Getting started

It has been a few days since I should have started this blog, but here goes anyhow. The purpose of this blog is to both provide a record of my experience doing a digital internship with the incredibly hip American Center for Mongolian Studies (ACMS) and to help me organize my ideas. As you can probably already tell, I intend to keep the writing here pretty informal-- as if I were simply writing in a notebook. At the risk of making myself look like a fool I will attempt to be brutally honest about the internship. Looking like a fool will be inevitable since I am learning computer stuff that I was convinced at one time I would never be able to handle. One year of graduate school has made me realize that not only can I handle the digital world (at one time I was convinced I could not look at a computer screen for more than half and hour because it would give me a headache-- it must have just been that monitor), I have to learn more about the digital world if I want to be a librarian.

So, speaking of myself, I am a student in the School of Library and Information Studies at UW-Madison. I got here by being one of those people who knock around not knowing what to do with themselves after college. When I got my undergraduate degree in English from UW-Milwaukee I managed to land a choice job parking cars for rich people at a condominium. That lasted until I ran away for a summer to Eastern Europe. I did manage to get more interesting jobs when I returned to Milwaukee, such as organizing an Asian Film Festival, but nothing with a real future. After taking another summer to wander around the globe with my wife, we ended up in Madison so that she could go to school. Those plans were interrupted by a pregnancy. So I applied to graduate school to pursue a degree in library studies. I figured that since I liked hanging out in them I could probably see myself working in one.

Studying Chinese and going on shoestring backpacking trips have given me a strong interest in international cultures and affairs. Part of the reason why I kept procrastinating about finding a "real" job is because I was afraid of being tied down. When my wife and I were in Mongolia we vowed to go back when we had the chance. Since then I have been trying to find an excuse for a return trip. I haven't found one yet, but I guess I am getting closer. This last spring semester I took an excellent class with Professor Louise Robbins about the global knowledge society. As part of the class we got to study a country of interest to us, and as you might imagine I chose Mongolia. As part of my research I got in contact with ACMS, which in turn led to the internship I am now starting.

Researching Mongolia's knowledge society is no easy feat. I quickly realized during my class with Professor Robbins that there is no easy way to find good information in English on modern Mongolia. In many ways it seems as if modern Mongolia is stuck in the shadow of the Mongolian empires of yore. One of the main objectives of this internship will be to collect or guide researchers to information on Mongolia's knowledge society. At this point I am defining knowledge society in same way as we did in Professor Robbins' class using the Lor and Britz model with the below categories:

ICT Infrastructure:	Information Content	Physical Delivery Capability	Human Capacity
Communication infrastructure	Access to relevant information	Transportation	Education
Technology availability	Affordability	Warehouses	Literacy
	Timeliness	Physical addresses	Information literacy
	Presentation in languages and contexts users understand	Libraries and other cultural institutions	Information intermediaries

Lor and Britz. "Challenges of the Approaching Knowledge Society: Major Issues Facing LIS Professionals." Libri 57, 2007.

Because of the digital nature of this internship some areas will receive more focus than others. ICT infrastructure and digital information content will be strong focuses for obvious reasons. Other areas, such as physical delivery capability, are topics I will not be able to address as well. The end result of this project should help ACMS flesh out their reference wiki, while making me learn a whole lot of digital stuff I never would have otherwise.

During this internship I will be supervised ACMS Resident Director Brian White (check out his This Month in Mongolian Studies Blog) and my faculty adviser will be the aforementioned Professor Robbins.

I more than encourage your feedback, I crave it. So please feel free to let me know what you think or any Mongolia related leads you think I should look into or any wiki tips you might have.