My SRP: considering a topic

Thanks to Carly and Siera, it looks like I'll be completing a Senior Research Project along with the class of 2015.  It's fitting I suppose, since I started working on our Research Curriculum with this class way, way back in Biology and Health classes their freshman year.  I'm excited to select my topic!

This is Avol's.  It's in a different space than when
I worked there, and now it's merged with a great
feminist bookstore called A Room of One's Own.

On Friday, Carly asked me why I enjoy this so much.  Why do I love research projects, teaching students to conduct research, locating information, etc.?  Then Siera asked if I dreamed of being a Librarian when I was a kid.  That got a laugh from the class, but it's really an excellent question.  In some ways my life has been heading in this direction for a long, long time.  My dad is an information hound.  He reads widely and deeply on a crazy range of subjects.  He seeks out obscure references and sources.  He remembers everything.  Some of that must have rubbed off on me.  Not to mention the fact that I spent countless hours at the public library doing homework and projects with friends when I was a kid.  I loved it there.  There were these purple chairs that would spin around and around, and we all knew the strange section of the library where there were books on subliminal messages in advertisements, and it was so cool to request some old archived magazine article and have the Librarian slip into the back and reappear with it in his hand.  The best job I ever had (until now!) was at Avol's Bookstore in Madison, Wisconsin.  It's a great, academic used bookstore in a college town, so the customers were professors, grad student, and sometimes famous musician s or writers.  I sold books to Shel Silverstein, Henry Rollins, and Rob Zombie more than once.  People would come in looking for a book or a topic, and I would lead them around the store to check various sections like mysticism, political history, books on books (one of my favorites), literature in translation, engineering.  You name it, we had a section on it.  I cannot tell you how satisfying it was to finally find that one, special book that someone had been looking for over months and years.  Or to lead someone to a section where they would browse for an hour and then emerge with a handful of worn, dog-eared, sweet smelling paperbacks to take home.  I mean, come on!  It's a great moment when that happens, and I guess I just like being there for all of those great moments.

So, I take pleasure in helping you find what you need, what you love, what you've been looking for without knowing it.  That's my story, and that's what I'm going to try to study during the SRP.

My first thought was that I'd study something about art and information, specifically that way art can be used to manipulate information, to spread mis- or disinformation.
Then I thought I'd go back to my old Foundations of Information course and dig up some Marshall McLuhan, the father of Information Studies.  Have you ever heard the phrase "the medium is the message"?  That's McLuhan, and I might want to ask some questions about his work, though I'm not there yet.
Then I thought I would consider libraries and access to information.  What is the nature of libraries? How are they essential to our civilization?  But that seems obvious.

There is something on the tip of my tongue.  Something about McLuhan and libraries and that feeling people get when they zero in on an answer.  I have to do some more thinking, but I will say I am SUPER happy that I was challenged to do this.  It's going to be great.

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Oh, and in case you were wondering, it looks like Mr. Buxman is going to be my research advisor, along with Siera as a secondary advisor.  God help me.