Reflections on assigned reading--The Portable MLIS Chapter 11

To be honest, I intentionally skipped this chapter in my required reading because the title seemed so foreign and unappealing to me. (Sorry Professor Weedman but Information Retrieval: Designing, Querying, and Evaluating Information Systems doesn't sound like an edge of your seat thriller!) I thought I would eventually come back to it, trudge through it, and hopefully find some nugget to comment on in this blog--and then be done with it. Well, to my pleasant surprise this topic actually had more relevance to me than I initially suspected. I found the concept of designing information retrieval systems interesting, although I'm not sure I will make a career out of this aspect of library science. What follows are three observations I've made from the reading.

Observation #1: Professor Weedman did a masterful job equating designing information retrieval systems to how one might organize his or her closet. This clever analogy made what was an initially daunting concept for me much easier to grasp. As I read her introduction I had one of those "Aha--I get it now" moments.

Observation #2: "Metadata" (A term so new, so alien that I was afraid of it!) When I came home from the Syracuse University MS-LIS Admitted Student Open House in May, I was excited about the prospect of enrolling, but concerned, confused and frightened by the vocabulary everyone seemed to use. Library folks have a totally different lexicon from most ordinary people and I was befuddled when Scott Nicholson was talking about "metadata." I asked my wife what she thought it meant and we both had no idea. Professor Weedman, however, did an excellent job articulating this new concept to a new-comer to the library science field. It is now clear to me what that very foreign-sounding word means--and helps me to think that perhaps I can make the transition to librarianship (and their peculiar language) after all.

Observation #3: Prior to reading this chapter I had very little substantive knowledge about how a search engine like "google" worked. I just knew that If I typed a word into that little box on my computer, all sorts of "stuff" would pop up. Thanks to Professor Weedman, I have a clearer understanding about what is going on behind the scenes with "searches," how they work, and most importantly, how to make them work better (best) for me and the patrons/students of the library I will serve in the future.

References:
Weedman, Judith (2008). Chapter 11, Information Retrieval: Designing, Querying, and Evaluating Information Systems. Found in The Portable MLIS: Insights from the Experts by Ken Haycock & Brooke E. Sheldon (Eds.), Libraries Unlimited, Westport, Connecticut.