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Introduction

The oddest part of the portfolio exercise must be the requirement that we justify why each segment is significant. My positivistic tendencies ask: how does one prove significance? How is one not to fall back on paraphrasing the Supreme Court's definition of obscenity: "I know it when I see it."

So while it might be clear to me why each of these five experiences is significant, I shall try to explain.

My service with LITWG-the Library Council of Washington's Library and Information Technology Working Group-has given me the very significant experience of recommending what projects get funded and which ones do not. Sitting at a table discussing whether to fund our own faculty's grant proposals was a service to the people of the state who will be the beneficiaries of the grants and to the federal government from whose budget the monies comes. If one wishes to put a dollar amount on significance-on April 9th, I helped approved $351,000 in spending, and argued that more information and clearer explanations was needed in order to justify $300,000 more.

Leadership might be the most abstract concept of which to argue significance. Can I honestly claim that Technology Bootcamp would not have happened without my efforts? Obviously not. Am I to detail every whispered conversation outside of classrooms regarding what skills would or would not be taught by the faculty? Not if I want a degree. However, the totality of my experiences detailed in this portfolio should indicate to even the most casual reader how I have contributed to the iSchool community, and how the extent of this contribution can best be described as leadership.

My two year study of the technologies surrounding Geographic Information Systems-all undertaken outside the iSchool curriculum-has been perhaps the most pleasurable experience in recent memory. I have studied the organizing concepts of geo-spatial data, along with the methods used in their display, both as metaphor for bibliographic information and as an end unto themselves. GIS has held my attention like no other subject (save perhaps Science Studies), and at the end of this process I know just enough to appreciate how much more there is to learn in the field.

An indication of how much I have come to value GIS applications, and their relevance to our field, is that I felt compelled to share my experience with my peers. Taking a topic in which I could claim to be no more than a novice and attempting to teach it-even on an introductory level-was an experience that I would repeat in an instant (and indeed, am repeating in my current coursework). It is important that the perspectives of different technological paradigms and user groups be brought to Information Science, and I am proud to have brought this one to a few people in our community.

How to explain the significance of my intellectual arguments made over the course of these two years? Certainly I can point to the award and the publication, but I am more proud of the fact that as I have discussed issues of Science and Technology Studies with faculty, they have asked me for sources and have told that they too are struggling with the same issues and readings. Throughout my time here, I have continually tried to engage in the debate regarding what it is that we think we are doing. Is it a science? Is it a profession? Is it even possible to measure the effects of our work? To say for sure if one way of doing things is more effective than another? At this point I cannot say that any of us can know.

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