Networking COMPOCON
When we were assigned to attend the first week of COMPOCON I was a bit hesitant about it because I had never attended a writing convention before or even knew what it was going to be about. I didn't know how helpful it would be. I just thought the COMPOCON sessions were going to be covering what I already knew. Although COMPOCON was more like a small convention of information for English students. The first COMPOCON event of 2015 was an all week event in which you went and explored all the different ways in which you can use the library to help answer questions, find information, and gain knowledge on your research topics. There were many sessions in which you could attend and all were based on different topics like Researching the Weird, Developing a Question, Ask the Librarian, and many other interesting sessions.
While there were various sessions, all I knew is that it was going to be a lot of information thrown my way. Which made me think it was going to be long and possibly boring That
wasn’t the case, it was informative and caught my attention. I learned many things that I didn’t know about what the library offered when it comes to researching. I learned that if I need help in doing research, finding sources on the school databases, or how to use the databases depending on what my focus is I could get help from the librarians. Not only was it informative it, was also very interesting we got to engage in the COMPOCON sessions and also view the different databases that could be found online. One of the many sessions that I attended was Ask The Librarian: Music. In this session I learned how to access databases available online for UTPA students to be able to get information on their research and also online music files they could listen to streaming online. The session was good because it was nice to see how you could integrate music on to your research. The Session was helpful for future reference in doing a research paper on music and also gave an idea of places places online you could look for information in music.
I believed the rest of the sessions at COMPOCON were going to be boring because the first session wasn’t as enjoyable. Mainly because I am not a big fan of classical music, but if classical music is your thing then this is the session for you. The UTPA music databases allows you to search up artist, songs, and information pertaining to those artist and thier songs only contained classical music. So for those that aren't particularly interested in music or developing research in music it won't be useful, but being there and learning about the databases and how they work was useful.
Later on that week I went to the “Researching The Weird”session instructed by Carl Nelson, a current Librarian at the University of Texas Pan American. I went to this session because it
had an interesting name. The name was mysterious and made you wonder the many types of things that could possibly be classified as weird. The wonder was a good thing it made your ideas start to flow and would be useful in this session. With our weird ideas and topics like comic books and witches, we were taught various ways in which you can research topics that are “out of the norm” or “non traditional academic subjects.” Take comic books for example you could incorporate it into researching writing proficiency or with anime you could research language acquisitions in anime. We also futher explored the databases and how they work, which will come in handy when writing research papers all you have to do is go to lib.utpa.edu and click on the articles and databases link. When using the database you need to be specific like if researching about witches and their religion you should type “Wiccans and Religion” to get better more accurate sources to assist in research.
The last COMPOCON session I got to attended was called Beyond the Books: Local Topics. Out of all the sessions i attended I thought this one was the most interesting. During the
sessions the librarian talked about the history of Edinburg. Some interesting facts that I learned were that the city was founded in 1908 and named Chapin which was something I didn't know before. I think the session was really interesting and would definitely get the attention of anyone because it was about how the city of Edinburg was first mapped out and the important people who had a great influence on agriculture in the RGV such as John Shary. It was a session that focused on research and used the culture of the valley as an example. They also talked about art in the valley and displayed art pieces that artist from the valley had done and also some of the books that a UTPA professor had written about the culture of the valley.
COMPOCON surprised me and I really enjoyed the few sessions I got to attend. As a college student, time is never really on your side because there is always something happening classes or homework or something for that matter. But taking the time to attend the sessions was worth it and I really recommend to all english students. It will benefit you tremendously with your research process, developing questions, collecting sources, or finding areas to study when writing research papers. Not only will it help with just research it will also allow you to be more familiarized with the library and all it has to offer besides a place for collecting sources.You also may learn a thing or two that you never knew about that will help you improve what you already do in writing.
