Introductions

Hello everyone!

It was really great to meet everyone last week and hear about all your various backgrounds.  My name is Katherine Power and I’m a 1^st year MI Archives and Records Management student.  Before deciding to dive back into the world of academia, I was an Apprentice Aircraft Maintenance Engineer working on helicopters in Yellowknife, though I travelled around the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Alberta, and British Columbia quite a bit as part of my job.  (Yes, including the Arctic Circle.  24 hour daylight takes some getting used to!)

I often walked to work in the winter.  This was not the coldest day I experienced.

Prior to being a wrench wench, I got my BA with an honours in Anthropology from St. Mary’s University in Nova Scotia.  I spent 2 summers digging in the dirt at the Grand-Pré National Historic Site as well as one summer digging in the dirt on the Mongolian steppe.

We brought a pool table with us, because archaeologists have got their priorities sorted.

Prior to that, I got a Bachelor of Music from Mount Allison University in New Brunswick.  It made sense at the time.

I’m excited about this class because I’ve been fascinated by the history and evolution of books and the written word for years (in my copious amounts of spare time I enjoy practicing calligraphy) and I’m really interested in the various ways books continue to evolve.  Ebooks, audiobooks, graphic novels, interactive technologies, why sometimes holding a book is still preferable to reading a screen – if it has to do with how we interact with words, I’m interested.  As someone who owns both a tablet and a dedicated e-reader, I love having the ability to bring hundreds of books around with me at all times.  But despite moving across the country several times in the past few years, there are still boxes of books I refuse to give up and will ship to wherever I currently find myself.  And I don't think I'm alone in that.

I look forward to seeing you all in class!