8 Credits Down, 32 to Go

I am done with my first semester at UIUC, woohoo!!! I got A’s too, which means I feel okay now to share some of my academic content.

Let’s start with the course Information, Libraries, and Society, one of UIUC’s two required courses for the MSLIS. This class had a lot of reading and discussion leading (all classes are online & synchronous). The biggest thing worth half the grade was a final essay, which was a thousand percent influenced by my current obsession with Severance. In particular, how the space itself is so artificial, sterile, and when it refuses to accept aspects of human existence like death into its atmosphere, it feels contextually accurate. It feels like the ideal of that space, and it’s dehumanizing. And all of it is disturbingly, comically familiar. There’s some kind of collective subconscious in its design that has us recognizing it as something we’ve lived and felt, even if it was just a walk down white hospital hallways; a drive through a street with identical houses; a stroll through a perfectly-planted corn field.

This course’s anchor was Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, and now I’m wondering if I could’ve just submitted an essay examining Severance through Foucault and left libraries out of it altogether. I didn’t though, because libraries are the thing, haha. But also let’s face it: libraries contribute to our collective recognition of artificial, sterile, overly-ordered spaces. And it has a ton to do with the development of western European (read: white) culture subjugating non-white populations. Read this, and ummm yeah think about Milchick.

The other course I had was Information Services for Diverse Users, which I adored and it featured reading that I cited a ton in my Info, Libs, Society essay. Loved how handy that was, and oh and also Mendeley in particular was amazing. UIUC is linked with Mendeley too so when I created an account with my illinois.edu email, it was like the world of scholarship had cracked open for me. 10/10 UX.

So, two assignments. One was a zine, that I didn’t know how to do because all I could think about was the history of fanzines, fans attending conventions and passing around slashfic in 8-page spreads, haha. It was on libraries and tech, and the readings for that course section really brought out my personal repugnance for relying on FAANG + Big Tech give us money for the ultimate goal of an educated and informed population. Puh. Or hoping gajillionaires will ever be like Carnegie again. Yeah, right. Most public libraries are funded by taxes. We could take that money and find ways to build out the independent, decentralized internet that won’t be bought out or infiltrated by those who would seek to make money off us in increASINGLY UNETHICAL WAYS */*endrant*/* But here’s the zine in video form (bc I’m tired and it’s easier to upload a video than figure out a cool way to display this as an image gallery webpage).

Okay and lastly, a cultural programming assignment, where I design a program series for a specific population. I did Android 101 for Older Adults where I really got into how older adults + technology education = excellent health outcomes. So now IRPL (In Real Professional Life) I’m getting into designing a telehealth program and also looking forward to applying to pilot ALA’s Digital Pathways: Online Health Literacy Programming for Adults’ toolkit.