What an interesting day this has been!
Every 8:30am Monday mornings is my Information Use in Communities class – a course that brings together two things I love – people & information. For my end of the semester paper I’m looking at the ways in which the homeless find, access and use information & they ways that technology has helped that [or not].
However, today I left after an hour of class to attend a conference on translation & human rights hosted by the Department of Comparative Literature as a part of their Year of Translation series.
It was an all day event & I was unfortunately only able to stay for the first panel & the keynote address. However, what I was able to attend was incredibly fascinating & intriguing. I tried taking notes but my brain couldn’t keep up with the ideas filling my head. Even now I am unable to put into words my growing & expanding ideas about human rights, translation, authority, competency and all the ways in which these relate to archives.
The keynote speaker of the day was Ellen Elias-Bursac – a reviser in the English Translation Unit for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. It was an intersection of so many interests for me, including Balkan states, human rights reparations and the generating of documents and records that will soon be headed for an archive or destruction.
The classmates I had attend with & myself caught up with her afterwards to blab on about these ideas & archives & records & information – I’m sure it’s clear our minds were overflowing. But, most importantly to me right now, I asked her about doing an internship! She said the ICTY has recently hired a new archivist &, since the tribunal is set to be disbanded in 2012, the archive is playing a very interesting role at the moment.
I went to their website & found all the intern application materials. I also sent them an email telling them who I had talked to & to ask for some more specifics about what area I need to apply to. The application is due November 30th & it’s pretty daunting, but I think doing an internship with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia is definitely worth it!
Speaking of Yugoslavia & the Balkans, I also spent a lot of time today doing research on the destruction of libraries & archives as a form of cultural genocide, specifically in Bosnia-Herzegovina & Kosovo. It’s for my introduction to archives paper & it’s been my favorite research paper to date.
I’ve also started using the open-source software program BibDesk. It’s a bibliography management tool similar to RefWorks, but it’s a Mac client that is much more user friendly & I’m able to modify it to suit my needs.
Just so this is not totally nerd stuff, I think an owl may be my next tattoo. An owl, signifying wisdom, is a good fit for what will be my “information sleeve.” [Along with my books/birds tattoo & future card catalog tattoo].
Maybe that was nerdy….
Have a good Tuesday.
xoxox.
Related posts:
- Semester one: completed!
- A day off, a break from life, a pause from the busyness
- I need a nap
- Monday, monday, can't trust that day…
- True confessions of a workaholic
Monday, November 9th, 2009, 9:14 pm | 
Uncategorized | 
RSS feed
| 
Respond | 
Trackback
