Preparing for life’s work

"To be of any value an education should prepare for life's work."

"Don't trust your memory. Make notes. Write down your observations."

The last year has been a formative one as I approach the end of library school, and though I am by no means a fan of introspective self-indulgent blogging (see the death throes of LiveJournal), I think it is necessary to reflect on just two things that happened to my year that will inform the shape of this blog over the next few months.

The first is the completion of my directed research project, in which I crafted a large paper on social media use in the academic library. Prior to the completion of that paper that was the realm in which I was most focused. Academic libraries, I thought, were the realm of my interest, and that I could continue my investigation past finishing that report. But what I found instead was that my interests focused further, and I felt freed from trying to wrangle such a broad and complex environment. I now find myself moving past the broader academic culture (or even, perhaps, "libraries" in their most general conception) and its adoption of social media, into a realm of web culture that I view as more pressing, less well-defined, and that requires more reflective practice than it currently receives.