Posts tagged ‘tattoo’

November 17th, 2009

The beauty of books

I’ve done very little lately besides homework, namely my research paper. I so badly want it to be good & to appear smart. Plus, I find it all so interesting that I don’t mind researching. Although, the mechanics of writing a paper are less than enjoyable.

I’ve come across so many beautiful quotes about books, libraries, archives & records that I thought I’d share one of my favorites. This is from a speech at the Library of Congress by Barbara Tuchman:

B ooks are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are engines of change, windows on the world, and (as a poet has said) ‘light-houses erected in the seas of time.’ They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.

If I had enough space on my arm, I would get this tattooed.

Also – I need your help!
In a few months, I will be going on an Alternative Spring Break trip with some other SI students. There are a number of different places I could spend the week and they include the Library of Congress, the Museum of Natural History, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, NPR, the American Library Association and the National Archives and Records Management [to name a few]. Students going on the trip make a $25 donation and pay for their own food, but travel & housing are paid for through fundraising & matching grants from SI. One of the ways we raise money is by hosting an annual book sale.

So:
Please donate your old books!
Your new books! Short books! Yellow books!
Any & all objects that could be seen as a “book.”
You can give them to me or drop them off on the 4th floor of West Hall if you happen to be around campus.
I would really really appreciate it.

Credit goes to Daily Drop Cap for the beautiful “B” used in the quote. Check out the site more more fancy letters!

Also, check out this fun site. They have postcards, such as the one below, that you can fill out & send online! It’s a fun, thoughtful way to keep in touch with those around you [besides inviting them to take Facebook quizzes...].

& with that,
goodnight.

November 9th, 2009

Monday I love you!

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.