Goodbye

Hello to all!

This will be my last blog for the Preservation Department, not just for 2016, but going forward. Earlier this year, my department (Digital Initiatives,) broke away from the Preservation Department and teamed up with Digital Repository to become a new department, DSI (Digital Scholarship Initiatives.) So… Good-bye old…hello new!

I’ve been thinking a lot about this blog space and how I’ve utilized it during the years that I have been writing for it. Except for one, maybe two posts, they have all been about designing webpages and the challenges I have faced in creating them. I have to say I have learned as much about that process writing down my experiences as I have in creating the actual pages. Someone doesn’t really understand their position until they have to explain it to someone else. I haven’t always been good explaining my job to others, but the act of expressing those challenges on paper has allowed me to also teach myself, and in effect, become more confident of my skills. Sounds weird, but true.

In looking back over my blog posts over the years, I am struck at how constant is change. At one point in my blog writing, I noticed that as soon as I finished writing a blog about Dreamweaver webpage development, I was immediately thrown into developing and transferring our webpages to Drupal. From this constant change process, I have learned that I feel a lot more comfortable designing webpages…even when my comfort level is no longer safe. I mean to say that I have lived in such a constant upheaval environment in regards to designing web pages and the software that we use, over the last few years, that when I am no longer under constant stress of transferring to a new “something”, I feel empty and like: “what do I do know?” But do not worry gentle reader; my new supervisor has taken care of that.  Which is great for me. Instead of treading water, now I feel more in my element than ever before. (When things are flying at me a hundred miles per hour is the only way I feel I am functioning. And besides…times travel so much faster when hands are busy having fun!)

It amazes me that in a span of nine months, what started out as one little site called Digital Collections, way back in the early-mid 2000’s, and was a constant for many years, has morphed and bloomed into a larger site with Digital Collections just one of the sites underneath the umbrella called Digital Initiatives; the last half of the year has found me creating supplemental sites to compliment this new site. Every specialty will have it’s new home (Yearbooks, Online Exhibits, etc.)

But that’s just the future as envisioned in November 2016. Who knows what more changes are in store. All I know for sure is that one must buckle in and get set for a fun-filled bumpy ride into the future. I know I’m going to enjoy it. I hope you have learned as much from reading my blog posts as I have from writing them. It’s been real. Thanks for tagging along with my adventures.