  Hey. nbsp;  This blog here is being started by a group of fledgeling librarians in the LEEP program at the University of Illinois. nbsp; nbsp;  LEEP is a long- distance education program for people who want to get their Masters in Library Science while continuing to live and work in their home towns,  which,  in some cases,  are as close to the University as Chicago,  and in other cases as far away as Hong Kong or Germany or London. nbsp;
 We take classes and interact w/ each other mostly on- line,  although we all have to be on campus once a semester.
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 Right now we're all on- campus in what's known here as " librarian boot- camp" a 10 day marathon session in which we learn how to do web design and learn about the main theoretical issues affecting our field and re- learn ( as many of us have been out of school for a while)  how to be graduate students.
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 We also socialize a lot,  and drink a lot of beer,
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and make good friendships,  and get really stressed out and exhausted and silly.
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 Personally,
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I've been working so hard I keep&
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having weird dreams about my classmates at night,  all night long.
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 The best weird dream I had so far was one in which a small number of us &
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 1.  broke into a bookstore 2.  then were suddenly back in one of the dorm room lounges together,  where we&
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all had on&
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costumes- the * best*  one of which was&
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worn by a female&
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classmate&
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the first initial of her name is " K,  b. t. w.
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 Heh.
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which was made completely out of six- inch long paperclips,  w/
a 2 foot- long one positioned straight across her chest.
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 &
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 In the dream we all laughed uprociously and ran around and jumped&
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from lounge chair to lounge chair,  capes and feathers flying behind us.
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 (
Yay geeky&
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librarian superheros!
 &
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 Anyway.
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 One of the things we have to do for class is to put together group projects about issues related to our profession.
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 Our professor gave us our topics a couple of days ago,  and then pointed to different parts of the room where we to go to if we wanted to be a part of that group.
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 i. e.  Those who wanted to work on " The Open Archives Initiative"  were to meet near the windows,  those who wanted to work on " Future of Funding for Libraries"  were to meet near the back of the room,  other groups were in other spaces and " Creative Commons and its driving forces"  were to meet near the door.
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 &
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 When&
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we were given the go- ahead we all went to the&
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group we wanted to join,  and a small bunch of us bolted as fast as we could to the " Creative Commons"  section,  as we'd read a book for class by Lawrence Lessig called * Free Culture*  which is about recent developments in copywrite law that are&
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threatening our culture's creativity and intellectual growth.
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 &
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 &
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 The first few postings on this blog come from the members of this small&
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group.
 &
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 My classmates and I&
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will probably&
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talk about these developments a more in future postings. we've created this Blog initially because we want to make something that we can register with Creative Commons and thus find out more about the process and implications involved in registering a creative project.
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 We also would like to,  as time goes on,
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document some of what we're learning about about this topic in general,  and create a fun,  readable record of what we're finding out- something that people outside of the LEEP community can access and hopefully find helpful as well.
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 &
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 We're not sure yet what,  if anything,  this blog will eventually turn into.
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We've been talking about how&
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after this particular project is over we'd &
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like to&
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invite the rest of our class to join the blog &
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as a place to continue talking publicly about library/
literacy/ information related issues in a fun,
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beyondtheintimidatingeyeofprofessors- type&
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way.
weird how posting something on the WWW feels somehow more private than posting it on one of our class bulletin boards)  . perhaps,  perhaps,  perhaps&
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we can add something to the field by rambling and musing together on line about these issues.
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 &
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 It would be cool if we could create something that laypeople might be interested in following as well,  as the issues we're dealing with as a class are ones which actually do affect everyone in our country,  even though not everyone is aware of how important these issues are.
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 &
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 &
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 The world needs geeky librarian superheroes.
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 &
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 It does,  damn it,  it does.
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