Mar 30, 2010

Working for the Q Center

Last semester, I searched furiously for jobs/internships relevant to information professionals/librarians. I applied for a digital literacy internship, got the interview, and failed, probably because I showed up to the interview dressed like Flava Flav. I applied to a few other jobs with no response until I heard back from the Q Center.

The Q Center is a place where gay/lesbian/transgendered youth can go for advice, do homework, meet mentors, and just have a place to feel safe and be themselves. So you might be asking, why did the Q Center need my services? The center has a very nice collection of gay/lesbian/transgendered fiction and non-fiction available for the youth to check out. The director of the center desired to expand their collection and hired me to develop an acquisition plan. In addition to the acquisition plan, I had to go through all the books to see which ones were missing, I had to migrate their book database from a '90's computer to a new millennium computer, and I had to contact Q members to ask for the books back.

The interesting part of the story came in the interview. The director asked me how I've been involved with social justice and gay & lesbian issues. I sort of froze because I'm an aspiring librarian and never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd have a question like this for a library intern position. After I stopped mentally screaming, "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH." I collected my composure and crafted tales of my philosophy minor and mentioned the fact that I lived comfortably with my homosexual cousin. Whew. I was nervous because I felt like I had to be a gay/lesbian/transgendered student or even advocate to do library type work. Also, I did think for a split second about lying and saying that I was gay, but I couldn't live with something like that. I was nervous. Don't judge me.

Luckily, I got the job, worked a few months and helped to add over 100 works to the Q Center collection. I'm happy with the experience, but in retrospect the interview was perhaps the scariest moment of my life. Long story short. Expect the unexpected.

Mar 6, 2010

haiku4u

spring break approaches
we are waiting and waiting
and waiting...wait...um.....?

This Book is Overdue!

Mar 3, 2010

2010 EMC Information Calendar

Just so you know, I have no idea what this is good for, except that you get a piece of information about information every day, and how could that be bad?! My brother sent it to me and he's a multimedia guru - or if I were to use the correct terminology, he's a thought leader - so I figured I'd try it out and clicked "Blogger" and BAM! here it is on my page. I put it on iGoogle too, just in case. ("Just in case what?" you ask? I have no idea.)