On the home stretch of IRLS 672

As we approach the home stretch of IRLS 672, I'm asked to reflect on where I was when I started and where I am now, and not just from a technical standpoint. Of course, the technical stuff is the obvious stuff at this point, but once this knowledge either gets used and becomes integrated - or heavens forbid - isn't used and is forgotten, what will remain of my 672 experience?

At this point, my guess is that one of the main things I have gained is confidence and comfort level in working with lower-level (read advanced) computer applications such as Command Line Interface (CLI) in a Linux environment and also with Apache, mySQL and PHP. I have a much better "feel" for how well-integrated the LAMP environment is for setting up a useful web server and feel more empowered to get under the hood if I need to make a change or to fix something that isn't working the way I would like. I certainly know that I am only making a beginning at understanding how all these programs work and there are a lot of situations where I won't have a clue about how or what to do, but still, I'll have some concept of what's going on behind the curtain.

I have certainly gained a lot of perspective from reading from the rest of the section. There are people from all over the country working in this area and lots of interesting projects that they have experience with. It's been great to hear their stories and to gain from their experiences in the realm of digital collections and with libraries in the digital age. This course has been a fantastic way to begin my DigIn program and I'm very much looking forward to the challenges and rewards in the semesters ahead.