All posts tagged with library-science

I was privileged to attend and present at the Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) meeting. The theme for 2013 was “Virtual Communities for Biodiversity Science”, an apt theme for the global virtual Biodiversity Heritage Library. The venue was beautiful Florence, Italy and the weather was warm.

A blinking cursor on a blank screen. 137 million objects, 8.2 million digitized items, illustrations and photographs, artifacts and first editions, spanning 19 institutions, 9 research centers, and hundreds of years. Where to begin? It didn’t begin earlier this summer when I started working as the marketing intern at the BHL, and it didn’t begin earlier this year when I originally applied for the position. It probably didn’t even begin when I enrolled in the University of Washington’s master of library and information science iSchool. For the sake of argument, I’d say the beginning for me was when I was 6 years old and took my first trip to Washington, D.C.

My interest in the Smithsonian Institution, as an entity, began a long time ago when I was a young girl. I came to DC with my middle school to visit the National Museum of Natural History and since that trip, I was completely in love with museums and wanted to know how they operated–how all of those magical exhibits came to be, who was responsible for making that happen, and all of the different people who got to work together to make this large organization thrive.