Hello!

My name is Shawnte and I'm in my second year of SJSU's MLIS program. I love the program so much, I'm really learning a lot. I got my BA in Art History, also from SJSU, so when I graduate I hope to find a job in a museum library. I've been keeping my eye out, and the last time I checked there were at least three at museums I would love to work at. One of them was at the Frick Collection in New York, which is small but probably one of the best museums in the country. Another one was the Guggenheim, also in New York. I think their collection is just okay but the building is pretty amazing. The last one was at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. The Getty does some really cool work, but I'm not sure if I want to live in LA. I like to visit, but all of my friends who live there currently or have lived there really hate it.

Currently, I live in Sunnyvale, California with my husband Nick, who works at an advertising agency. It's definitely not like Mad Men, but he's been able to do some really cool things and I hear that sometimes they get to drink in the office, so it's probably not so different. We live in an apartment, which means no furry pets, but we do have an aquarium. We have two fish: a pea puffer (Mr. Fugu) and a Paraguayan tetra (Cousin Larry). We also have two snails (Snail and Snail). Rapid Dave, our only snail who had a name, disappeared a while ago under mysterious circumstances. We think he died. Sunnyvale is pretty great, and I've learned some really interesting things from living here. It's home to: the first Pong machine, the world's largest can of fruit cocktail, a flock of wild parrots, and rumor has it that there was once a Batman-themed nightclub here that may or may not have been named The Batcave.

When I'm not doing school stuff, I work on campus in SJSU's Visual Resource Library. I've been there for a couple of years and it's pretty great. I pretty much get paid to read art books. I also "intern" at the San Jose Museum of Art. I'm more of a volunteer, but intern sounds more official, or so the museum people say. At the museum, I scan and prepare images of artwork from their permanent collection and put the images into a database that powers the museum's collections website. I'm actually learning a lot about museum operations and meeting some really cool people, so I feel like my time there is well spent.

This image at the top of this page was taken at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, while I was there for an assignment for another class. I saw this right when we walked in, it's a sign that cycles through some phrases that talk about the Exploratorium's mission and what you can do there, but this one really struck a chord with me. I stood in front of the sign until I could get a decent picture of this phrase, because I'm pretty sure it's how I approach everything I do.