Almost all the boxes have been emptied and taken to the recycling center; most of our stuff is somewhat organized; the paint is dry. Whew, it's a lot of work to get settled in while starting a graduate program - I don't know where I got the idea that the first month or so would be fairly light?!? Thankfully my folks came down to help us put things together and shape up the yard.
Anyway Linden enjoys our neighborhood as she can ride her tricycle to the small lake in 5 minutes to feed the ducks. Although the pool is now closed, the playground offers lots of fun. We finally found a preschool f0r her - quite an ordeal as every place gets booked a year in advance. But it's really small (i.e. only 3 other kids) and Ms Latha and Ms Radica are wonderful. Linden's vocabulary has increased dramatically with their help.
I put a few photos of the house in the Flickr set. We decided to repurpose the master bedroom for a family workroom - basically a place to keep Linden's toys and games.
So I am 7 weeks into the doctoral program here at SILS - taking three courses (Statistics, Interactive Information Retrieval and the doctoral seminar a.k.a. baby docs). Learning a ton of totally new stuff.
I am working for Dr. Helen Tibbo on an Institutional Repository project for the Digital Library at Carolina. An IR is an online space devoted to collecting, preserving and providing access to the intellectual output of a university (faculty research, data sets, administrative records, university archival material). This basically falls into the area of digital archives - Helen and Dr. Cal Lee are two of the most prominent researchers in this field. So perhaps I will follow the digital curation path.
The IIR class focuses on the intersection of a systems-approach and a cognitive-approach to designing information retrieval tools. Much of the work in this area is conducted by TREC the Text REtrieval Conference. (One of my favorite things is that retired CIA folks typically participate as TREC relevance evaluators - how cool!)
The doctoral seminar is led by Dr. Gary Marchionini and there are about 12 other newbies in my cohort. They are from all over the place geographically and in terms of background. Research interests range from information visualization, bioinfomatics, hard-core information retrieval systems and information seeking behavior of various groups.
I have so enjoyed getting to know everyone here and spend hours everyday in the doctoral study room (working hard of course!) - there's a picture in the Flickr set of my little cubicle.
The campus here at UNC is absolutely gorgeous - mostly really old brick buildings with a very East Coast feel. The town of Chapel Hill is relatively small and the bus system is extensive and free so almost no one actually drives to campus (which is a good thing as there is very little parking).
I put up my new webpage: www.unc.edu/~rclemens and hope to be able to add lots under the "Research" section.
Better get busy finishing this stats take-home exam, sigh.
Anyway Linden enjoys our neighborhood as she can ride her tricycle to the small lake in 5 minutes to feed the ducks. Although the pool is now closed, the playground offers lots of fun. We finally found a preschool f0r her - quite an ordeal as every place gets booked a year in advance. But it's really small (i.e. only 3 other kids) and Ms Latha and Ms Radica are wonderful. Linden's vocabulary has increased dramatically with their help.
I put a few photos of the house in the Flickr set. We decided to repurpose the master bedroom for a family workroom - basically a place to keep Linden's toys and games.
So I am 7 weeks into the doctoral program here at SILS - taking three courses (Statistics, Interactive Information Retrieval and the doctoral seminar a.k.a. baby docs). Learning a ton of totally new stuff.
I am working for Dr. Helen Tibbo on an Institutional Repository project for the Digital Library at Carolina. An IR is an online space devoted to collecting, preserving and providing access to the intellectual output of a university (faculty research, data sets, administrative records, university archival material). This basically falls into the area of digital archives - Helen and Dr. Cal Lee are two of the most prominent researchers in this field. So perhaps I will follow the digital curation path.
The IIR class focuses on the intersection of a systems-approach and a cognitive-approach to designing information retrieval tools. Much of the work in this area is conducted by TREC the Text REtrieval Conference. (One of my favorite things is that retired CIA folks typically participate as TREC relevance evaluators - how cool!)
The doctoral seminar is led by Dr. Gary Marchionini and there are about 12 other newbies in my cohort. They are from all over the place geographically and in terms of background. Research interests range from information visualization, bioinfomatics, hard-core information retrieval systems and information seeking behavior of various groups.
I have so enjoyed getting to know everyone here and spend hours everyday in the doctoral study room (working hard of course!) - there's a picture in the Flickr set of my little cubicle.
The campus here at UNC is absolutely gorgeous - mostly really old brick buildings with a very East Coast feel. The town of Chapel Hill is relatively small and the bus system is extensive and free so almost no one actually drives to campus (which is a good thing as there is very little parking).
I put up my new webpage: www.unc.edu/~rclemens and hope to be able to add lots under the "Research" section.
Better get busy finishing this stats take-home exam, sigh.
BTW: My new email is: rclemens@unc.edu
