This space has been vacant for a long time. The past 4 years have been a wonderful and challenging experience in order to finish my PhD in Communication and Information from the University of Tennessee. I defended my dissertation on April 21 and turned in the final revisions a month later on May 22. The last semester was a whirlwind of data gathering, analysis, and writing. Coming up on three months later I’m beginning to feel a bit more comfortable with the outcome. In the final weeks of work I felt like there was no way anyone was going to take my work seriously. Now I’m starting to see some of my own contributions in a better light. The next step is publishing.
I searched for a job at the same time as I worked on my dissertation which made the last year fly by even faster. I finally ended up accepting a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Alberta. I’m working the digital initiatives team and the humanities computing faculty to evaluate the current usage of web archives at the university and suggest some future directions for research and support. The fellowship is supported by the Council on Library and Information Resources and the Digital Library Foundation.
I’ve only been in Edmonton since the start of July and so far the city and university have been great. The weather has been very mild. The sun is still up at 10 p.m. My colleagues are friendly. The next few weeks will be focused on setting some goals for the coming year and working to finish up some loose ends from UTK. I’m looking forward to the adventure.
