...Celeste Dube, and I'm on my second year of my undergraduate degree in English and Professional Writing, in the Book Stream. My overall interest in my studies is to focus on the editing and production process in literature, and work towards being involved in publishing books, likely focusing either on stylistic or structural editing. To help get experience towards these ends, I've been volunteering with the York U-based literature and arts journal Existere for the past year and a half in several different capacities. I've also started a blog of my own to make my attempt at being involved (ish) in social media, but the jury's still out on how that's going.
In research, with the overwhelming amount of information at our fingertips on a daily basis, I would like to learn effective ways of searching out information I actually want from it all, and I would like to learn more concrete methods of determining which sources are actually reliable and appropriate for any given use. In a nutshell, whether it's my own writing or if I am responsible for someone else's, I want to be confident that the information contained in it is truly as credible as it should be.
I've never heard of Zotero, but (if I'm thinking of the right program) I've used RefWorks several times over the last couple of years, and have a small working knowledge of it, and remember it being pretty useful in the process of sorting scholarly articles for essays whenever I could find an article online in York U's databases.
Largely, my research experience for school-related inquiries has all been conducted through links to online databases through the Scott Library system or book searches in person. On personal matters (for writing, or plain old curiosity's sake), my research has been Google searches, relying largely on hits from Wikipedia (I know, I know - shame on me), as well as The Globe and Mail, CBC, CTV and BBC site updates and archives. Lately as well, whenever there's a broad topic I want to learn about, I've started streaming documentaries whenever I come across one from a reputable-sounding source (though again, I'd like to narrow down the definition of "reputable" over the course of this semester).
When it comes to podcasting, I have even less experience with it than I do blogging, which is to say I have no experience whatsoever, not in hearing about them, not in listening to them, and needless to say not in making one myself. As for the prospect of making one, I'm not necessarily intimidated, but I couldn't say I'm excited to do it either; I know nothing about recording or sound editing, my recorded voice is awful (I sound like I have a permanent cold), and I've never enjoyed having to do presentations, always preferring being creative on paper rather than out loud. From the description in class though, it basically sounds like a radio show, just put in the online format, so it seems interesting. And as a further silver lining, recording and posting it means no in-person presentation jitters (aside from the in-class pitch), so all in all... I'm tentatively optimistic about how this'll turn out.
Last but not least, after looking at the list of podcast-emulation possibilities, I'm most interested in doing Spark, Everyday Einstein or Stuff You Missed in History Class. I love the idea of dissecting an innovation or historical event and taking a look at what it meant, means or will mean in the scope of society as a whole. Writing has me addicted to getting to tell a good story, and I feel like with any of these three topics, the mix of narrative and social relevancy could allow for a really interesting finished product.
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