Heads up!

Wowzers, this semester started with a bang! My blog updates have suffered a little-here's why:

The summer flew by, what with an internship at Frederick County Public Libraries, and a trek to California for ALA Annual. Suddenly, it was the end of July, which meant it was time to get packed for three weeks abroad!

I spent the first two weeks of August in Florence, Italy, studying librarianship in the global context as part of a pilot program from the Syracuse iSchool. I had a fantastic time, forging connections between my understanding of librarianship and the Italian approaches we saw.

From there, I made my way to Helsinki, for the World Library & Information Congress, IFLA's annual conference. The city was astounding, and what a climate for libraries! Finland was a blast, the conference was a great place to network, and the conversations I had are helping me define exactly what it is that I want to do with my degree.

Arriving stateside with less than a week to spare to move, get settled in Syracuse, and prep for classes made for an exciting end-of-summer. Now, though, I've gotten a handle on my classes and have started to look ahead. This semester is filled - finally - with the content that inspired me to apply to LIS programs: Information organization and architecture. I have a nice mix, with the introductory/core Information Resources: Organization & Access class, an in-depth Information Architecture for Internet Services course, and a tech-heavy Social Web Technologies class in which I'm learning to program and design web interfaces and smartphone apps. The classes I have this semester are more related (and as such, jive better) than either term last year, and I'm excited to see them all coming together.

It'll be a good year, I think--I'm currently in Colorado, getting ready for the next adventure, and between conferences and job hunting and finishing all that pesky coursework, I'll be sure to stay as busy as I like to be.

Can't wait! I'll keep you updated.