Back to School!
Posted September 9, 2025 by Emmy Mahoney
Hello, everyone! This semester, I am starting the second year of my graduate school program, and I am very excited to jump back into learning. Having survived a full year, I have some tips for students entering their first year of graduate school. In terms of keeping up with assignments, one of the best pieces of advice I can offer is to find a calendar system that works for you. This could be a planner, a monthly calendar, a digital calendar, or something else entirely. My preferred calendar system is to create a large poster of the semester, which outlines all of my assignments and their due dates. This helps me to visualize the semester as a whole and make long term plans for completing school work. Furthermore, I hang this poster by my desk, so I am consistently reminded of what I need to accomplish. My next piece of advice is to schedule a recurring time in which you do not complete any school work. This could be at a certain time every day,…
Now for the rest of my summer!
Posted September 3, 2025 by Aurora Daniel
First, I continued working at the Simmons University library part time on Mondays and Tuesdays. Since we had a lot of student workers graduate this spring for the first month of the break I was one of the few workers trained on all of our tasks. This meant that I was busy my entire shift sorting mail, processing interlibrary loans, updating book catalog records, and responding to reference chats, emails, and phone calls. Since I like to stay busy this was perfect for me. Once the new student workers were trained on our tasks I transitioned to some of our longer term projects like collections inventory, updating book labels, and spent more time on collections cataloging. Inventory in the Beatley Library stacks Additionally, all throughout the summer I was coaching Ultimate Frisbee. The Spring session ended mid-June, so I said goodbye to all of my elementary school players as they don’t have practices during the summer. I brought popsicles for the last day and I was swarmed by players. They gobbled them right up and…
Summer in Rewind Part I
Posted August 28, 2025 by Aurora Daniel
This summer has been packed! As the last summer break of my time at Simmons, I felt that it was important to squeeze as much work experience as possible while also maximizing my VA education benefits by taking summer classes. On top of this, I needed to have surgery at the end of the summer to repair my left hip labrum that would prevent me from having an internship this fall, so I felt it was all the more pressing to maximize my time. Since I did so much this re-cap will be split into two blog posts: the first focused on my summer courses and the second on my work experience. Summer courses at SLIS are typically split into two 8-week sessions, although a select few are spread out over the entirety of the summer. In order to get my scholarships and VA education benefits to cover my classes I had to be enrolled “full-time,” which over the Summer session means 6 credits. I had to take two summer courses in the same session…
Summer Classes
Posted June 2, 2025 by Emmy Mahoney
Hello everyone! Even though the spring semester has ended, I have decided to continue my studies by enrolling in summer classes. Simmons offers a wide variety of courses each summer that students can choose from. I am currently enrolled in two classes for the first summer session, which runs from mid May to the beginning of July. The first class that I am enrolled in is LIS 439 Preservation Management. This class is an introduction to preserving physical items that information science professionals may encounter in libraries, archives, and museums. We have discussed many of the possible materials that these physical objects are made of, how they deteriorate, and how to preserve them for future generations. So far, the professor has covered different types of leather, film, and digital media. The course has a more scientific feel, which is exciting to get back into after years of studying the humanities! The second course that I am enrolled in is HIST 574 Seminar in Modern US History: The American West. This class discusses the exploration of…
Summer Reading
Posted May 16, 2025 by Emmy Mahoney
Hello everyone! One of the things that I struggle with the most during the school year is that I have less time to read for pleasure. Now that the spring semester is over and I have much more time, I plan on reducing the vast size of my reading list by a large chunk. The first book on my list is the romance novel, Funny Story, by Emily Henry. Several of my friends have repeatedly recommended this book to me, not only because it is a fun read, but also because the main character is a librarian. You know what they say: if the shoe fits! Looking to the opposite side of the genre spectrum, I am looking forward to exploring some horror novels. On my list, I have The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix and Maggie’s Grave by David Sodergren. I have also most recently added Stephen King’s The Long Walk in the hopes of reading the novel before the movie comes out this September. While I enjoy reading…
First Semester as LISSA President In the Books
Posted May 13, 2025 by Aurora Daniel
As I wrap up finals, my library shifts dwindle until my summer internship starts, and I attend my last meetings about student engagement, I find myself wanting to reflect on my most productive and busy semester at Simmons. Way back in January I was elected to be the Library and Information Science Student Association (LISSA for short) president at SLIS. LISSA serves as the umbrella organization for all student orgs at SLIS. As LISSA president in many ways I serve as the student body president of SLIS. I attend various meetings with SLIS faculty and administration, other centers at Simmons, and even the Simmons University Board of Trustees where I serve as the voice for the SLIS student experience. Additionally, LISSA itself is an organization so I plan and host events, create and send out the “This Week at SLIS” email newsletter, and oversee our Instagram. Some of the events LISSA has held this semester were selling SLIS t-shirts, a movie night for “Google and the World Brain,” a study break event in the Simmons…
Archives Internship
Posted April 30, 2025 by Emmy Mahoney
Hello everyone! As I mentioned in one of my previous blog posts, I have been working as an intern in an archives. The opportunity to complete this internship was granted through the course, Introduction to Archival Theory and Practice, for which we are required to complete sixty internship hours. Through this class, I was paired with the Moses Brown School, in Providence, Rhode Island. The project I have been working on is arranging and describing one of the institution’s former headmaster’s papers. Named L. Ralston Thomas, he was the headmaster from 1924 to 1955, making him the longest serving headmaster at the Moses Brown School. The collection also contains a wide range of records regarding his wife, Editha Thomas, a performer and musician, who eventually joined L. Ralston Thomas to work at the Moses Brown School. One of my favorite parts of working on this project has been getting acquainted with the archives. This internship was my first time working in the field and it has been such a wonderful learning experience. With the guidance…
Spring Days!
Posted April 28, 2025 by Isabella Rodrigues
Hi, everyone! I’m sure you all have felt the shift in the weather the past week. Congratulations, we have made it to spring finally! Remember to sign up for Student 9s to get discount Red Sox tickets! While the sun stays out longer, students across campus are gearing up for finals. I for one find my to-do list more than anxiety inducing. For both professors and students, this is a time of stress and it’s extremely important we all take care of ourselves while we finish the semester strong.
Events, Conferences, and Lectures, Oh My!
Posted April 25, 2025 by Aurora Daniel
April is a busy time at SLIS: It’s career month, there are professional conferences, and it’s a time for capstone presentations and other culminating events. Although I’m not graduating this year and thus not required to attend any of these things, I’m still going to get a sense of what they are like so I can be better prepared for them next year. Additionally, as the Library and Information Science Student Association (LISSA) president I want to be present as many things as I can on-campus to show my support for current students as well as to spread the word about opportunities for student engagement and leadership. I volunteered to speak at both the in-person and online Accepted Student Day events early on this month. As the LISSA president I wanted to make sure that potential incoming students were aware of the kind of clubs that we have and that they’re able to put a face to the person behind the weekly emails they’ll get if they start in the fall. It was wonderful to…
<LIS 488>
Posted April 17, 2025 by Emmy Mahoney
In order to complete the MLIS degree, we are required to take a course called Technology for Information Professionals. This class essentially teaches the fundamental principles of technology. At the beginning of the semester, I was really intimidated by this class. I had never considered myself well-versed in technology, so reading words like Python, HTML, and Cascading Style Sheets on the syllabus made me very nervous. Now, as we near the end of the semester, I can say that this class has boosted my confidence in technology. For our final project, we are making websites using HTML coding. We started this project at the beginning of the semester, and have been working on it for our weekly assignments. Through this project, I have learned that a lot of the coding process is trial and error, and that can be tedious. That being said, nothing is more satisfying than figuring out the right code and seeing the elements appear on your website exactly how you want them to look. In the early stages of the project,…