 – This afternoon was great, really interesting. Oxford Brookes Library actually reminds me a wee bit of Lancaster University (where I was an undergraduate student) Library, so I really felt it had a lovely atmosphere. The library itself is bigger than I thought it would be, spanning over three floors (with the entrance on the first floor – in the middle!) We firstly had an introductory talk by one of the Subject Librarians, followed by a tour of the library. Some aspects I quite liked were the private study rooms for groups, with projectors and space to discuss work and practice presentations; the many different types of study areas, ranging from group work ‘lounging’ areas, to silent study; and the friendliness of the staff we came into contact with!
After the tour we had half hour talks on ‘the work of subject teams’ and ‘the work of Special Collections’ respectively. The special collections held by Oxford Brookes are quite interesting, and varied!
...
Obviously there is more to being a subject librarian, but it was nice to make some links between my library placement and that of a more ‘traditional’ library role; bridging the gap (for me) somewhat, and also pointing out how different the many forms of librarian and information management there can be."

I found this blog, "Library Trainee in Oxford", through BlogSearch by typing "academic+librarian+advice".
The link to this blog is : http://sarahehogg.wordpress.com/
I found it really helpful being a student!

Convergence of Categorization Approaches

The following is an assignment in which I took a passage from Heting Chu's Information Representation and Retrieval in the Digital Age; it is translated into Layman's terms.

"What differentiates one categorization approach from another lies mainly in the nature of the framework adopted for the purpose of information representation. Classification, having endured tests of various kinds, has established itself as a plausible method for representing information...as more substantive and quality information becomes available on the Internet, classification is beginning to be utilized to categorize network-based information (e.g., McKiernan, 2001)" (pg 29).

Categorization is the representation of information in a library. It is what helps you find what you are looking for. Different categorization methods for a library are tailored towards the information facility itself. As libraries are more developed so are the categorization materials. Think of the categories as a Table of Contents. When you have a research paper your Table of Contents represents all the information on your paper. Now imagine a textbook's Table of Contents. It would show a lot more detailed listings of the information following it. These can represent different levels of categorization.

The internet contains more and more information everyday. Try to imagine how libraries have different databases and cards as filing systems to help you find what you are looking for. Doing this they use abbreviations, words, numbers, etc. Now try to imagine structuring the World Wide Web into a database system.

"...text categorization using automatic means (e.g., Boley et al., 1998; Yang, 1999) has increasingly been explored with an orientation toward taxonomy rather than classification, as a growing amount of information is available digitally. While automatic classification once attracted a lot of attention from researchers, the brainpower needed for rigorous classification seems unattainable in purely machine-based algorithms" (pg. 29).

As more and more information that we seek is located on the Internet, as Information Professionals, we start to categorize these materials by taxonomies rather than classification. Taxonomy categories are used for online information as hyperlinks. When Chu discusses the "rigorous classification" they are saying that classifying the World Wide Web would be virtually impossible. Therefore, using hyperlinks help to locate these information sources. Imagine that you are trying to find a novel in the library and you use the the call number to find the book. This is using classification in a library setting. Now imagine that you are trying to search for the book online. Sometimes entire books can be typed out online. You can find them through taxonomies.

Who, What, When, Where, Why?

Hello!

To purpose of this blog is to post any information relating to the Astrophysics field as it would influence an acedemic library. As an assignment for an Information Storage and Retrieval Systems course for my Master's in Library Science, this blog will post different competencies along the way.

Buckle up!