May 4, 2009

Today we got Rose Bond's syllabus for the Summer Animation workshop. I had to go over it with a fine-toothed comb to figure out if we even have many of the obscure animated short films, and if they were accessible in the catalog. I went to the Library catalog and searched each title first as a keyword search, then as a title search, to see if there are any incongruencies. I want to make sure that all of the work we've done has been a success as far as finding individual films on a compilation DVD. I found a few items that still need to be digitized, as well, so I feel like this is a real working way of measuring my progress on this project. serenity put one of the student workers on the same task as me and it ended up being really confusing; she would take something off the shelf and when I went to look for it I couldn't find it, etc. So I was very busy, and expect to be as busy tomorrow. I am finding that having a student worker was only marginally beneficial, and he ended up getting things done in bursts: he'd finish 4 films in one day and then nothing for a couple of weeks. It has been frustrating in the sense that this being my practicum, I have really ended up doing most of this work myself, which wasn't the goal. I have very little time left for other projects, and I really want to be doing more hands-on reference work, as I feel that it would benefit me more in the long run. I have learned a lot about being self-directed and setting goals for myself. I have also learned more about how to (and how not to) supervise other people. So in that sense it's been helpful. I'll report more tomorrow once I have finished this syllabus work.