Why I am Here Now: A Slice of Life with Omniscient Narrator Long ago, in the faraway galaxy of Cantabridgea, a Thoughtful, Not So Young as she used to be Woman decided she had to do something to Change Her Life. Although in many ways her life had been Full of Surprises and she had developed Interesting Abilities, the Bigger Picture (such as the minor points of Living Up To Her Potential and Paying The Rent Without Panicking) had not been Figured Out. So she began a search for a Deeper Meaning and a New Plane of Existence.

Many paths crossed her mind. She'd been an English major in college so long ago, where creative writing had been her major. After all these years, did she want to attend a doctoral program for the 5-7 years it would take to become a scholar and professor in English literature? (I guess not, murmured an exhausted little voice.)

For many years she'd been a free-lance journalist and editor, an experience that involved many skills: research, interviewing, story development, desktop publishing, and networking, to name a few. Her client list was really a short history of her varied experiences as a journalist, all of which had been thoroughly (emotionally and intellectually) enriching (though not financially "enriching"). Maybe Journalism School was the way? (Although she was accepted to journalism schools, she decided it wasn't exactly the answer.)

After much research and rumination, she decided that attending the College of Library Science at the University of Maryland at College Park might be a good solution. She could combine her research skills with her love of books and information and enter the area of special libraries, concentrating on cultural and communications settings. One area of interest is in news libraries, which will be the setting of her fall '98 internship. For a class this summer '98 in Special Libraries, she and two team members (dubbing themselves "The Press Room") visited and interviewed managers at 17 media libraries (newspapers, news associations, TV and radio stations). These visits were fascinating and are summarized in a Press Room Report.

Finally, she decided she needed to make another change: move away from her home of 16 years and begin a new life in the Washington, DC area. So far, despite the "challenges" (yup, that's what one of her optimistic friends calls 'em) of CLIS, UMD, DC, MD, ftp, html, 690 (and a few more initials she has forgotten at the moment), baby, she has NO REGRETS.

Le Joie de Vivre

The Wonderful/Wacky/Web & Lovely/Library/Life: A Digression

Speaking of the web, one of Ms. Marinelli's accomplishments during this first semester at library school was the co-creation (with a classmate) of a web project called Image and the Librarian. This megaproject, which involved doing a literature search, finding links to other sites, and scanning in great images, pushed Ms. M. towards the abyss of "html addiction." [There will be those reading these words who will understand.]

For a course that researched the "information behavior" of various groups of people, she queried storytellers from the network she had been part of in good old New England via an email survey. Another exciting project involved children's literature: picture books about Native Americans and African Americans, a very tricky subject area (as expressed in the webpage I is not for Indians).

And lastly, her library exploits involved rushing madly about the McKeldin Library reference stacks in search of thrilling yet obscure information, such as Where was Alexander Fleming buried?