Hi everyone!
I wanted to take some time to introduce myself and my blog. This is the Connected Corner and is where my work for INFO 287, the Hyperlinked Library, will be posted. I chose to name my blog, the Connected Corner, because I felt like it embodies the theme of this course and this blog will serve as a space for me to connect with my peers.
A little bit about me, my name is Bella and I work in an archival digitization department at a public University. I fell into this field by chance when I started working in the archives as a student employee during my undergrad. At the time, I had no clue that this was a field of work that I could pursue. Flash forward three years, I have continued to work in our digitization department and have developed a passion for transforming old material into digitally accessible formats.
Maybe some others in the the LIS program who are interested in archives can relate to this, but my personal hobbies are all a bit “old school.” I love to thrift and go to antique stores. I enjoy hobbies such as hand embroidering and recently crocheting (I’m almost finished with crocheting my first sweater). Lastly, I’ve been enjoying birdwatching. Just yesterday, while watching the bird bath in my parents backyard, we saw two Lovebirds (apologies for the blurry photo). Keep in mind, I live in Minnesota. Someone’s pet birds must have escaped and they look very out of place in our Minnesota forests. Hopefully they can find their way back home.
I look forward to connecting to everyone this semester and talk to you soon!
-Bella
Hi Bella,
It sounds like you have found a focus in this program that you are really passionate about! Although I have a different focus, which is K-12 libraries, I do find archives really interesting. I’m also super jealous that you are crocheting a sweater; I’ve been wanting to learn to crochet for a while. I hope you have a great semester!
@littlelibrarian the photo of the Love Birds is very cool. I like the name of your blog and I think it really taps into the themes of our course, connection, conversation, etc. Welcome to the hyperlinked library.
Hi Bella,
I really enjoyed the picture you shared of the two lovebirds. I hope they found their way back home.
Birdwatching is a new activity that I am beginning to enjoy. I spend a lot of time in my backyard, and I have come to enjoy watching the birds that visit. Two mourning doves stop by quite frequently. Initially, I thought they were pigeons, but after doing some research, I realized they were actually mourning doves because of their coloring and unique sounds.
I hope you have a great fall semester!
@alishaacosta
I love Mourning Doves! My parents have had some nests in their yard and the babies are so funny and cute.
@littlelibrarian I worked at my university’s special collections and archives as a reference assistant and absolutely loved it. It’s a big reason why I decided to pursue my MLIS. We helped out with some of the digitization based on patron requests, and it was always so interesting to see the variety of items come through for digitization. There were so many items I would have never known the university had if someone hadn’t requested for it to be digitized. Do you have a favorite digitization project you’ve worked on?
@adalie
That is one thing I really like about digitization is that I’m able to see material across many different archive departments at our University because patrons request a wide variety of things. If I worked in one archive, say the University Archive, I would only interact with material from their collection.
My favorite project I helped digitize was when I was a student employee. It was a cookbook collection (you can find them here: https://umedia.lib.umn.edu/search?facets%5Bcollection_name_s%5D%5B%5D=Doris+S.+Kirschner+Cookbook+Collection&q=cookbook). That was fun seeing all the old recipes. But my favorite items to work with in general are correspondence especially when you can tell the person who wrote it has a sense of humor. I love finding little gems like that.