Aspirations

Going through my log files I've noticed an uptick in the amount of people getting here via the audio/video search engine Singing Fish.com. My guess, based on the relevant statistics, is that many are finding their way here because of a reference I made to Munch's painting a while back - before it was stolen the second time. Today I decided to go ahead and play around a lil bit and see what kind of goodies I could excavate - and to my delight I fell right into the biggest pile of mp3's I think I have ever seen. Better yet, however, was coming across a video (unfortunately using Realplayer) of a lecture given by Clay Redding in what was part of (or at least to my ears sounded like) the LATC seminar series entitled: What is Metadata (and what does the Metadata Librararian do)?

For me this was a 50 minute confirmation of my chosen career path. Everything Mr. Redding discussed manifested my inner geek - and that, my friends, is a wonderful feeling. When he started talking about validation -- it was like, "oh my god! Validation! Like - fer sure!" -- only, it wasn't really like that at all. I'm beginning to question the direction of my personal statement - and wondering whether or not I should simply talk about how this creation called Yezbick.com has led me to my interest in the field of LIS. True - the higher calling was one of service in some sort of fashion - pooling my talents and exercising them in a manner which benefits the greatest number. True as well is the knowledge that I have long been a research junkie, always craving the building blocks of even the tiniest of morsels of info (highlighted yesterday where I drew the comparison between turning over a rock and discovering hidden treasures and the internet paths I've taken). Yet it was this website that gathered together these interests and pointed me to similar tastes across the web. In the majority of those that shared them one was likely to find yet another common link - librarianship. Is that a bad idea to bring up a blog in this undertaking? Would the admissions crew look at it and say to themselves, "This guy is actually talking about his website - what a maroon!" Or would they find it of genuine interest? Answers? Anyone? I wanted to have this thing done 4 days ago but have been stuck sweating words in the head for nearly two weeks now.

What is simply frightening to me is the mass of relative knowledge I seem to lack in comparison. I look over some of these resumes of people my age who are working towards their MLIS and then I have to check myself when I hold my own. Sure, they may have coded an entire site for IBM when they were 16, but do they know how to tell the difference between Medium Rare and Medium?

In Mr. Redding's seminar he talked about what, as a metadata librarian, it is that he does. Everything was gold until he began discussing the authoring of scripts. I have yet to learn the rudiments of any programming language -- and the course I was planning on taking to learn just the basics of the forsaken Java wasn't being offered this fall. I did manage to sign up for the intro to information systems -- although I was really hoping to get into the database class, which had closed by the time I managed to get into late registration. It has been much easier to teach myself HTML, XHTML and CSS over the course of two years -- but scripts still look pretty much foreign to me. I can read over them and see what they are doing, but to write fluently from scratch would be impossible. It is something I'd like to incorporate in a structured environment.

If you have a high speed connection you can check out the lecture and see just what it is that makes me tick of late - what kind of aspirations I have and why I have checked out 6 O'Reilly books from the library and have them scattered about my desk in the basement right now. If not, I feel your pain.