Cover Letters!
Posted March 24, 2025 by Isabella Rodrigues
Hello everyone! This week I thought I would write about something I hate a lot: Cover letters. Cover letters can be what makes or breaks an application and personally I spend a lot of time perfecting and tweaking it for every job. It is annoying for many reasons, one of which is that new hiring trends use AI to scan cover letters and resumes (what is the point of writing one when a robot determines your value?) Also many organizations have an application portal where you have to input the information found in a cover letter and resume into separate sections anyway. Again I stress: what is the point? Pick one way for me to tell you I worked somewhere for however long and had these responsibilities. I’m sure I’m not alone when I say this current process takes a lot of time, way more than sending a quickly edited resume and letter. It drives me nuts. That being said, cover letters themselves are an art. An art I am not good at because I…
Diving Into The Archive
Posted March 20, 2025 by Emmy Mahoney
This semester, I have really been able to delve into the archives portion of the dual degree program, and I am having so much fun! I am currently taking two archives classes; the first class is called Introduction to Archival Theory and Practice, and the second is Archives, History and Collective Memory. In my introductory course, we have been exploring the fundamental principles of the archives, including original order and provenance. For this class, we are also paired with an institution for an archives internship. I just started mine at the beginning of March, at the Moses Brown School, in Providence, Rhode Island. This is my very first time working in an archives and it’s really cool to be applying what I have learned in class to this position. As I progress through this internship, I promise I will tell you all about it! In my second archives course, we have been contemplating how groups of people remember and the idea of a shared past. This class is so fascinating and has given me an…
Making The Most Of My Field Placement
Posted March 19, 2025 by Aurora Daniel
As mentioned previously, I’m taking LIS 438 – Introduction to Archival Theory and Practice. This course has two components: the typical readings and lectures that provide a crash course to archival appraisal, acquisition, and processing as well as a 60-hour long field experience. My winter break internship felt like a nice preview of what I would be learning in this course, and so far it’s been nice to flesh out some of theconcepts and challenges that came up in that project and to be able to actively learn from my mistakes. One of the surprising parts of this course has been the history of archival collecting and how archival collections have been organized. In undergrad I was immersed in the museum world and museum collections cataloging which, while there is some overlap between the two, is very different from how archives organize their collections. Additionally, the development of the two fields and their standards couldn’t be further from each other, with archives in some cases resembling libraries more in its developments whereas museums are a…
Commuting Has a Bad Rep
Posted March 8, 2025 by Emmy Mahoney
Commuting to school generally has a bad reputation. It can be time consuming and the Boston traffic is not great, but driving in is not as bad as it may seem. I live about an hour and fifteen minutes outside of the city, and I have found several ways to improve my drive into Boston. The first is listening to an audiobook. As graduate students with endless assigned readings, it can be hard to find the time to read for enjoyment. Using your commute to listen to an audiobook can solve this issue and improve the commute. I am currently listening to, and would highly recommend, Drew Afualo’s book Loud: Accept Nothing Less Than the Life You Deserve. Another way to improve your commute is to call your friends. Having a strong and supportive community is more important than ever. Taking the time to call your friends both makes your drive easier and puts a smile on their face. Finally, making a pump up playlist of all your favorite sing along songs is going to…
Welcome New Blogger – Emmy Mahoney
Posted March 6, 2025 by Lindsey Clarke
Emmy is our newest blogger! We are excited to have her as part of our blogging team! Here is a little about her: Emmy is currently in her second semester of the program and is loving it so far. Outside of the program, she works at a bakery, and is starting an archival internship for one of her classes this week. In her personal time, she likes to read, run, and hang out with her dogs. A fun fact about her is that she lived in Romania for a year, where she taught English to Romanian students. Welcome to Emmy!
Reader’s Advisory Recommendations:
Posted February 20, 2025 by Isabella Rodrigues
Hello, all! I hope everyone has gotten into a good groove for the semester. I am starting to realize I have way more homework than I thought I did and a bit of panic set in, but then I started planning and I got back on track again. Winter makes everyone and everything a little clogged. So in an effort to knock off those winter blues I have made a list of recommended books for both patrons and librarians! Put these titles on hold now! This gothic horror novel is a reworking of Carmilla and Dracula centering around a woman named Lenore stuck in a loveless marriage with her husband. One day she finds a strange woman who appears very ill during the day and yet completely alive at night. All the while the local village girls keep disappearing… If you’re like me, you were obsessed with Maggie Stiefvater’s The Raven Cycle series as a teen. This is the author’s first plunge into adult literature and I couldn’t be more excited. The year is 1942…
Digging Into Historical Theory
Posted February 20, 2025 by Aurora Daniel
If last semester was my dream Library Science course schedule, then this is my History one. I should start by explaining that I want to complete my dual degree as quickly as possible, just to save some money and to get into my career sooner, and I need to take summer courses to do that. However, as only Library Science courses are offered during the summer session, there had to be a semester where I took two History seminars to get this done. Since there were so many classes offered I was interested in, I made this that semester. I managed to decide on HIST 560: Seminar in the History of Women and Gender 1790-1920: Queer Histories and HIST 554: Behind the Veil: Simmons Black Oral History Project. Coming into grad school I had a lot of professional experience but lagged behind some of my peers in historical training. I was an art history major in undergrad, which I have no regrets about, as the program focused on working with primary sources, how to craft…
Experience in the Form of Volunteering
Posted February 10, 2025 by Erin Wood
The job market can be competitive, especially when you lack experience. It can feel impossible to get employers to even look at your resume, and it’s disheartening! However, volunteering with your local institutions can be an easy way to build up a resume and make connections. Most local libraries, archives, and historical societies are constantly looking for volunteers. Of course, we would all prefer to do paid work, but the perk of volunteering is that it allows you to get experience on your own time. I recently started volunteering at the Danvers Historical Society, where upon hearing I was an archives management student, they were thrilled to give me some of their backlog to work through and send over to the town archives. I go in a couple days a week on my days off from work and get to sort through a ton of interesting materials. Danvers, like most towns and cities in Massachusetts, has a rich history, and it’s fascinating to see how things have changed over the years. It’s also shed some…
Winter Break Shenanigans
Posted February 6, 2025 by Aurora Daniel
Ah to be back in classes! Before I get into what I’m up to this semester, I want to dedicate a blog post to my winter break shenanigans. Winter break is one of the few windows of time each year that my partner and I both have time off as he’s a middle school teacher and I’ve been in college most of our relationship. So we take advantage of that by typically going on a road trip south to Philadelphia or D.C. or a weekend getaway up to the White Mountains in New Hampshire. However, this year we decided to stay home and be tourists. Ice sculpture from Boston’s First Night celebrations A lot of that decision had to do with my own work schedule over winter break. I was one of the recipients of the Massachusetts State Historical Records Advisory Board (SHRAB)’s Archival Field Fellowship for 2025. Since I’m taking LIS-438 this semester I wanted to prioritize completing this over the break. That meant that as soon as I finished up my internship at…
Welcome Back!
Posted February 4, 2025 by Isabella Rodrigues
Welcome back everybody! To all returning students, I hope you had a restful winter break. To all new students, welcome to SLIS! I hope everyone had a good first week of classes on campus or online. To everyone who doesn’t know me I’m Bella, a second year SLIS student on the archives track! I currently work as a reading room assistant at the Schlesinger Library and as a cataloging intern at the Congregational Library. This is my final semester at Simmons, although it hasn’t hit me yet. I am both excited for the future and a little sad to be leaving Simmons and all the wonderful people who have helped me find my footing on my educational and career path. But, I still have a whole semester ahead before I can get nostalgic! This semester more than ever is going to be a balancing act between multiple jobs, a full class schedule, and the ever pressing post-graduate job hunt. I know a lot of my fellow SLIS students will be doing the same and I…