Main Content
Introduction
This Web site represents the culminating project for my work at San José State University, for a masters in library and information science.
I chose a Web site for my portfolio because of its familiarity and control. I enjoy Web design, and have been constructing basic sites for my own use for several years. Using what I learned in 240 (Information Technology Tools and Applications) and 251 (Interface Design for Information Services), and what I have learned on my own, I knew I could put together a functional and presentable site fairly quickly. The alternative option was to build a portfolio using the Angel platform, which is an interface I am not familiar with, and which produces a result I find unattractive. Instead of trying to learn Angel and learn how to modify its product, I decided to use something I'm already familiar with, and which allows me complete control over the finished product.
Presentation is an important part of information. The layout and design of a page can have a big impact on how the content is received. My intent with the ePortfolio site is to make the content the focus of the pages, and to make the navigation clear and easy to find, but unobtrusive. I decided that a simple bulleted list along the side of each page would work best. I set the navigation to not scroll, so that it would always be available to the user no matter where they were on the page. I located the evidentiary items at the end of each page, after the body of the page. Where the evidentiary items are something other than a Web page, I labeled the item with the appropriate format, so that the user knows when they might be dealing with a download.
The first step I took in writing the competency statements was to go through the list of competencies and match them up with the classes that might have met the requirements. My later classes listed which competencies the class met on the greensheet, but my earlier classes had not. For those classes, I read over the class descriptions to figure out which competencies they would meet. After I had matched each competency with likely classes, I pulled coursework that I thought I might be able to use as evidence.
When I sat down to write the statements, I found I couldn't work systematically. For many of them, I had to start by capturing what was essentially a brainstorm of what the competency meant to me. Sometimes this would end up being the beginning of the essay, but it could end up being in the middle, or it might end up being rewritten entirely. I pulled from what I learned in my classes over the years, and also from my experiences over the last three years working as a substitute library clerk. A few of the statements required additional research, which I made note of at the end of those essays.
It often happened that once I was done with the statement, I would choose evidence other than the pieces I had originally identified as possibilities. It seemed that writing the statement would often change my understanding of the competency. After making the final selections, I wrote a paragraph or two describing the evidence and how it relates to the competency.
Working toward a degree, or any schooling, can easily becomes a process of putting one foot in front of the other. Doing this ePortfolio has given me a chance to reflect on the journey I took to get here, and to see how it might all fit together. It has also given me a chance to review some of the material from previous classes that I might have forgotten. I hope to put this knowledge to use in the future in whatever aspect of information science I end up pursuing.