Hey,
You can call me Oz. They/Them Please
I am a 32-year-old going on 33 this October and a resident of the city of Chicago.
I am completing my Master's in Library Informatics Sciences to become a Librarian with this class, and a class starting later this Spring will be my final semester at Dominican University.
I have two cats named Midnight, a black cat, Bob, a gray cat with no tail, and one dog named Cooper. My favorite color is yellow, and my favorite animals are cows, cats, and alligators. I enjoy painting and reading about cowboys (not the sports team) in my spare time.
I currently have two jobs, one in retail and the other as a part-time library clerk at a City of Chicago branch. I have worked in the public library field since the summer of 2019, starting as a page.
I aim to become a research librarian, as I love reading and listening to informative "essays" on various topics. Recently, the ones I find the most interesting are ones about social/cultural "norms" and how they got ingrained into societal structures. Such as beauty/fashion trends and gender identity/sexuality "taboos."
My experience with social media is that I use it as a tool to keep in contact with my friends and stay informed of current events in the world around me. I tend to reblog or comment on social media instead of posting my original "content." If I did post my own "content," it would most likely be pictures of my cats or some sort of art or activity I finished, such as completing a new Lego set.
Growing up in the early internet, I was repeatedly told not to give out my real name, and I still hold that ideal. Seeing others who post their full names and locations gives me a bit of unease. Still, there is nothing I can do about it, with more and more social media sites forcing users to use their "real" names to either make an account or get protection from stalking/harassment for being a marginalized identity.
Being a Millenial, I am smack dab in the middle of generations that picked up social media later on and generations who were born with it, and it's a weird dichotomy to see, especially when one "generation" is passing laws trying to regulate social media. It's more complicated than that, with issues of "freedom of speech" and content moderators not being compensated enough, along with AI spewing "data" at alarming speeds, making it difficult for social media users to find the real stuff. There is also the issue of censorship, with LGBTQIA+ (Queer) and human rights issues currently happening in the Middle East being erased from social media accounts. At the same time, conspiracy and other bigoted beliefs are allowed to spread like a virus hellbent on taking everything with them.
All of this concerns me as a librarian whose job is to help individuals find the information they are looking for and protect users' privacy within the library itself. I hope this class will give me the tools and information to share with my patrons to be an effective social media user in this age of misinformation and discourse.
Bob- Taken by Me 
Midnight- by Me
