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The ‘I’ Word: Internships

Two weeks ago, I completed a semester-long, advanced TEI internship where I learned XSLT and utilized it to migrate two digital collections (explained more here, and check out the blog here) in the Digital Library Program. During these two weeks, I’ve had time to reflect on the impact that internships, especially tech-based, have on students. At Indiana University, a student must complete an internship to graduate with a dual degree or specialization. However, this is my number one piece of advice for any student, but especially library students: do as many internships as you possibly can. The hands-on experience obtained during an internship is invaluable moving to a real-life position, and something we can’t always experience in courses. This is especially true for internships introducing and refining tech skills. I’m going to shock you: learning new technology is difficult. It takes time. It takes patience. It takes a project application….

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“Why won’t my document print?!” — Two Librarians in Training

For this post, I am joined by a fellow student in Indiana University’s Information and Library Science Department, Sam Ott! Sam is a first year student, also working toward a dual-degree Master of Library Science and Master of Information Science, who has over three years of experience working in paraprofessional positions in multiple public libraries. Sam and I are taking the same core classes, but he is focusing his studies on public libraries instead of my own focus on academic and research libraries. With these distinct end goals in mind, we wanted to write about how the technologies we are learning in library school are helping cultivate our skills in preparation for future jobs. Grace On the academic library track, much of the technology training seems to be abstract and theory based, paired with practical training. There is a push for students to learn digital encoding practices, such as TEI/XML,…

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Is Your Library In?

In my previous post, I discussed learning XSLT for my current Indiana University Digital Library Program internship. Along the way, I explained a little about TEI/XML, as well. Thinking about these tools led me to consider all of the different markup and programming languages, and tools that go into building a digital library. While my Guide to Digital Library Tools is kept for another day, I wanted to explore one platform in particular. Omeka. IU hosts a fantastic series called Digital Library Brown Bags on Wednesdays throughout the school year. I’ve attended many and see an Omeka usage pattern emerging. The most recent Brown Bag was titled Designing the Digital Scholarly Commons: “In Mrs. Goldberg’s Kitchen: Jewish Life in Interwar Lodz” given by Halina Goldberg, Associate Professor of Music at the Jacobs School of Music, and Adam Hochstetter, Web Developer for the Jacobs School of Music. After seeing many projects utilizing…

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Learning to Master XSLT

This semester, I have the exciting opportunity to work as an intern among the hum of computers and maze of cubicles at Indiana University’s Digital Library Program! My main projects include migrating two existing digital collections from TEI P4 to TEI P5 using XSLT. If you are familiar with XML and TEI, feel free to skim a bit! Otherwise, I’ve included short explanations of each and links to follow for more information. XML Texts for digital archives and libraries are frequently marked up in a language called eXtensible Markup Language (XML), which looks and acts similarly to HTML. Marking up the texts allow them to be human- and machine-readable, displayed, and searched in different ways than if they were simply plain text. TEI The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) Consortium “develops and maintains a standard for the representation of texts in digital form” (i.e. guidelines). Basically, if you wanted to encode a…

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Tech Tools in Traditional Positions

During this winter break, I’ve had a slight lull in library work and time to reflect on my first semester of library school, aside from reading for pleasure and beginning Black Mirror on Netflix (anybody?). Overall, I’m ready to dive in to the new semester, but one tidbit from fall semester keeps floating in my thoughts, and I’m curious what LITA Blog readers have to say. Throughout my undergraduate education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, I was mainly exposed to two different sets of digital humanities practices: encoding and digital archive practices, and text analysis for literature. With my decision to attend library school, I assumed I would focus on the former for the next two to three years. Last semester, in my User Services and Tools course, we had a guest speaker from User Needs Assessment in the Indiana University Libraries. As the title suggests, he spoke about developing physical…

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Building a Small Web Portfolio

Since my undergraduate commencement in May, I have been itching to create my own personal portfolio website. I wanted to curate my own space devoted to my curriculum vitae, projects, and thoughts moving through my education and career. This was for my own organization, but also for colleagues to view my work in an environment I envisioned. I began looking at sites belonging to mentors, students, and other professionals, noticing that each site fit the person and their accomplishments. Then, I began to wonder, which design fits me? Which platform fits me? If I’m terrible at any sort of creative design, how will I design my own website? I found clarity when a fellow library student shared some advice: it is never right the first time. Get it functional, get that first iteration out of the way, and improve from there. Choosing a Platform With web design becoming increasingly accessible,…

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IA & UX Meet Library Technology

The class I enjoy the most this semester at Indiana University is Information Architecture. It is a class where theory and practical application are blended so that we can create something tangible, but also understand the approaches – my favorite kind! As usability.gov defines it, Information Architecture (IA) “focuses on organizing, structuring, and labeling content in an effective and sustainable way.” While the class doesn’t necessarily focus on Library Science since it is offered through the Information Science courses, this concept may sound a bit familiar to those working in a library. In the class, we have chosen a small website we believe could benefit from restructuring. Some students chose public library websites, and others websites from the private sector. Regardless of each website’s purpose, the process of restructuring is the same. The emphasis is placed on usability and user experience (UX), which the ALA Reference and User Services Association defines as “employing user…

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Shifting & Merging

It has been exactly seven weeks since I moved to Bloomington, Indiana, yet I finally feel like I have arrived. Let me rewind, quick, and tell you a little about my background. During my last two years of undergrad at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), I spent my time working on as many Digital Humanities (DH) projects and jobs as I possibly could in the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities. [DH is a difficult concept to define because everyone does it through various means, for various reasons. To me, it means using computational tools to analyze or build humanities projects. This way, we can find patterns we wouldn’t see through the naked eye, or display physical objects digitally for greater access.] By day, I studied English and Computer Science, and by night, my fingers scurried over my keyboard encoding poems, letters, and aphorisms. I worked at the Walt Whitman Archive,…