Goals and Dreams

Recently we've been asked about our goals for our MLIS degree, what we want to do when we're finished, and what we hope to gain out of the experience. On a very basic level, I am getting this degree because I want to be able to advance at my current job. It is industry standard that someone doing what I do has a graduate level degree relating to preservation of information. I am working towards a graduate certificate in information management. Because of my current experiences with cataloging historical documents, I am very interested in how researchers are able to find and use the information we put out there. I'd like to focus on the nuts and bolts of creating new tools and new ways of thinking about how we catalog, access, and apply information. I can see myself working in a government archives on day and digitizing records en masse. Another option would be to work for a government contractor and using my expertise to streamline the movement of information within government agencies. Ultimately I'd like to find myself at a doctoral program at the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin. Their program is well known and its located somewhere I'd like to be for awhile. I'd like to do research into how well digital archives are doing as far as making their documents accessible to researchers and if those researchers are able to easily use what they find. The field is young enough that even in my own job, we have a hard time finding resources on best practices. That's part of the reason I'm going to the Electronic Resources & Libraries conference in March. I'm already working in the industry and I feel a very urgent need to be better at what I do. I suppose that need to be better at what I do is what brought me to Wayne State in the first place and its also what I expect to get out of the program.