Hello, and welcome to Lifelong Beginner. This will be a space where I record my thoughts on cataloging, code development, metadata, technology, and other topics that are guaranteed to generate lively discussion at parties.
A quick bit of exposition: my name is Robert Carter. I grew up in Athens GA, and spent most of my adult life there with the exception of my four undergraduate years at the Rhode Island School of Design (BFA Illustration 1992) and about six months in Brooklyn. I worked for five years at the Talking Book Center (now the Special Needs Library) at the Athens-Clarke County Library, and seven years at the Visual Resources Center at the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia. Most of this work was part-time while I pursued interests in art (painting, sculpture) and music (upright bass, jazz/swing). But in the early 2000s I decided it was time to turn the day job into a career. I researched various library and information science programs and in Fall of 2005 I enrolled at the School of Information (aka the iSchool) at The University of Texas at Austin. In the final semester of my MSIS (Master of Science in Information Studies) program, I worked with the Visual Resources Collection at the School of Architecture, and upon graduating I was offered a chance to stay on and continue my work there. I accepted, and as I write this– June 2008– I’ve been working at the SOA VRC for just over a year.
My area of specialization is digital image collections, more specifically digital image collections of cultural objects (art, architecture, etc) for educational use. And even more specifically, I focus on information architecture for these collections, i.e. how metadata is structured to optimize its use in cataloging and search/retrieval with automated applications.
I chose the title “Lifelong Beginner” for a number of reasons. One of them is the fact that I am in some ways new to this profession, even though I have over ten years of experience in library work and over seven years experience with visual resources libraries. Although returning to school after thirteen years wasn’t easy, I felt like I chose a pretty good time to begin my formal training. The internet had survived its first boom and the subsequent shakeout, and had started to re-invent itself with a new sense of focus. I was savvy enough with technology that I could keep my head (barely) above water in some of the more tech-oriented classes that the department offered. And a lot of exciting trends had just emerged, trends which I barely knew about before I started at the iSchool.
Throughout all this re-education and my work of the last couple of years, I’ve been accompanied by a feeling of “I have no idea what I’m doing”. But looking back on my life, I realize this is how I’ve learned the things I’ve learned, by throwing myself into projects when I knew in advance that I barely comprehended what I was getting myself into. (I expect I’ll write more about some of these projects in time.) Which brings me back again to the title of this blog: I expect to go through life feeling like a novice, because I expect to keep moving ahead into the areas I don’t understand. And maybe if I keep this up for another forty years I’ll feel like I’ve acquired a grain or two of expertise.
