October

October has been a month of transition for the past several years.

I moved into my first apartment in New Brunswick, NJ (my hometown) in 2001, shortly after the attacks of 9/11. 2003 saw me preparing for the MLIS program at Rutgers. Elizabeth and I moved from New Jersey to Seattle in 2005 so that I could study computational linguistics at the University of Washington. (I burned out on school very quickly and decided, after the Code4Lib 2006 conference, that I could in fact make a career in library technology.) We moved back to the New Jersey area in 2006 for my current position working on the digital library at Princeton.

It’s been a great year. My time at Princeton has been highly rewarding and we’ve taken full advantage of living closer to our family and friends.

October is also my favorite month of the year (even when the Yankees don’t win the World Series): the leaves turn pretty colors; the air takes on that early autumn crispness; and groves of apples are ripe for the picking on lazy weekend afternoons. And this October, we have yet more changes on the horizon. Elizabeth and I are moving to Arlington, VA and I’ll be starting at the Library of Congress on the 29th. I’ll be working with folks like Dan and Ed on the repository development program, which supports a number of projects including Chronicling America (National Digital Newspaper Program).

It will be difficult to say goodbye to folks around here, but it’s the right move for us at this time. Ah, October.