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While working full time at an academic library, I attend LIU's Palmer School of Library and Information Science on a part time basis. I attend both the Purchase and Manhattan campus locations. I chose the Palmer School because of its convenience, opportunities for face-to-face networking, and ALA accreditation.
As part of my degree requirement, I will be interning at NYU's Bobst Library during the period January 2004 - April 2004. Having completed most of my degree requirements, I can draw a two conclusions about the experience. First, I recognize myself in many of my peers and teachers. All of them enjoy searching for information, value libraries and learning, and have a desire to work in a "noble" profession. Second, the classes I have enjoyed the most have exposed me to useful information sources and analytical methodologies, and allowed me to make presentations. As someone who enjoys opportunities to dress for occassions, I dressed as the Good Humor Man for a presentation on sources about the ice cream industry, and I dressed as a football coach for a presentation on the NFL Draft as a knowledge management activity. In addition, I utilized multimedia for my presentations. Third, I have little desire for my career to focus on tiny details, such as whether or not to close paragraph tags in HTML or whether or not to include an author's birthdate in a catalog record. Rather, I enjoy thinking creatively about how to improve libraries. Perhaps my MBA training taught me to think about organizations, rather than computer code.
I took a class in order to earn a certificate in LAN Administration. At the time, I had recently graduated from business school and found job opportunities to be slim. Therefore, I decided to improve my knowledge of technology and make myself more marketable by taking a course. The professor focused on Novell Netware 4.1. The value of this certificate today is that it exposed me to fundamental concepts about technology administration and computers that I did not learn through my MBA education.
My MBA education made me comfortable making presentations and working in group settings. My favorite classes involved discussions of strategy and "what ifs". I concentrated in Management Information and Decision Systems because I had a strong interest in balancing the protection and sharing of information. In 1995, very few people were interested in this subject, which is now a popular subject, even outside of the field of technology and business. During my second and final year of business school, I was President of the very successful International Business Group.
I graduated with honors in European Cultural Studies from having written a senior thesis on Franz Kafka's animal characters and earning a 3.6 GPA within my major. My overall GPA was 3.22. My European Cultural Studies major emphasized comparative literature, sociology, art, music, and history.
High school was significant to me for two reasons that are in evidence today. First, it helped me to recognize my affinity for research. In one 10th grade assignment, students were required to visit the library, to photocopy articles on Africa, to summarize the articles on index cards, and to submit the index cards. I visited the school library nearly everyday and must have found more articles than any other student, because the professor added several pluses to my A grade. I think I overwhelmed the teacher. As I approached college, my bibliographies had become graduate school length bibliographies. Second, I realized that I truly enjoyed learning.