I was very excited to learn about the topic this week because stories mean so much to me. My bachelor’s degree is in English and my original plan was to work in publishing. I love to read stories and to tell them as well, but logistically a career in publishing didn’t work out for me. I followed my love of stories into the library world and here I am now. While I was in my undergraduate studies I took a course that was all about telling stories and the human experience. We had to visit the StoryCorps website and listen to the way the interviews were conducted and how the…

The AI wave has taken the tech world by storm. It seems like every website or app is starting to incorporate AI in some way or another. I hadn’t realized that AI was already around back in 2019, only because I didn’t know to call it that until recent years. It never clicked for me that Siri and Alexa were considered AI and when I read that I laughed and face-palmed because of course they are! My immediate thought when I hear someone mention AI is ChatGPT because that is what we hear about the most, but AI has been around for years before that. I was very surprised to…

Academic libraries serve multiple purposes. The most common is the traditional idea of academic libraries being places of research and study. While that is still true, advancements in technology have adjusted the way that libraries operate and expanded the ways that they can be used. Today there are IT Help desks, maker spaces, and even food pantries available in academic libraries. When I started looking into becoming an academic librarian, my reasoning was to be a part of academic research. The only time I went to the library during my undergrad years was to study or check out a book. I didn’t participate in any other services and assumed that…

One topic this week that has been on my mind is human curation versus digital curation through algorithms. As someone who has been on social media since back in the Myspace days, I have seen a change in the way we view things online.   The current algorithm on Instagram focuses more on suggested posts and popular posts as opposed to the original version of the app that would show all the posts from accounts you follow in chronological order. While the new algorithm is great for people to get exposure to new accounts it also hurts smaller accounts by making it more difficult for their content to be seen.…