August 8

As my last week starts, I find myself incredibly antsy and wanting to just go home already... but nope, I have one last week to get through. Luckily, the actual "work" time is not that much this week, I don't think, what with events and meetings and leaving procedures. Surely, there will be lots of paperwork to fill out.

This morning, we had our big tour of the Library's dome. We walked out on two different levels of the dome and I snapped photos in every which way just to take advantage of the height. It was pretty neat. I've attached some of the photos I took...

This is a look down at the Library's Madison building, where I work. Just to give you an indication as to how high we were, that building has six floors.

The Capitol from our vantage point:


And beyond the Capitol, over the mall (that grassy area in the middle), to the Washington Monument, with the Lincoln Memorial barely visible behind that. All those buildings along the mall are the various Smithsonian buildings.


Beyond that, I processed CDs in the morning and was very excited to get the Black Eyed Peas "Elephunk" CD. I listened to that all morning. In the afternoon, I actually decided to start in on one last record label that isn't copyright complying... Dischord Records. So, hopefully, I will be able to finish that before the week ends. There's no reason why I shouldn't.

A couple of the interns in the Prints & Photographs division invited me for coffee in the afternoon so that was nice. I really like them. One of them, Audra, is deciding between UNC and SU for library school. I think I made her decision for her - and I feel slightly guilty that I didn't recruit someone to SU. Just as the day ended, we found out that we were going to have to present our "treasures" to Dr. Billington tomorrow. Apparently, this is like the only day this month that he will be here to see us so that was why we got the last minute notification. So, yeah, that will be fun.

August 6 & 7

Yes, it was my last weekend in DC. I still had quite a few things to do on my 'To Do' list so I tried to get some of them done. On Saturday, I drove around areas of Maryland because my time there has been pretty limited since I got here. I've mostly focused on checking out areas of Virginia, just because it's closer to where I'm staying. So I tried to drive around parts of Maryland, visiting Bethesda, Rockville, and College Park primarily. I also fit in some back-to-school shopping. On Sunday, I hit some more museums: the National Postal Museum, the National Gallery of Art, the National Archives and the National Museum of American History.

I really enjoyed the Postal Museum. It's not very big and wasn't very crowded (although, honestly, the whole mall/downtown area was not very crowded at all on Sunday, for some reason) but it had some very interesting exhibits about the history of the US postal system.

Here's an old postal truck on display at the Postal Museum:


The National Gallery of Art is amazing and has an unbelievable amount of artwork on display. It's nearly impossible to see everything in a few hours, but I'm not much of an art museum fan so I was fine. I'm more interested in cultural/societal museums than just regular art museums. Like, show me how artwork in a society fits in with general life in that era. Just seeing collections of art kind of bores me. Artifacts over artwork, I guess. Regardless, they have a very large collection, particularly of Degas statues. That's one thing that really stood out to me.

A Roy Lichtenstein piece at the National Gallery:


The National Archives was really interesting, too. It sort of is just an advertisement for the documents they have, but it's pretty fascinating, especially since I'm someone who has really looked into getting a job there. They have the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and other types of original documents like that on display, but I found the general exhibits interesting too.

The front of the Archives building:


At the National Museum of American History, I really wanted to spend more time at the First Ladies exhibit because I was really fascinated by it the first time I went there but the museum was such a madhouse that it was hard to read everything.

So, anyway, pretty much the only museum I haven't gotten a chance to go to yet is the Holocaust Museum, which I hope to do Tuesday or Thursday as it is open late those two days.

August 5

Today it was back to the grind. I still say it feels like continuing to go to class even though you've already taken the final. We do have an evaluation to fill out, too.

I spent the entire day processing CDs upstairs in SpecMat. I had only spent about one hour there this week so I thought I should make up some time to make it more equitable. Plus, I missed it a little - not the processing but the listening. I went through quite a bunch today!

Thom, my fellow intern in Recorded Sound, was offered a job at the Library, if you can believe it. It sounds like Gene, my boss, basically created a job for him so he could stay in DC until more permanent jobs open up in like April. This is only like an 8-month, temporary gig and it's a technician job (which therefore doesn't require a MLS) but I still can't believe that Gene was able (and wanted) to manufacture this job for Thom. Personally, I'm thrilled that I only have to work with Thom for three more days; the thought of working with him permanently frightens me. Thom has not completely decided whether he is going to take the job, though. There is a job he's been waiting for in Indiana. It also is a temporary job, though, and would be a 1-year placement. Must be so rough to have everything in life just handed to you...

Anyway, it was my last day with Gene since he's on vacation next week and although he didn't offer me a job, he hugged me and said if I ever needed anything from him like a reference and recommendation that he would definitely help out. He actually did say that if I found myself back in DC or Culpeper in need of a job, he would definitely love to help me out. Anyway, how nice of Gene! I really, really liked Gene. I even daresay I had a small crush on him. Small both because he's married and so it was therefore totally inappropriate and also because he's shorter than me. Heh.

So now there is only one more week at the Library. Next week among the activities planned are the tour of the Library dome, the going-away party and my other boss, Nancy, is going to take me to the National Museum of American History to talk to one of their librarians. I'm psyched about that!

August 4

Today was the big day with our big presentation/open house of all the "treasures" we interns have found this summer! It was a lot less stressful than I thought it would be since no one particularly important showed up. No Librarian, no Congresspeople, very little press. In fact, the only press people I'm aware of were this very cute young intern reporter from The Washington Post and one very old, not-taking-any-notes man from the Associated Press. Besides these two "outsiders," the rest of the people who came by were Library personnel. There was quite a turnout, though, with hundreds of people milling around and checking out the items over the course of two hours.

I've included some pictures to give everyone a feel of what it was like. Basically, it was like an open house with each division's interns revealing their finds. Thom, my fellow Recorded Sound intern, said he now knows what it feels like to work as a vendor at a conference. Luckily for me, Thom was more than willing to stay behind the table and answer questions and play DJ. He was very thrilled to play DJ, actually. We let people listen to our CDs if they want.

Overall, it was a fine time, although I was very annoyed to be grouped at the same table with the Motion Picture interns of MBRS. I realize we are all under the same division, but those two units represent 9 of the 21 total interns so why do we have to share a table? The two interns from the Copyright Office had a whole table to themselves, as did the three interns from Manuscripts and the three from Prints & Photographs. If any thought was put into the logistics of sticking 9 people behind one table... well, right, there was no thought put into it.

The cute Washington Post reporter wrote a story that made the front page of the Style section of the Post. It's here. (If you need an account to access the story, you can find one at BugMeNot.) He mentioned some of the more interesting finds - which includes one of our political, post-9/11 CDs, which I got him to listen to when he was at my table. Yes, I spent the whole time trying to get the cute reporter to talk to me. There were some really neat, apparently previously undiscovered manuscripts - one from Tom Wolfe when he was in college, one from Noel Coward... There were some photographs that were neat, including one of Henry Ford in an automobile race in Grosse Pointe, MI, in 1901, and some of the home video footage provided by the motion picture division was interesting, notably the footage of Michael Jordan playing basketball at age 13 and some clips of Marilyn Monroe. These last couple are mentioned in the article.

I'm glad it's all over because I was a little stressed about the whole event. The most popular questions were along the lines of "What's so special about this?" and the truth is, I don't know... we just needed to find stuff... But, I BS'd my way through it. Overall, it felt like a final project for a class... except now we still have to go back to class for a week.

This is a close-up of our Recorded Sound treasures. That's Thom in the back.


This is the whole MBRS table, with Recorded Sound on the right of the picture and Motion Picture on the left. That's Thom again behind the table and Nancy, one of my supervisors, on the far right.


This is an even better view of the space we were given... as you can see now that we were placed between the Motion Picture people (with an eye-catching TV) and the prints & photographs people (with an eye-catching TV). Here, we have an interested party listening to something with the headphones. Oh and that's the cute Washington Post reporter interviewing the Motion Picture people.


And, finally, here's the reporter (his name is Dan... he's from Buffalo) talking to Thom. Yes, I am a bit of a stalker. I did eventually butt my way into the conversation, too, and hey, he actually mentioned the item I showed him in the article so what do you know? Oh, by the way, all these pictures were taken at the very end of the day so that's why it doesn't look that crowded there. It wasn't anymore, but the event was officially over by this time.

August 3

Today was basically one of preparation for tomorrow's big presentation. Thom & I needed to get our items ready, meaning we needed to find good tracks for listening in case someone wanted to hear the CDs. We also needed to come up with good explanations for why we included something. We also needed to be able to describe the methodology we used in finding our "treasures." We also needed to somehow decide how to display everything, including having a boom box or stereo accessible for playing the CDs. So, it was just a matter of thoughtfully trying to describe things.

Also, we got emails telling us about a tour of the Library's dome planned for Monday morning. At first, I thought, hmm, okay, I thought we already saw the dome from the inside of the main reading room, but whatever. Well, a later email clarified that we would be going on the OUTSIDE of the dome. This is about the best picture I could find on Google to show how high the dome is. Here is another, from Yahoo, to give perspective - it's just as high as the Capitol dome, which is a much more well-known dome. In fact, I think they said on one of the tours that the Library's dome is actually just as high but the torch on the top was put on because the original statue that was designed for the top would have made it higher than the Capitol dome and of course, that's a no-no. So, anyway, apparently I'm going to be climbing up to the dome to see the sights. I am going to have some kickass pictures of the city after that! Let's just hope it doesn't rain.

August 2

Back to work. Today was kind of a busy day. I worked in cataloging for an hour in the morning. Then it was time for the Recorded Sound group party for us interns. Lots of breakfast foods (bagels, doughnuts, danishes, deviled eggs and yummy fruit) and, better yet, GIFTS! Yes, the department actually bought us gifts which was really unexpected and fantastic. We got a MBRS book, a Library of Congress pen and Library of Congress post-it notes. They are all pretty cool. You, too, can have a copy of the book as I found a PDF of the entire book.

After the party, our bosses Gene and Nancy met with us to talk about our big presentation of our "treasures" on Thursday. Gene gave us some tips about what to say and what to do. It's just me and Thom and Thom is a music know-it-all so I sort of feel superfluous. I know if I start talking, he'll just interrupt and cut me off anyway. I'm really not looking forward to this whole big event and it's being advertised like crazy. There are signs up everywhere; emails have been sent out to staff, announcements have been made and we were even on the front page of The Gazette (the Library's employee newsletter - and I'm guessing that link won't work but I figured I would try it anyway) last week, complete with picture. Besides the 4,000+ Library staff, press and Congresspeople are supposedly invited. I'm guessing not many Library employees are going to walk over to the Jefferson building to see our "treasures" but then again, it's kind of hard to read the people who work here - anything to get away from actually working seems to entice most so who knows. Don't forget, there are tunnels so it doesn't require much effort to walk over there. Also, there's a two-hour timeframe.

Besides that, we had a MBRS meeting, which happens monthly and primarily covers issues relating to the big move to the Culpeper facility next year. After the meeting, we walked over to the Adams building (which is actually even farther away and still probably only took 15 minutes so my theory that people won't walk to the Jefferson building is probably way wrong) to get some of the CD images scanned by some fancy-schmancy digital imaging machine for the Web site. I'll let you know when I find the site.

Anyway, when Thursday is over I'll be much relieved. And ready to go home as I'm not happy that the place I'm staying has roaches. This is not a new development; however, the one I saw tonight was about 4 times larger than any of the other ones I'd seen - and it was alive, while the others were already dead. Ick, ick.

July 29, 30, 31; August 1

I elongated my weekend by calling in sick Monday and not going to work. Yep, I’m a bad girl. Turns out I missed a tour of the Capitol in my sickness, which actually bums me out a little but oh well. I heard the tour was sort of abbreviated anyway.

My weekend, though, was great! My mom’s superior shopping/bargain hunting abilities brought me a new outfit for the wedding without me having to leave the comfort of their home. Also, I saw some friends, saw my nephew (see pictures below - Ben's first Web site), went to my college roommate’s wedding and reception, where I saw other friends, and finally just hung out with my parents. It was very nice! And the drives to Cleveland and back were not too difficult or traffic-filled at all.

July 28

What a day! First, we were surprised to find out that there was indeed going to be a SpecMat party for the interns at 10:00am. Mention of this had been made weeks ago but it had never been confirmed. So, I had RSVP’d that I would attend an intern-only session on “How Congress Works” – at the same time. Once I found out about the scheduling conflict, they agreed to move the party back an hour so that I could attend since they realized that they had forgotten to inform the interns that the party was even taking place. Miscommunication, how rare. I was really looking forward to the talk because I enjoy political science and I felt like I should go since they had asked us to RSVP about eight times. Normally, they just mention an event and don't ask for an RSVP.

So, the “How Congress Works” session was not your basic ‘How a bill becomes a law' kind of thing but rather sort of a historical perspective on how Congress has actually operated, complete with discussion of some of the better and more innovative Speakers of the House. It was pretty interesting, I thought. Our speaker was from CRS (Congressional Research Service), which is something I’m very interested in as a career path, so he described what they do a little bit (write nonpartisan reports for Congress).

The party was nice – all breakfast-type foods like croissants, muffins, fruit, danishes, etc…. I talked with a few people in that department who I hadn’t talked to before so that was nice. One of the catalogers informed me that the Library refuses to allow any political discussion during elections or really, any time at all. She told me how she went to a Jesse Jackson rally and put that down as her reason for taking time off of work and they told her to just put “personal reasons” and not be so specific. No one is allowed to wear buttons or show political preferences during election season, either. I guess this is all to avoid Congress finding out that someone has a differing viewpoint and refusing to fund programs because of it. Interesting when you think that Congress in general kind of exists because of the political interest of its citizens. As a side note, though, apparently the woman who sat in my cubicle before me was named Maggie Jackson – Jesse Jackson is her cousin.

Besides those two events of the day, the rest of the day was the same old thing. I woke up really early this morning (like 5:15am) to get to work as early as possible since I’m driving back to Cleveland this evening. Long day.

July 27

Thom & I attended this lecture on information architecture, taxonomy and controlled vocabulary. Heady stuff. The speaker was a woman named Denise Bedford. She works at Worldbank and basically described their attempts to build a satisfactory search engine for their users and mentioned some of her findings. I thought it was pretty interesting, although a lot of it went over my head. She talks about some pretty common sensical stuff that is typically overlooked. For instance, she wants her search engine to be able to include misspellings. She pointed out how search engines like Google will ask, "Did you mean..." and then if you click 'yes', well you've lost all the misspelled hits. It's not completely impossible that you can find some relevant information that has a misspelling. Anyway, things like that for 90 minutes is how it went. I was interested to hear about their success with Teragram, which is an information processing software package - basically it's the type of program that was looking to take my indexing/abstracting job away. It lost out to the much cheaper Indian labor force but it sounds like the software has advanced to a point where it is pretty successful and needs only minimal human supervision. Interesting... I'm sure Gale is all over that.

Beyond that, I processed CDs in the morning and tried to find "treasures" in the afternoon, same as usual.

July 26

Nothing much to report really. I listened to a wide variety of music while I diligently processed the CDs in the morning. I didn't keep track but some of the variety was Chet Baker, Three Doors Down, Destiny's Child, Bobby Darin, Shimmer and a rap compilation. I think there was more that seem to have slipped my mind. Umm, but nothing too exciting. Tran finished my tray of brief records and had no comments about mistakes, which makes me happy. I have a lot more brief records ahead of me. It seems that there are more and more of them… I really impressed myself with my diligence today. Doesn't take much to impress me, though…

We got word about an MBRS party for us. It will be some sort of breakfast gathering on August 2nd. Yay! Although I don't really like breakfast food… but you know, if I have a couple bagels I'm good to go for the day. The SpecMat party was supposed to be this Thursday but I haven’t heard anything more specific about that so maybe it’s been postponed (or, God forbid, cancelled!!).

Thom & I went to lunch together and on our way back to work, we ran into Frank Evina in the elevator. Frank is like our Fellowship Master, the man from the Copyright Office who basically organized the whole ‘Junior Fellows Summer Intern’ program. He showed us that he had in his hand the layout for the big press conference next week. Each division will get its own table apparently and the "treasures" we found will be laid out. The press (whatever press there might be - I'm not expecting a whole lot) will walk around and inquire about the given treasures. Simple enough. Gene (the MBRS boss) suggested Thom & I work together on a presentation to give the press. I figure Thom will be all over that - he loves to show off that he knows a lot about music and cataloging and library stuff. Or show off what he thinks he knows, at least. We'll see.

I asked Gene what the Motion Picture interns of MBRS were doing for their “treasures” since they hadn’t really been doing anything in that regard all summer. He said they were looking through copyrighted home videos… Yes, people have copyrighted home videos! But, he said they found some footage of Marilyn Monroe attending some party and also some home footage of jazz singer Nina Simone. How cool is that? I would so much rather be looking at people’s bad video footage than listening to their bad songs. But I guess I should really stop being bitter that I was chosen for Recorded Sound and not Motion Pictures since my time left here is almost in the single digits. Anyway, Frank said there were fascinating discoveries in all the divisions. Again, we'll see.

Oh, and an interesting tidbit: I needed to mail something and I was going to use a LOC envelope, thinking it would be funny to send something in the mail from them... Right on the envelopes, it says "For Library use only, $300 fine for private use." I've never seen such a punishment listed before - people steal office supplies from their work all the time! Needless to say, I just used an envelope brought from home.

July 25

I figured it was going to be a bad day when I missed the bus. I came outside like one minute too late and the bus drove right past me. I had to wait 20 minutes for the next one. Then, we ran into so much traffic on the way to the Metro station that it further delayed my getting to work. THEN, the next Metro wasn't arriving for like 7 minutes, which is ridiculous for rush hour. I finally got to work about an hour later than I had intended when I woke up in the morning. Not fun.

But, back to CD processing in the morning... I was hoping that would be okay because it was what I planned to do anyway (I prefer to divide my days) but I chatted with Gene in the morning and he said it was fine to do that. Thom never came upstairs, though. He "treasure" hunted all day. Ali, the little bugger, had left me some of her CDs to finish, which actually was fine, but of course they were briefs so a little more difficult. I've been doing a lot of briefs lately, which just isn't as fun as the others. I'm getting the hang of them, though, and Tran is back full-time so there isn't any question about who will look over my work. In fact, Tran took my nearly full tray of brief records to look over and I didn't hear back from her about any mistakes yet so I think I'm good to go. She doesn't care as much as temporary trainer Gina did - which is good or bad, depending on how you look at it. Personally, I'm glad I don't have to mark all the contemporary Christian CDs as "gospel" like Gina suggested because that just seems wrong. She looks at them as all the same but I feel like there is a difference. There is no category for contemporary Christian, which is ridiculous because at least 1/3 of all the CDs we process fall into that category. Of course, what do I know?

After lunch, I ran into Ali - who did not go home yet! She was supposed to fly out last night but apparently changed her flight and decided to hang out at the Library to rub it in all of our faces that she is still here but not working.

Anyway, in the afternoon, I tried to find more "treasures" and didn't really find anything today. I sifted through a couple more boxes and found some possibilities so I'll listen to them as the days go on.

July 23 & 24

Another weekend gone and now there are only two more left before my internship ends! My parents & I did our usual family thing - drove around, went to eat and went shopping. We hit pretty much all areas of the DC area, checked out the monuments at night, drove through Georgetown, went to Ikea in College Park, visited Old Town Alexandria, and went to about six (at least) shopping areas. Fun!

July 22

Pretty much today was the same as yesterday in that we (Thom & I) just went through a bunch of the CD-Rs to try to find some treasures. I found some Bruce Springsteen song that had apparently only been available on the Internet. Also, I found this neat recording from a science teacher who uses popular songs and changes the lyrics to teach about science. For instance, he uses the melody from YMCA to teach about S-K-I-N. It was cute. And, apparently it works, so says his Web site. There's a bunch of post-9/11 patriotic recordings that I listened to also. There's a LOT of crap too. I mean, it's like any loser out there who wants to make a CD does so and then sends it to the Copyright office. Talent not required. I will admit that I heard some okay bands, too, though. I mean, that Bruce Springsteen has some talent.

Anyway, I guess that is going to be our afternoon project from now on (all 15 more days!) but I plan on going back to cataloging Monday morning. I'm not sure about Thom, though. I heard him tell someone that he was going to be doing this for a week and a half. Oy. While doing nothing but listening to music may sound like a fun job, it gets boring fast. I mean, don't forget that most of this music SUCKS.

So, I spent some of the day slacking off with Ali (and without Ali) since it is her last day today. She promised me a tour and maybe a place to stay in Providence if I find myself there this fall (so if anyone's up for a road trip...)!! It's good that she is leaving because I went out to lunch with her a couple times this week and spent a fortune. Money isn't really an issue with her. The food was good, at least. We went to Tortilla Coast and Sonoma Restaurant and Wine Bar. Because of Ali's leaving I did get an early glimpse of the nonsense that is required when we leave this place. Lots of running around to get signatures. We aren't allowed to keep our stacks pass OR our ID, which bums me out. I mean, they both expire on August 12th so I don't see what the big deal would be if we wanted to keep them as souvenirs.

That's about all. My parents are due in this evening so I'll be hanging out with them all weekend. That saves me from having to come up with things to do just to get away from the apartment where I'm staying, which is basically what I do every weekend: try to spend as little time there as I can.

July 21

Okay this is going to be a long entry. It was kind of a busy day.

Well, I'd been moaning and groaning about getting a new project for weeks now and today was the day. Thom & I arrived at work at the same time and while we were standing in line to get our bags scanned and metal detected, he starts asking me if I heard what we are doing today, if I know where we are supposed to be. Umm, since I don’t call the bosses up in the morning before I get to work, I thought this was perhaps a trick question… Anyway, Thom had heard last night (after I left) that we were going to have a 2-day project ahead of us. We would be working downstairs in the MBRS reference room all day and not going up to cataloging at all. Which was fine with me… except it was the ONE day I had left stuff at my desk up there, including my leftover lunch, a book I was reading, snacks, a sweater (the building is SO cold, yes, I always have a sweater) and whatever else. I was kind of annoyed, just at the last-minuteness.

So, there is this stack of like 2000+ CD-Rs that Thom & I are going to be “treasure” hunting through. Apparently, we need to present a list of ten treasures that we’ve found during our time here to show to Dr. Billington, the Librarian of Congress, and to prepare for our big press conference on August 4th. Treasure hunting from Copyright deposited-material was supposed to be the main focus of our fellowships. The main problem with coming up with a list is that we haven’t really been treasure hunting. Hence, this sudden introduction of a new project that fits better with the guidelines of our fellowships. Ali was not really asked to participate in this new project, even though it’s only a 2-day one because she is leaving for good tomorrow. Which translates to: Cheri & Thom are working together on a project. Big fun, as you can imagine. I know I was thrilled.

The first step, in Thom’s eyes, was to sort all the CDs by genre. I wasn’t really clear on why this needed to be done, other than because Thom wanted to show off how much he knows about music. I guess the idea is to take a bunch of CDs from the genre that interests you so that you are better equipped to pull out “treasures.” All well and good, unless you barely can put music into different genres like me. I probably couldn’t recognize blues from jazz from folk to save my life. Plus, being CD-Rs, most don’t come with fancy inserts or anything and simply have an artist and song title written on them. Most music experts (like Thom) can’t even categorize something based solely on the name and title. Although Thom liked to think that it was no obstacle for him.

So, Thom decided we should sort so we sorted. Once we got some sorted, we took piles to our respective workstations and tried to listen to them and pick out “treasures.” I don’t know what constitutes good music… I mean, my favorite performer is Madonna and that’s more for the performer in her than her musical talent. So I was a little overwhelmed. Luckily, I soon realized that the music actually isn’t necessarily what makes something a “treasure” but it’s more its historical perspective or its uniqueness or what it says about society. That was sort of what I suspected and that was why I didn’t understand the sorting into piles. Gene backed me up on that. Thom wanted to listen for unique musical arrangements or something which is fine, I guess, but that is not the only thing that makes something a treasure. What I ended up doing was spending some time listening to the CDs but more time just looking these people up on the Web and trying to see if they have any unique stories or anything. I have a couple ideas from what I’ve found but hopefully I’ll find more tomorrow.

So we spent all day doing that, minus a break for a seminar entitled “How to Apply for a Federal Job.” It talked all about “structured interviewing” and how that is unique to government employment. Basically, a structured interview is one where the questions to be asked are prepared in advance and focus solely on job-related issues. One’s answers need to prove their experience. Specifically, an interviewee should use the “STAR” approach in which they should think of a Situation or Task where a problem was faced, then think of the Action took and then describe the Result of that action. I don’t know – I thought this was a pretty common way to present oneself in an interview and was not government job-specific. .

One of the favorite comments around here is “Only in the government…” as if things that occur here would never happen in the private sector. It irks me to no end, primarily because most of the people who make these statements have only worked in the government and so really have no clue as to how private businesses operate. As if HR staff in the private sector company prefer vague answers during interviews and are constantly asking interview questions that don’t relate to the job.

Also, it is not an ‘only in the government’ situation to not have any money to spend on projects. It is not an ‘only in the government’ situation to have to have to use your vacation days or lose them. It is not an ‘only in the government’ situation to have to work within a budget. It is not an ‘only in the government’ situation to hear one thing promised by management and then find that those promises aren’t kept. These are some of the annoying comments I've heard in the 7 weeks I've been here. Sure, there might be some extra paperwork and red tape but ultimately, government and non-government enterprises are really not all that different. Yeah, that's my rant.

Anyway, that was a nearly 2-hour presentation and about the most interesting thing I gleaned from it was the definition of a “slug line” which is a way to increase the number of people in your car so that you can use the HOV lanes on the freeway. However, I’m not a 20-year-old who has never held a job before and from what I heard, some of the Fellows who are in that boat found the talk pretty enlightening.

Next week, we have a talk on How Congress Works. Also, we were asked for our zip codes so that our Congresspeople can be invited to the big press conference on August 4th. I’d really like to meet mine from Ohio (Dennis Kucinich) so that’s the zip code I gave them. I hope he comes!! Our Senators were apparently invited also but I’m more meh about them. Voinovich is okay.

July 20

Another day of CD processing in the morning and record label researching in the afternoon. I worked primarily on making brief records because I don’t like doing them and I’ve put them off for a few days. So, yeah, they had piled up and I spent pretty much the whole morning doing them. I listened to such varied things as Neil Young, Silbermond, My Chemical Romance (although I borrowed that from Ali and not from the Library) and the Fahrenheit 9/11 Soundtrack. I tried to get most of my record label data finished because well, I’m sick of doing it and I keep thinking that one day soon we’ll just move on to a new project without notice and I won’t have things completed.

Anyway, I decided to leave a half hour early, too, to go to the National Zoo. I’ve been wanting to try to go and see the panda bears since I got here but the zoo was a huge bust. The female panda just had a baby and she and the baby are off view now anyway – this I knew. Apparently, the male is only viewable from 8am to 5pm, though – this I did not know until I got there after 5. Who knew the panda worked a set schedule? He must have negotiated a good contract when he arrived. Also, though, there was a sign that said he wasn’t outside today because of the heat. Well, if that’s the case, then I don’t imagine he comes out at all in the summer; it’s hot here every single day!! Despite not being able to see the panda, I still planned on checking out the rest of the zoo, but quite honestly, it’s like the worst zoo I’ve ever been to. I was really disappointed. They hardly have any animals and most of those that they do have are just your basic lions, tigers, kangaroos, wolves and orangutans. I mean, if I can identify the animal without having to read the sign, then you know it’s nothing special because I know nothing about animals. Plus, they have more signs pointing out trees (bamboo) and plants (poison ivy) than they have pointing out animals. If I wanted to see those sorts of things, I would go to the Botanical Garden. Also, they have a sign pointing out free roaming squirrels – as if they brought squirrels to the zoo! Squirrels are EVERYWHERE! In fact, I had one harassing me at lunch the other day right by the Library.

Regardless of its lameness and my disappointment, here are some photos of the highlights. There is a sloth bear, a giraffe and a tiger. Scary! Heh.

July 19

We had an early (9:30am) meeting with the Recorded Sound division and I was the only Recorded Sound Fellow who made it to the meeting. The other two barely get to work by that time, whereas I'm usually there at about 8:15ish or so, depending on traffic and well, how many times I hit snooze. Regardless, I'm always at work by 9. We have a pretty flexible schedule, but we have to arrive sometime between 6:30am and 9:30am and although we are welcome to work more than 8 hours a day and earn credit time to use later, we have to be out of the building by 6:00pm. Anyway, turns out Thom never came in all day and Ali rolled in around 11:30. Umm, yeah, I didn't even ask.

Anyway, our CD-processing efforts were lauded at the meeting. We apparently are really helping out, which is good because I guess they get more and more CDs from the Copyright office each day and have only 5 people in SpecMat (the cataloging division) to process them. Gene, my boss, talked to me AGAIN about what else we are going to work on but he has no answers. We were told yesterday at the party that we will have the big press conference on August 4th and each department is supposed to present the top ten "treasures" that were discovered so the folks at MBRS (Motion Picture, Broadcasting & Recorded Sound) are starting to worry what the interns there will present… none of us are finding “treasures.” Between the Motion Picture and the Recorded Sound units, there are 9 Fellows… which means approximately half of the Fellows in the whole entire program (there are 21 total) will not be able to contribute anything at the press conference. Gene mentioned that there is a box of CDs that we might be able to go through and listen to and determine what kind of music is there and maybe make some findings. He said there are 2000 items in the box and that it’s a lot to go through in so short a time. I didn’t mention to Gene that soon there will be only Thom & I to go through all of it, too. Whatever they decide, I just wish they would make a decision already and give us another project!

Anyway, the day wasn’t all meetings. During the rest of the morning, I processed CDs per usual. I listened to some band called Off by One as well as The Notorious Cherry Bombs and the Irish Tenors. Tran, my trainer, came back from vacation, even though she told me she wasn’t due back until the 25th. I didn’t ask what happened… now I’m in a dilemma, though – Who do I give my work to when I finish it? Tran or Gina? I’ve almost finished another box of brief records and will have to have someone look them over. I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. In the afternoon, I researched In the Red Records, which isn’t complying with Copyright depositing. Fun stuff.

We got an announcement that our presence is desired for a seminar on “How Congress works” (or doesn’t work, heh heh) next week so I am eager to go. I mean, I know the whole ‘how a bill becomes a law’ process but I don’t mind hearing it again from the Library’s point of view. Plus, who knows? Maybe actual Congresspeople will be there to explain it!

You know, I’m basically ruined for CD listening now. I noticed after work that as I put my own David Bowie CD into my CD player, I caught myself looking at the label and noticing the CD number and the label name. I would never have done that two months ago!! I guess it’s no different than remembering the numbers that we used to identify the videos at our video store for YEARS afterward. I still can recite the numbers tied to some videos (320: Return of the Jedi). Also, after I started indexing, I couldn’t read ANYTHING without automatically trying to add indexes to it. I’ve pretty much lost that habit.

Other than that, my watch apparently died, which sucks since I rely on it a lot now that I’m working full-time. I took it to get a new battery but I guess there is something wrong beyond that and a new battery won’t help get it running. Damn! I guess I’ll have to just go back to using my cell phone as a timepiece. Anyway, if anyone comes to D.C. and wonders where to go to avoid the crowds, I now have the answer: Landmark Mall. It’s not that far from my house and it was deserted. I couldn’t believe it. Some Greek guy decided to hit on me and gave me his card and everything, but I guess there were pretty slim pickings for him, what with the mall being so dead!

July 18 pictures

I know no one cares or doubted me but here I present pictorial proof of the copyright PARTY. See the cake (yummy) and the cake being cut (that's the Librarian of Congress himself, Dr. Billington, on the right) and there is me Vanna White-ing the anniversary banner. Yes, that is me actually in one of the rooms of the Library of Congress (wearing my ID badge, of course), although I know it's hard to tell what with Ali's blurry photo-taking.

July 18

Nothing too exciting for a Monday morning. CD processing and, while I’m working, CD listening. I listened to a variety of stuff today: The White Stripes, Heather Headley, Willie Nelson & friends, The Happytones, Paul Wright (again – I’ve listened to him a few times now) and Destiny’s Child. I didn’t really notice while I was listening but apparently Paul Wright is a Christian singer. Way to ruin my enjoyment, Google.

At 2pm, We had our big PARTY for the 135th anniversary of Copyright moving to the Library, which meant a cake and some punch. The cake was okay – the punch was better. Mainly it was an opportunity for us Jr. Fellows to get our pictures taken over and over and over and over again. Great fun. We also got to chit-chat with the students in the other divisions, which was interesting and which made me really sad, actually. I mean, their jobs seem so much more interesting than mine. Even listening to music gets boring when all you basically have to choose from is Christian rock and Spanish music. Sure, I know, I mention all kinds of other stuff I listen to but the vast majority of the stuff fits into those two other categories.

On a totally different topic, you guys might have noticed I finally learned how to post pictures and so some have been added to my blog. It’s not like it took all that much learning but it was more a matter of only having dial-up at my house and not having 3 hours to kill just to upload one picture. It finally occurred to me to just burn them to a CD and do it at work. (During my many allotted breaks, of course.) So far I have posted some of the trip to Baltimore on July 3rd and the fireworks on July 4th, as well as this weekend's trip to the Air & Space Museum. More to come.

July 16 & 17

Another weekend passed - only three more! My parents now claim they will be here next weekend. I'll be back in Cleveland the following weekend and then I'll be back in DC for one final weekend! Time flies.

I had a pretty tame weekend trying to knock a couple items off my 'To Do' list. I visited Eastern Market, which is like a flea market, farmer's market, arts & crafts fair thing. It was okay. I was primarily looking for jewelry and they had some really beautiful stuff. It was SO hot, though. Unbearably hot and humid. It ended up storming most of the afternoon after I left there. I spent a lot of time at the National Air & Space Museum, which I enjoyed. Other than that, I stayed at home and just vegged out, watching movies. I don't have to be on the go sight-seeing all the time, do I?

Here are some pictures of my trip to the Air & Space Museum. I enjoyed the 'space' part of it a lot more than the 'air' of it (although, yes, you must get in the air to get into space, I do know that much about aviation). The first is the Hubble telescope that was used for testing here on land... the second is an actual lunar module designed for the Apollo missions to the moon and the third is the Spirit of St. Louis, the plane Charles Lindbergh used to fly across the Atlantic.

July 15

Just as I suspected, I spent all morning fixing my brief records after Gina (trainer #2) went through them. My primary mistakes were with the 511 field, which is the ‘Participant or Performer Note.’ I was told by Tran (trainer #1) to get the information off of the CD first and foremost. If there is no artist/performer information there, then go to the back of the CD case. The last resort was to read the inserted booklet. So, many times, I never even opened the little booklet that comes with the CDs since most of you know that the CD usually lists the artist's name. HOWEVER, according to Gina, I should be examining all the information provided in the booklet. I had to add all this extra information like band member names, instruments played, additional and accompanying musicians. Yeah, it kind of sucks. It really did take me about the four hours to go back through all of the 50 brief records that Gina had looked at and to correct my mistakes. I also have to add diacritics to all the Spanish-language stuff. Adding diacritics is a total pain in the ass.

At lunchtime, I went out to eat with Ali, a fellow Recorded Sound Fellow, and she told me a secret: that next week is her last week. She’s known from the beginning that she was only going to be working for 7 weeks because of a big trip to South Africa planned with her family. No one knows – well, except for me now and also for close family friend Dr. James Billington. Yes, that is the same Dr. Billington who is Librarian of Congress. So… I guess that officially answered my question as to how Ali got selected for the program. I had already known that her father had raised some hell, pulled some strings, etc… but I just hadn’t realized the extent to which he had connections. Apparently, Ali’s Dad and Dr. Billington are in the same “men’s club.” I didn’t even ask what that entailed. Anyway, getting over the general bitterness I have for people of privilege, I am actually pretty jealous that she’s leaving. I kind of feel like I’ve gotten all I can out of this experience in the six weeks I’ve been here and wish I could just get out.

In the afternoon, I worked on creating a database from the catalog of non-compliant Estrus Records. At the end of the day, we got an email inviting us to a party for the 135th anniversary of the Copyright Office’s infusion with the Library (woo hoo!) and also for our halfway point. It’s a joint party for those two reasons. Whatever. Like I’m going to complain about a party – regardless of the lame reason they are having it! I hope there is cake because I’ve been totally craving cake ever since I didn’t have any on my birthday.

Oh, which reminds me, Happy Birthday to Brian!

July 14

In the morning, I processed CDs and listened to some Jesse Malin, The Thrills, Henry Mancini and Gob. Interesting variety. I kind of liked Gob. Right as it was time to leave cataloging and just as I suspected, my temporary trainer, Gina, finished going through my tray of brief records… umm, let’s just say that I am going to be spending all of tomorrow fixing things. Oops. She kept saying that it wasn’t my fault, that Tran (my regular trainer) doesn’t know how to properly do things and that she wasn’t trained well and that it frustrates her. She says she was worried for me when she found out that Tran was going to train me and she says she has checked Tran’s work before and knows she doesn’t do things correctly. Great. It still makes me feel like a loser, having so many things wrong. I haven’t even looked at all the mistakes I have supposedly made (that’s for tomorrow morning) but Gina says that most of them are just repetitive ones of things that I was apparently not told. She also told me that once Tran gets back and has questions about how I’m doing things now, to just send Tran to her. Yeah, that will be fun. Let me get in the middle of office cat-fighting. Fun!

Totally randomly, this supervisor lady Linda, who is not really our direct supervisor but is a supervisor in the cataloging department so I imagine we work for her in some way, brought me these brochures for next week’s Montana week. I mean, it doesn’t officially have that designation but there is someone coming to talk about the “high, wide and handsome” state of Montana (handsome?) on Thursday and there is a concert of Montanan cowboy songs and poetry on Wednesday. So I guess I look like someone who would enjoy this sort of thing since there are all sorts of events on a daily basis at the Library and I’ve never been hand-delivered any of the brochures before. Like I would ever waste my time with anything Montanan!

Later, this same woman cornered us after the MBRS Goals Group meeting, asked how things were going, gave us her history and asked about things we might want to do while we are here. I mentioned I'd like to meet with someone from the Congressional Research Service and she thinks she might be able to pull that off. I would be super psyched to do that!

The MBRS Goals Group meeting was at 3pm and semi-interesting, just like the Music Division one was earlier in the week. We talked about division priorities and the upcoming move to the Culpeper facility and what that means for the catalogers and the workflow, etc… One of the items on the agenda was “Junior Fellows” (us!) but we got skipped over in the interest of time. Bummer. But we were told that a party is planned for us in SpecMat on July 28. Party! I can’t wait! And, we will probably have another party from MBRS! Finally... the benefits of job-sharing. Anyway, there was a lot of discussion of how to catalog and store various formats (like CD-Roms, etc…). I have to say I was kind of amazed that the Library of Congress doesn’t have all the answers.

I'm also having Internet issues at home, which is preventing me from easily posting pictures to this site. The gal I'm living with FINALLY got her DSL working and I bought an adapter to make my desktop wireless and it worked great when I tried it at about midnight on Weds. Tonight, though, it didn't work at all. I couldn't connect. It's really frustrating. I hope I can figure it out before the weekend is over.

July 13

A quiet day – in fact, one of my coworkers even told me I was so quiet today. As if I am ever loud… Anyway, I processed some CDs, listened to some CDs (Smashing Pumpkins, The Cribs, Miles to Dayton and some Sixties songs compilation), and did some record label database-making in the afternoon. Same old. At lunch, I finished touring the National Museum of the American Indian, which I ran out of time perusing on Sunday afternoon. Luckily, it’s the museum that is closest to my work and therefore only a 10-15 minute walk.

My trainer, Tran, is on vacation until the 25th so I was given someone new (Gina) to look over my work. I have to say that I’m a little nervous about it because it’s pretty common knowledge around the office that Tran doesn’t know what she is doing and therefore, I probably don’t know what I’m doing either. Hopefully Gina will go easy on me. She seems nice, at least.

After work, I went to the AFI Silver theater in Silver Spring, MD, which boasts some sort of state-of-the-art technologies for film-viewing. Basically, I think it specializes in showing older titles on the big screen. They have a George Lucas series going on where all his movies are being shown. The series I went to is “Science in the Cinema,” in association with the National Institute of Health. They show movies with medical-related themes for free and then follow them with discussion about the affliction shown in the movie. I saw The Notebook and heard discussion about Alzheimer’s disease. It was pretty neat – and did I mention free? The pairing of those two words - movie and free - is one of the most wonderful things in the world! Anyway, I think I might go back. They are showing Something the Lord Made in a couple weeks and I’d really like to see that. A similar free movie series is taking place at the National Building Museum with movies about architecture being featured. I might partake in that also, although it’s not in a nice movie theater but in the museum’s great hall. It also is on Wednesdays.