As library students, we're all aware of how deeply digital tools have transformed out field, but sometimes we forget that those same tools are impacting other fields as well, fields with which our own work may eventually intersect. In the academic world, scholars are pulling computational techniques into the traditionally low-tech humanities, and finding that it offers exciting new approaches to subjects like literature, classical studies, and history.
Sssssoooorrryyyyy about the lack of updates. Life has been busy last semester, and I wasn’t happy with how much time I spent for just one class. Ugh, never again.
So I visited the Hawaii Legislative Reference Bureau library during a break from work. Like a lot of libraries, it has a ready reference section, a general circulating collection, periodicals (some relating to legislation), newspapers, and legislative documents (e.g. Hawaii Revised Statutes and Acts). A lot of the books comes from other state agencies (many which are required to send their materials by law) and legislatures from other states.
I briefly looked the newspaper clipping files, which has clippings relating to the legislature. There’s even a cabinet with clippings of current legislators.
A reference librarian there said every day she spends 2 hours at the reference desk and performs collection development in the backroom. There is even a cataloger who catalogs legislative materials.
The library is only one part of the LRB as it also has the Public Access Room, a room for the public to do legislative business or to learn about the legislature, and the research section with researchers (many are lawyers) writing bills and researching for legislators.
There are other LRBs in other state legislatures. For my job, when researching state legislators in the military, I contacted a few LRBs, and while they couldn’t answer my inquiry, they at least forwarded me to the appropriate sources (e.g. legislative research offices).
The UH Manoa Library has received $265,018 from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to digitize and upload the predecessor newspapers of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on the Chronicling America website. The publications are:
● Pacific Commercial Advertiser (1856-1921)
● Honolulu Star-Bulletin (1917-1922)
I wrote about hula performances on the U.S. mainland in the early 1900s.
Hi all, wow it has been a while. I’ve been working full time at the library this summer. However, starting this week, I will be working half time. Hopefully, I’ll be able to continue working in the library in the next academic year.
I was surprised to see people actually visit this blog :/ Especially since the last time I updated was 2 months ago. I’m happy that there are people who actually want to learn more about me by reading my blog and looking at my accounts at other sites (e.g. LinkedIn). I’ve been Google searched!
Unfortunately, in the second week of August, I will stop working for the library’s Hawaii Digital Newspaper Project. That project was my main duty and also the funnest. Now, it looks like my position will focus more on digitizing materials and creating their respective metadata for the electronic records. However, I may continue to assist with writing grant proposals in the future.
I’ve added a whole bunch of historical feature articles:
https://sites.google.com/a/hawaii.edu/ndnp-hawaii/Home/historical-feature-articles
Please take a looksie there. I will probably write a few more before my participation in the project ends.
Librarianship is a quickly changing field. Thanks to computers and the internet, it has undergone a tremendous metamorphosis over the last two decades. In light of these changes, we’re kicking off a new series in which we talk about the many emerging careers in librarianship. Today’s inaugural issue talks about the emerging field of data curation.
Before you comment, yes, this is an unbalanced look at professionalism. Yes, I am trolling a little bit - but with a heart that wants to lead discussion on the topic of library professionalism. Please do write a post about why these ten reason are bullocks.
On the other hand, I often see librarians and library school students that take professionalism as a given.
This week I asked people who hire librarians:
Would you hire someone with a MLIS for a paraprofessional position (e.g. assistant, clerk, page)? If so, under what circumstances? If not why not?
I do this all the time. We have a library school at our local university and our library system has a Student Librarian program. Many of our student librarians want to stay in our system, but professional positions don’t come up that often.
Bloopers in Historical Hawaii Newspapers
Three bloopers I found in the historical Hawaii newspapers.
Happily, I’m nearing the end of the research/analysis paper marathon! I finished a 15-page seminar paper on Tuesday night. I wrote about English-as-a-second-language learners exchanging e-mails with other language learners to gain fluency and for constructivist and dialogical learning and multicultural English composition. Unfortunately, the requirements for the paper were quite demanding and were continually added until the week before the whole paper was due. My classmates were definitely not happy. I had to redo a lot of research, but fortunately didn’t had to rewrite or throw away any part of the paper (whew!).
I’m currently about 85 percent done with my more interesting seminar paper about how lyrics in Dylan’s three songs (“Times They Are A-Changin’,” “Masters of War,” and “It’s Alright, Ma [I'm Only Bleeding]“) are effective poetry and are highly influential sociopolitically. This paper’s a breeze and much more enjoyable to write compared to the other one.
Next Tuesday, I’ll visit the Hawaii Historical Society Library to inspect their copies of the earlier runs of the Hilo Tribune. That visit will definitely not be as grueling as the academic marathon I was in in the past 3 to 4 weeks.
