I have just over a month until I take the big, comprehensive exam to get out of graduate school. Can I just admit that I am really, really nervous? I'm not nervous because I'm worried about writing essays or trying to develop coherent thoughts and possibly arguments. No, I'm nervous because I think* I'll be expected to name-drop authors/researchers and their related concepts or works.
I am TERRIBLE at remembering who developed or said what. I've never been good at that. Sure, I can remember a few names like Buckland, Kuhlthau, and Ranganathan. But I can't really tell you exactly their work! I can't even recall all of the 5 laws of library science or what they mean.
So that means I need to study! At least I know what I need to study (the who/concept thing), so that should make it a little easier. I already know that I need to review certain topics such as:
- What is information?
- How is it organized?
- How do people access and use it? (Information seeking, information retrieval, digital divide, etc.)
- Cataloging (Metadata, FRBR, WEMI, RDA, etc.)
- Copyright/intellectual property
- Five Laws of Library Science
- Legal issues in information science
- Collection development
- Social media
- Relevance
- Digitization/digital libraries
- Web 2.0 & Library 2.0
- Information literacy
- Ethics in information science
- Information technology
As I study, I will likely come across other topics I need to revisit. I've seen that previous exam orientations resulted in students setting up their own study groups and I hope my group does the same. It would be nice to have others' perspectives when studying.
I will probably be nervous until after I've taken the test. Then I'll be nervous until I get my result (pass or fail; no numerical score). Basically, my constant level of stress will stay with me until mid-April. Joy.
*From the orientation slides I've seen, it appears that the exam-takers will be asked to refer to specific concepts from "the literature" (which is confusing, because it's a closed-book exam and we are told that it is not a test of rote memorization, so how do we refer to literature??)
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