Archives Found

Those of you who visit the site (versus reading along via feed reader) may notice a few changes. I completed several major WordPress upgrades on Sunday (from 2.2.3 to 2.8.1– gulp!), and hopefully that will fix some of the attendant issues that have been plaguing Archives Found headquarters. The layout, blogroll, links and theme here haven’t changed for awhile, and I’ll probably be monkeying around with that over the next few days. Please let me know if you’re having trouble with leaving comments, or with anything else on the site– you can send me an email (archivist at archivesfound.com).

As a result of my post on the certified archivist exam, I’ve been receiving some email about study groups for the CA exam in August. I’m not taking the exam this year (I’m already a CA), but for those who want to study, I understand that there are forums over at the ACA website for that purpose. If you’d like to link up with someone, that’s probably the best place to do so. There are fourteen test sites this year, and so I’d guess that there are a lot of potential “study buddies” out there.

Something I’d like to mention on the personal front– I’ll be leaving my archivist job at the end of August, and starting in the doctoral program at Pitt in the fall.  Never fear, dear readers– I’m certain that I will still have things to talk about here. In fact, as I’ve started to clear out my inbox, I’ve found that I have lots and lots to talk about– as soon as I have time. Fingers crossed for at least one new post this week, and for a few more prior to SAA- Austin. Thanks for reading along!

I’ve been neglecting this site for awhile in favor of other projects. Clearly it hasn’t been a priority, but I’ve been feeling the return of the muse lately, and so I’m hopeful that there will be more posts (and more frequent posts) soon.

To that end, I realized recently as I was fooling around with the site that I had locked the comments function, and that it required registration. Furthermore, I hadn’t forwarded the email address to one that I check more frequently, with the result that there were a bunch of things that required fixing this morning. So, kudos to those who perservered through the previous registration process– I’ve now eliminated that. Posting should now only require a name and email address (which won’t be visible on the site) from here on out. After receiving a boatload of spam overnight, I’ve activated a filter (Akismet) to moderate posts containing more than two links. I’ll try to investigate other options if that proves to be a problem, but so far everything looks OK.

I’ve also been meaning to upgrade to the next version of WordPress to take advantage of the latest bug fixes; I’m not sure when that’s going to happen. I should have a chunk of time to deal with it next weekend, but we all know what happens to the best-laid plans. Suffice it to say that the upgrade is on my radar, and may happen within the next few weekends.

If you notice something out of place, broken, or just plain strange, please let me know. As previously noted, I sure haven’t caught all of the annoying things in record time.

Well, I’ve already missed the first six days of the month, but I have good intentions: I want to jumpstart things around here, so I’m going to try to complete National Blog Posting Month by posting an entry each day during the month of November. It’s a takeoff on National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), which I completed in 2004 by the skin of my teeth, literally moments before midnight on November 30th. I’m hoping that I can tame the “skidding in by the seat of my pants” procrastination a bit more this year, in part because I have lots of things to say. At least I seem to have lots of profound ideas when I’m trying to go to sleep and the ideas are buzzing about like a swarm of extremely angry bees. We’ll see how that translates to paper, or really, 1’s and 0’s.

Well, I was able to import only a few of my previous entries, but I think I'll probably stick with those that made it through and dump the rest. I've been so busy with research papers/projects, working on the other websites and listservs that I run, and with life in general, that I've decided not to deal with the madness. Besides, sometimes a fresh start is necessary- maybe the universe is telling me to move on.

That being said, this site may undergo some radical changes in the next few months. I have about 4 more weeks left in this semester, and then I'll have more time to fool with the wish list… at least until summer session begins.

For the sake of clarity, all posts prior to the previous one (April 12th, 2006) are from the old blog.  

I’ve been dissatisfied with my setup on another site, and I want to try to migrate over here. I’m still deciding whether to import some stuff, or just to start anew. Since nobody else is probably reading this just yet, I’m not too worried.

Anyway, the main concept behind this blog (and the previous incarnation) is to think seriously, critically, and substantively about the challenges of librarianship. I’m currently in graduate school, and as a “librarian in training,” I want to have a place to discuss issues with my colleagues– both fellow students and other librarians. I’m hoping that I can use this as a place to elaborate further on topics that concern and excite me about the field.

What this blog probably won’t be: a discussion of my breakfast choices, rants about the neighbors, debates about grammar, or treatises on celebrity hairstyles. I’m hoping to keep this oriented towards the academic/professional side of life– so please let me know if I start talking about my (nonexistent) cats too much.