Entertainment Librarian-Style

As you may know, I am currently studying to be a librarian. And adventuresome library students like me find ways to sneak a little fun in between Cataloging and Reference.

For instance, I once had to develop a bibliography (book list) on any topic. So, naturally, I created one on the classics of sadomasochistic erotic literature. Another time I had to create an on-line form, so, naturally, I created an on-line multiple-partner lifestyle survey (you can view it - and take it - at http://plumlovely.com/wayne/polyamory.html)

This semester I am having yet more fun. This semester I am studying metadata - that's data about data. Yes, it really is as abstract and boring as it sounds. My final project is to find a collection of things and prepare it for digitization. For instance, I could call all of my baby pictures a collection and I would then need to decide what to record about each photo in order to put it online and make them searchable. Like, what size the photos are, when they were taken, who is in them, etc.

My "collection" is women's music festivals and my first paragraph (of, ostensibly, a research paper) is:

Here at the Wellesley College Music Library, we have recently been approached by a joint coalition of faculty members in the music and women's studies departments. They are requesting the creation of a Web-accessible database of women's music festivals – in essence, that library staff digitize a collection of events. The collection is designed to assist the faculty, staff and students of Wellesley College in staying abreast of current trends in women's musical performance and contemporary expressions of women's culture. Senior librarians and library staff members were unable to locate a metadata scheme that had been written specifically to accommodate recurring events. Therefore, we have determined to create our own scheme that we will call the Wellesley Core.

OK, back to bloggin, so some of the data I'll be collecting about the festivals will be whether there are workshops and what kind of workshops are held (political, personal improvement, etc.), what kind of performances there are, what kinds of settings (e.g. indoors or outdoors, university property or private property), whether there is camping or whether it is one-day event, what the policies are like vis a vis women-born-women and male children and all that other fun stuff women go into the woods and argue about. The first two pages of my paper are an explanation of what a women's music festival is like and why it is important to put them into a searchable database (so you could look up stuff like which festivals allow nudity, which are longer than one day, which have vegan options at mealtimes, which usually feature comedians or acrobats, etc.). Sorry, but this paper is only about HOW to do this, not to actually go ahead and do it. Guess I would need an independent study for that.

For those of you to whom this is important, my prof is female. So, no secrets will be getting out.