Foot meets door?

I have been O-U-T for a week now, and it wasn’t because I was just lazy or uninspired for once. I was at three days of seminar on library stuff. Here’s the deets for you library luvrs: first, a refresher on MARC coding, second, LCSH free-floating subdivisions, third, LCSH pattern entries, fourth, LC authority records and their MARC coding. I loved every part but the MARC header information on authority records in the LC view. There was this field that looked like “annabanana” to me that was supposed to report information about—see? I can’t remember, that part confused me. Otherwise, it was library geek-out fun. Although I must confess that I can’t retain MARC coding the way I should. Ugh.

For the people who don’t understand what I just said (sorry for the nerd-speak), I commuted to Jacksonville three days last week and sat through eight hours of intensive library training daily. It was exhausting. I’m still wrecked from it, which sucks because I work all weekend too.

One more library speak item: I also don’t remember my AACR2 as well as I’d like to.

Now back to random Christine-broken-brain musings. Regret. I know people are supposed to live without regret, but that’s one of those healthy brain things I just can’t seem to manage. Right now I’m regretting that I took an archives track in library school instead of technical services. OK, so honestly, I had no idea that the mega-nerd stuff would become important to me. At the time, I thought the relevance of the historicity of archives was paramount to my love of research. Turns out history isn’t as fun as the present. So regret, I didn’t work as hard at the word jumbles of cataloging, not knowing how much I would one day love metadata.

Un-regret. I did work really hard in library school to get what I thought I wanted out of the program. I didn’t go to an archive-emphasis university; I had to create my own program through internships and independent studies. Regret. Why didn’t I work as hard at what would really become useful to me?

I wonder where the Future Catalogers of America I was in school with work now and what they’re doing. Did they make it? Are they living their dream of Lois Chan’s metadata vision? My heart aches with the desire to join them. I totally want to get into technical services, but I don’t know how to break through. Florida just hasn’t given me the chance yet. In the meantime, I cross my fingers and dream of macro batch edits of updated subject headings.