welcome to my website

I'm a librarian and archivist working on my first website! I started this site at the end of February and I'm learning as I go.

There's a long road ahead, but some of the most immediate things I want to do are:

• get my header logo up and looking nice
• make the boxes in the nav bar open on hover
• make a sitemap
• make a bookshelf
• make a postcard page

I have been working on a small laptop screen but this site is really best viewed on a large display greater than 1920 x 1080. Please don't try to view on your phone!

I learned the very basics of html/css in grad school on top of a small foundation from messing around with customizing tumblr themes in my early teens, but I was never that interested in building something of my own.

This time around, things feel different: this type of knowledge is finally obsolete as a marketable skill. The present moment feels like a struggle for possession of my own brain. As the institutions we structure our lives around uncritically embrace AI and all its consequences, from the psychological to the geological, it seems like all I can do besides complain is refuse to allow my brain to get smooth, try to get good at things knowing that some skills will never turn into money.

The more I work on this, the more it reveals itself to be a mirror of archival processing. Web design at this basic level is just a process of arrangement and description, structured around set hierarchies. I’m creating a readable map pointing to multiple series of organized & linked folders, legible to both humans and computers, following sets of rigid rules that, when combined, have limitless flexibility to describe things that are complex and unique. And the way those pieces can fit together is a creative pursuit, made of patterns but infinitely rearrangeable, like chess moves and word games, not jigsaw puzzles.

I’m feeling a little shy about making the comparison to my work because of the amateurish quality of my website – the bones, my thought process, the places where I’m learning are all made so visible. I’m so exposed!

But ultimately the throughline of my life & work is ignoring the artificial distinctions between disciplines, between the professional and the amateur. All the materials I've worked with are unique because they're human, whether they don't fit neatly into schemes and standards, or literally can't be contained in boxes.

So this fun thing I'm learning for myself is now my unprofessional professional website. I'm flexing my arrangement muscles, reminding myself that all my technical skills have their origins in my interesting interests, anyway.

I'm excited to see how I improve over time, laid out so clearly every time I refresh the page.