one big list:

I've officially finished consolidating the haphazard lists of abbreviations that had been passed down to me by librarians of days past! What started as an eighteen page paper manual and an Excel spreadsheet has been consolidated to a forty-four page document with over two thousand terms! Everything from "audio-visual" to "zoomorphism," literally.

So what's next? I get to spend some time with the list and highlighters in a wide variety of colors.This will be the first step in creating a taxonomic schema that will then develop into our controlled vocabulary.

It's exciting to cross steps off your list, isn't it?

card catalog cards:

I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss old-fashioned library card catalogs. Sure, speaking as a graduate student/researcher, data bases and online catalogs make the research process more effective and expansive.  But I do miss thumbing through the old catalog, and seeing just where in the library's collections those cards would lead me....

Although the University of Texas has done away with most of their old card catalog cabinets, there are still remnants of the old card catalog system at the different library branches.  In particular, the old cards can be easily found in boxes of scratch paper left out for library patrons. Stacks upon stacks of old library cards are scattered on the different floors of the Fine Arts Library so that patrons can jot down the call number for which they're looking. Working there, I use the old cards for a myriad of purposes, and am often tickled by which book's card I'm using. But last week, I discovered a stack that were interesting for a much more personal reason....

so what's this all about?

So now that introductions are out of the way and I've explained where I'll be doing my Capstone project, you're probably wondering what this project is all about and what "Objectifying Objects" means.  At least, I really hope you're a little bit curious! Let me describe the project and then hopefully the blog's name will make more sense.

The VRC has an expansive collection of slides that have been used by University of Texas faculty for a number of years. 

These slides are labeled with terms from an uncontrolled vocabulary of abbreviations determined by the slide's physical size.  For example:

N à North    S à South     S. à Saint     AELEV à Architecture elevation

There is no standardized vocabulary for these abbreviations. Punctuation and capitalization are not consistent throughout.  So before the slides are digitized into a web-accessible collection, it's going to be my job to develop a controlled vocabulary specific to the VRC that will replace these messy and inconsistent abbreviations.

hello my name is:

If you've stumbled across this blog this early on in its existence, chances are you already know me. But if somehow through the magic that is the Internet you've discovered Objectifying Objects by chance, let me take a moment to introduce myself.

My name is Alexis and I'm a Graduate Student at the University of Texas at Austin School of Information, commonly referred to as the iSchool. I'm working towards my Master of Science in Information Studies with a focus in Academic Librarianship.  I'm a Graduate Research Assistant at the UT Fine Arts Library and have recently started volunteering with the FAL's Visual Resource Collection.  It is this volunteer work that will be the primary focus of Objectifying Objects.  


Volunteering at  the VRC is part of my Capstone Project.  What is a Capstone? The iSchool describes it as a "capping" experience to your academic studies, enabling you to "integrate [your] professional education and the intellectual and institutional vocations toward which [you] are striving." This premise may sound a tad lofty but, in fact, it's a great opportunity for students to work on a "real world" project, gain some valuable experience, and then present on the topic to colleagues.  And I'm lucky enough to have the opportunity to do so with the VRC.


I'll be updating this blog regularly, describing and musing about the project I'll be completing for the VRC. I'll describe that project and what hopes I have for it in the next entry. It's an interested project and I'm very excited about it! If that's not enough to entice you to check back in, I promise to explain the name of the blog then, too!