Mein Foto

Photo added to blog (with paint/digital filtering), proof that yes, I was indeed an Aggie. Once an Aggie, always an Aggie. This photo was taken my fish year, at Parent's Weekend, way back in the Spring of 1990. I was a young 'un then, and had no idea about wanting to one day become a librarian. When this photo was taken, I still had my heart set on becoming a Naval officer, my coke bottle thick glasses eventually dooming that prospect, but I didn't know that then. Back then, I had a tentative offer of a 3-year NROTC scholarship and was wrapping up a successful if otherwise unremarkable freshman year in the Corps of Cadets. There was still a Cold War on, as far as we knew, because there was still a Soviet Union and Gorby was still the man at the helm over there. That summer I would journey to Germany for a 5 week trip (2 weeks classroom instruction, 3 weeks travel around German-speaking Europe). By then I had already switched my academic major to German, along with History as a double-major, the disapproving frowns of my Naval Science advisers notwithstanding. I eventually was NPQ'd for the scholarship, returned to life as a civilian student, then went on to grad school, first for my MA in German Studies at Rice U, then eventually to UNT for my MLS, and the rest is history.

My first academic major at TAMU has been Political Science, but after my first Poli-Sci class, which was deathly boring, I dropped that major like a hot rock and became a History major. I added German later. I might've been happier had I done my MA in History rather than German Studies, but c'est la vie.

Back then, TAMU was using the NOTIS system for their OPAC interface (not that I would have known the term OPAC back then). It was an amber screen, menu-driven system. Although my High school still used a card catalog and the Dewey Decimal system (which I confess I never really learned all that well), I really didn't find the NOTIS system to be all that difficult to use. I may not have known what the call numbers meant, but I was able to find my books fairly easily. I did eventually learn the Russian history books were in the DK's up on the 6th floor of Evans Library. When I got to Rice U, I learned the German books were in the PTs on the 2nd floor of the Fondren Library. I found that I liked hanging out in the H's a lot, too, and sometimes the DD's (German history). I now know the basics of LC fairly well, at least what the leading letters mean, at a glance. I know some parts of DDC, but not the whole thing in any case, not from memory anyway. I still find DDC to LC conversion tables helpful where they exist.

Rice U. had a primitive web-based OPAC called, I believe, WebCat. It worked fairly well, and was certainly more aesthetically appealing than the old Amber-screened NOTIS system at Texas A&M. I don't know if they still have it, but when I was a graduate student, the Fondren Library had retained its card catalog, but hadn't updated it since 1986, according to the signage at the time. I don't remember if Texas A&M in those early days still maintained a physical card catalog anymore or not, but I'm thinking probably not.

I really wasn't an avid library user as a kid; I do remember attending a kind of summer camp activity thing at the Walter branch of HPL back circa 1978 or so...little did I know then that the HPL Central branch had just opened a scant 2 years prior. During High School mom would sometimes take me to HBU's campus library to do research, but she understood the library search tools better than I did...good ol' Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, etc. I just know I enjoyed pulling the bound periodicals from the shelves and reading things like Life Magazine from the 1950s and 1960s. I thought it was so cool that somebody kept these old magazines around like that so many years later.

I didn't really become an avid library user until I got to college, as an undergraduate. My library use expanded in Grad school, as I became more aware of the overall layout of the collection as ordered by LC classification. Before I went to library school, I once had an apartment that was only 5 or so minutes from HPL Central downtown. I practically raided their media library for the best of the best in documentaries, educational films, etc. I checked out and read books avidly, audio books too. That period in the late 1990s, circa 1998-99 was my heaviest period of personal public library use, when I really fell in love with HPL central, and to a lesser degree Harris County Public Library's West U. branch.

I've yet to visit the main Dallas Public Library, but have been to Fort Worth Public Library's main branch. While at UNT, I did sometimes go over to Denton Public Library. It's ok, but just can't compare to HPL's offerings, nor even Fort Bend County Library system's offerings for that matter.

Now I work in a library. At long last, I feel like I have a job with a real future, not just marking time and paying the bills, like at my last corporate gig. It was fun there, but it was ultimately a dead-end job. Which I didn't care about in my mid-to-late 20s, but as mid-to-late 20s became mid-to-late 30s, it was clear to me it was time to move on, and Libraries was the best way I could figure to get back into Academia some way, some how. It seems to have worked. I feel like I'm making a difference here, enhancing scholarship, contributing to the greater good. It's a good feeling. Signing off again, la la land calls. ZZzzzzz.