Introduction

Introduction

This site chronicles my journey toward a Master’s in Library and Information Science at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Prior to my graduate studies at UH Manoa, I earned my Bachelor’s of Arts in English Language and Literature from the University of Maryland, College Park, and did a study abroad in London through the University Studies Abroad Consortium. I was admitted to the University of Hawaii in the Spring 2019 semester, and am currently working toward my degree. As I complete the Student Learning Objectives for my LIS degree I will update the relevant sections of this site with artifacts and accompanying documentation explaining how I am meeting each requirement.

Currently I am working in UH Manoa’s Digitization Lab in Hamilton Library, where we are digitizing the archive of Senator Daniel K. Inouye’s papers. I have previously worked as a Health Plans Sales Representative for HMSA, Hawaii’s largest insurer, and as a Program Instructor for the Close Up Foundation, an experiential education nonprofit that provides civics lessons to middle and high school students from across the country traveling to our nation’s capital. I am familiar with the Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux operating systems, and I have used the Microsoft Office suite (including Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint) professionally. The skills I have used supporting digital archiving to date include document prep, scanning, the preparation of searchable PDFs with Adobe Acrobat, OCR correction with Abyy Finereader, and the preparation of metadata for online publishing.

Interests

I am interested in the potential that emerging technologies have to help us to capture, preserve and disseminate rare and delicate texts, some of which are present in good condition in only a few repositories in the world. Today, digital archiving offers innumerable opportunities to protect rare texts from unnecessary handling while still making the contents of those texts available to a world audience of scholars, researchers and other information-seekers. If we are careful about how these technologies are used, we can facilitate an outpouring of knowledge across our community and throughout the world, enriching our communication and leaving a solid foundation for future generations of learners.
I consider myself a lifelong learner, and my primary areas of interest include folklore, mythology, and the ways in which storytelling offers areas for cross-cultural understanding (or misunderstandings). I am particularly interested in the intersections between oral histories and the written word, and the ways in which stories are transformed across different generations of listeners in order to reinforce contemporary social norms.

Goals

As an information professional, I hope to continue working in Academic libraries, working to preserve and digitally archive rare texts so that they are available to current researchers as well as to future generations of scholars. I am also interested in Special Collections, currently focused on folklore and anthropological material documenting the indigenous cultures of the Polynesian, Melanesian and Micronesian regions of Oceania. In the future I hope to continue refining my skills in the technologies used to preserve and distribute documents, including microfiche.