Last November my Mom and Dad went on their first cruise ever. Their destination – Antarctica!! Why you ask? Because my Mom won the trip through the Doctor’s Review Magazine. You can read about their experience in my Mom’s article in the latest Doctor’s Review here.
One of the reasons this blog has been lacking in posts recently is the fact that quite a few changes have taken place since the last entry! Most notably is that I am now employed! I am working as a Law Librarian in Calgary, AB. This required me schlepping across the country from Thunder Bay to Calgary and finding a place to live and getting that all set up. I did quite a good job on that front – you can see pictures here. For personal reasons it was hard to leave Thunder Bay but this was an important decision for my future career in the information profession!
Finding this job was not the easiest task. As most people can gather the economy is currently not that awesome and if one is interested in special librarianship times of economic hardship are the worst. Often times it is the library/information centre in a private company that is cut when pockets are empty. I originally intended to look for a job in Toronto, however I quickly determined that this was not a great idea for a few reasons. Firstly, the Faculty of Information graduates a huge number of graduates each year and there are only so many places for people to work. And secondly, I believe the competition for jobs in Toronto is heightened because librarians with several years of experience are being laid off and are consequently back in the job market flooding positions with applications that are far superior to those of new graduates.
I feel for my classmates who are still looking for employment. I know that it was pretty easy to get down, but I just kept applying! I applied for 33 jobs over the course of three months and heard back from three of them within a “reasonable” time frame. I have learned that many organizations take a significant period of time to get back to applicants – it can take up to two to three months! So don’t lose hope! There are jobs out there! I think it does help to be flexible with location if at all possible, or be flexible with the type of job you get such as part time or not necessarily in your dream area of librarianship. Just be open!
I am really looking forward to getting to know Calgary as a city – it is much nicer than I had expected. And I am also excited about my new position. I will have some great mentors which I feel is extremely important for a first job and I couldn’t ask for a friendlier bunch of librarians! Oh I also really love the fact that I have an office. With a nice big desk. On the 44th floor. With a view of the MOUNTAINS!!! Definitely didn’t see that one coming!
Stay tuned in the next few weeks (I will try!) for more posts related to the “real” world of librarianship!
New kitten in the house! Josh got a kitten. We named her Sadie. She is adorable as well as rambunctious!
I decided that I needed some headshots for funky business cards that I am going to make! Gotta get around to that one of these days but between moving and applying for jobs things have become a little outta wack! I just wanted to thank my friend Gerald for taking an hour out of his day to talk around UBC in mid July to get these photos! You can see more of his work here: http://www.giant-squid.ca/
First and foremost I must say that I got this idea from my friend Monica because she made a video for her mom about how to set up a gmail account. Thanks for the great idea Monica!
Below is a video tutorial I made for my mother to help her import her CDs into iTunes. I used the free version of Jing to make this video. This is my first attempt at creating a video tutorial using this software and I would have to say that overall Jing was very easy to use! There are a few mess ups in the video where I use such weird words as “importation” and I don’t fully explain the organization of iTunes appropriately. I acknowledge that importation sounds weird and that I haven’t fully elaborated on the organization of iTunes – but I posted it anyways because I believe that it gets the message across! I just had to put in this disclaimer in case someone was watching this and though “wait a minute, she doesn’t really know what she’s talking about!”. The sound quality also varies throughout the video due to the fan on my computer turning on while importing the CD, and that all the windows in my apartment are open allowing a variety of typical Toronto construction sounds to make an appearance.
The only problem I ran into was figuring out how exactly to post this to my blog. I tried for several hours and each time was unsuccessful. I posted a question in the wordpress forum to see if anyone could help me with my problem and was told that .swf files are not permitted on wordpress.com, the most basic version, for security reasons. I followed the suggestion from the forum and used the vodpod firefox extension and was successful in posting to my blog. The only downside of this is that the size of the video makes it somewhat harder to see, however it is embedded nicely.
For a larger version of this video you can click here to see the version hosted on Screencast.
Josh loving the big redball!
I had to post this photo only because it is probably now the most viewed photo on my flickr page! I added the photo to the blogTO flickr pool and it got picked up on blogTO’s twitter feed which meant that a whole lotta people got to enjoy Josh being a goof. And Josh has been able to bask in his Toronto famousness. Just thought I’d share it with a few more of you!
This Redball Project in Toronto is part of the Luminato 2009 festival. Who knew that a giant inflatable redball randomly placed throughout the city could be so awesome! I love how simple this idea is and just how many people are drawn to look at it. I only stood and watched the crowd for about ten minutes and people were coming out of their offices just to have a look!
Dear WordPress,
Why is my twitter feed always non responsive on the right hand side of my blog? I like seeing my updates.
Thanks!
Julia
