Interesting things

I've been having trouble keeping this blog updated over the school holidays, obviously. It's hard, because I don't really have anything library-related to write about. I haven't been learning anything, I've only been working in the cafe a lot. So I've decided that I'm going to try to update this blog every couple of weeks, with some links to things that I've been reading or listening to.

First up is The Untold Story of Silk Road, a two-part article written for Wired Magazine by Joshua Bearman. Silk Road was an online black market, where people could by drugs, or guns, or other illegal stuff. In class we covered the Dark Web a little bit, and the lecturer touched on Silk Road, but she strongly recommended that we never go on there. This article examines the creator of Silk Road, and how he was tracked down by the police. Part 1 is here, Part two here.

Serial podcast is back! I'm super excited about it; I loved season one, it was my gateway podcast that introduced me to how amazing they can be. Season two is focussing on Bowe Bergdahl, a U.S. soldier that walked away from his base in Afganistan and became a hostage of the Taliban for almost five years. After a case last season that no-one had heard of, it's interesting that they have chosen such a high-profile case for the second season. Serial can be found here.

Something that is more linked to library action is an article from American Libraries Magazine on Melvil Dewey, called 'Melvil Dewey, Compulsive Innovator'. It turns out that Dewey was a massive weirdo, obsessive about numbers and a bit gross towards women.

So welcome to my blog! This is a first for me, so it's probably going to change quite a bit as I get better at using eblogger.

About me - my name is Nerida, I'm in first semester of MIM, and I currently work as a barista in a cafe. It's a good place to work, and I do enjoy it, but it doesn't tax my brain. I'm ready to do something different, and I think that I would enjoy library work. Something that doesn't cover my clothes and shoes in coffee would be good as well.

My dad is a librarian, currently working as the head librarian at Divine Word University in Papua New Guinea. When I was growing up though, he was the chief medical librarian at Bendigo Base Hospital. So on my days off from school, or when I managed to persuade him that I was way too sick to go to school (I was a terrible liar, and did this a lot), I would go with him to his work, and spend my day shelving books, wandering around, and looking at disgusting diseases in medical books. So for me, libraries are fun places!

I'm not very technologically able when it comes to the internet; I can do very basic things, but I'm hoping to learn more, and to become more skilled than I am. I really skim the surface of Web 2.0, so I think that some of what I'm hoping to achieve through this course is the ability to use the internet more adeptly, and to develop my skill set when it comes to social media and interaction. Understanding how html works is also going to be interesting, I'm quite looking forward to the course, but at the same time I'm a bit nervous because I obviously have a lot to learn.