help!

[Sarah Hood]

Dear Yoong Xu:

I'm pretty fresh out of library school myself (last May). I remember a
similar assignment during the Summer of 2002. I picked AUTOCAT. We not
only had to subscrive for a while, but we had to center our paper around
the archives of a particular week that was determined by our birthday.
My birthday is mid-late September, which meant I had to concentrate on
the archives of mid-late September of 2001. Needless to say, what went
on during that week was extremely atypical. A lot of emotion, even some
panic. (I remember a few postings where people were literally trying to
find out if this person or that person who apparently worked in the
towers was still alive - had anyone heard from them, etc. Apparently
many corporate librarians worked in the towers as well.) 

Anyway, to supplement my research - since a lot of what I was looking
at for that week was very atypical - I read up about the list and what
its mission is and the nature of what goes on. Go to the Web4Lib home
page and check it out. Check out the archives, too, as someone has
already suggested. 

I am a novice Webmaster at an academic library at a small private
college. This listserv has been very helpful to me because it centers
around library-webmasters and other library tech-people. I mostly lurk.
('Lurking' by the way is just basically hanging around on a list and
reading the postings.) I don't post all that much. If I need advice, I
post and ask. This is a great group of people and I've gotten some great
help and advice. I've been a subscriber to this list for a few months
and I haven't really seen any flaming. ('Flaming' is when someone
totally goes off on someone else and things can get pretty ugly.
Listservs are definitely not the place for that. I've been on lists
where that happens occassionally and it's not pleasant.) Great group of
folks here on this list. :-)  

Hope that helps. 

Good luck!
Sarah Hood

Sarah Hood
User Services Librarian/Webmaster
J. Drake Edens Library
Columbia College
(803) 786-3703
(803) 786-3570