Elizabeth Gasiorowski

For this weeks assignment I went to Answerland.org to speak to a librarian. The librarian I talked with was Beverly from Multnomah Country Library in Portland Oregon. Since I was a little timid about the process I decided to ask a pretty broad question. My question for Beverly was, “What are good keywords to use when trying to only get scholarly information on Betty Holberton?”

From there we talked about different ways to look up great information on Betty. This lead us to talk about EBSCO Host. The keywords suggested were Betty Holberton AND computer programming. These keywords gave two scholarly books. One being, “Female pioneer fostered practically in computer industry”, and the second book was, “History of software begins with the work of some brainy women”. These two sources seem to be very informational.

After those sources were found I asked Beverly for another source that would be beneficial she replied with Guides.library.oregonstate.edu.  From there we decided that the best tab out of the seven categories was computer science.

A very interesting fact Beverly gave me was that Betty Holberton’s full name is Frances Elizabeth “Betty” Holberton. After giving me the fact she gave me an educational website that was a biography of Betty’s life. the website was, ethw.org/betty_holberton.

After we finished talking about the resources I could use, she let me know of an amazing website called worldcat. I am very eager to get on this website to see what is out there on Betty.

Overall my experience with talking to a librarian was very enlightening. I even told my sister about answerland.org!

The person I am picking for my research project is Betty Holberton. Betty Holberton was a women who helped create different aspects of the computer system. From being one of the first six women to be a “computor” on a large scale, to helping the Navy create different codes, this women was miraculous.

Betty Holberton was from Philadelphia, PA. The culture from that side of the United States is not that astounding, but the culture difference from 1917 to now a pretty large gap. Back when Betty was contributing to the science world, it was very looked down upon to be doing so. A lot of people in that era did not understand why she would want to work with computers instead of getting married ad having babies. Understandably so due to the times, but at the same time a darker time in our history.

The technology Betty created, like I have said previously, were huge progressions for our society. She contributed to the United States first advanced computer switch board, as well as design first prototypes of our key boards. The color tan for our original key boards was actually picked out by M. Betty herself!

Betty unfortunately died in 2001 from heart failure. She lived from 1917 to 2001, and boy did she accomplish a lot in that time!

If Betty Holberton was still alive today, I would want to ask her about the journey she went on. I feel that it would be a scary place to feel inspiration in a time of women suppression in the scientific field. I would also want to ask her about how she felt getting hired, and if the amount of forward technology scared her, or excited her?

Hello Again!

Elizabeth here once more. This weeks assignment to make categories, pages, and organize our home screens to fit our personalities.

First when I opened this weeks assignment I was a bit overwhelmed. Like I said last week, myself and technology don’t always agree. So when I saw so many instructions for how to set up our page I was a bit intimidated. Thank heavens I took the time to sit down and look over it all before trying to do it, or I would be lost.

Once I started playing around with everything I realized it wasn’t going to be as bad as I thought it was going to be. After getting in the hand of it all, it was a breeze.

I really enjoyed this weeks assignment! Making my blog aesthetically pleasing was extremely fun.

Not much to say this week unfortunately.

Signing off week 2!

Elizabeth

This area will be designated for all work relating tot eh Cultural Research Project – due February 15, 2016.

This area is designated for work relating to the Financial Analysis – due March 16, 2016.

This area will be designated to the use of the Gender Lens assignment – due March 7, 2016.

Hi All!

This is my first time ever blogging. I would have to say, it is a bit intimidating and a little odd to be sitting here at my computer not knowing exactly what to say. I have a feeling that this is suppose to be formal, but I can almost not help but make it seem like I am talking to a friend.

Setting up my blog was pretty simple. I thought the instructions given to us were very direct and to the point. Thank you by the way for that. Sometimes with instructions I miss the important information or what I am actually suppose to be doing.

After setting up my blog, I started to work on my email signature. Boy was that a bit of a hassle! The instructions were perfect, but for some reason when I was trying to reply to the original email it wasn’t showing the signature I had just set up. So because of that, I had to send myself an email to make sure it was working. Then after I checked that off, I sent a reply email to see that it was all working exactly how I wanted it to. I am still a little skeptical if I did it correctly, but at this point if I messed it up, there is truly little to no hope for me.

This class has only been going on for less than a week and I already find myself learning so much more than I expected about my computer. First off, I had no idea that our computers could tag a website on the title when making discussion points. It honestly looks so sophisticated! Secondly, I am beyond grateful for the text-to-speech function for the internet. I will be honest, I played around between English accents and British accents for a good 5 minutes. I decided I would keep English for academic work, but make it a British accent when I have it read Buzzfeed news to me in the morning. It is so fun and creative!

I am extremely excited for all the other tips and tricks I am going to learn.

Signing off for week 1.

Elizabeth