Student Snippets A Window Into The Daily Life & Thoughts of SLIS Students

Tweeting NEA

Blake Spitz@bgspitz
At the mothership in Boston @simmonsgslis for #NEAfall12. Excited for a full day!
The event/conference of the week was the fall meeting of New England Archivists (NEA), hosted by none other than your very own Simmons College! Since I currently work in a library and not an archives I did not have the option of excusing myself for professional development and missed the workshops and banquet on Friday night. (Though I did go to Guy Fawkes Pub Night on Friday and drank Samuel Adams with Samuel Adams’ spirit in the Old State House!) But living in the dorms means that I rolled out of bed at 8 am and walked over to the academic campus where sessions started at 9. I tweeted the conference through my twitter handle (which until last night was simmonslazylibr now it’s puschartwarrior) so here is the day in tweets!
Stacie Parillo@stacieparillo
Every room I’ve been in seems really young. I wonder what the average age is of NEA attendees? #neafall12
Since Simmons hosted there was A LOT of Simmons grad students present, substantially bringing down the median age of the attendees but spending a day with my friends learning about cool things was awesome! (Wait, I do that every day at Simmons!)

Jessica Bennett@pushcartwarrior
Sitting on the floor at #neafall12 archival software session. Very well attended 
It was crowded but that made it all the more exciting. This meeting’s theme was “Proactive Archivists” and many of the sessions dealt with new innovations and technologies. People weren’t complaining about the crammed rooms though, they wanted to hear the speakers instead of going to another session so we sat on the stairs, the floors and lined up against the back wall.


Caitlin Birch@preserCAITion
“Stalking is your friend.” Pepare to network by researching the list of attendees before a professional event. #neafall12 #snapnea #1a
 There was a session on “Talking to Strangers” i.e. networking
S. Bennett@stephestellar
Brandeis uses Dropbox! To send objects but also to create a slideshow – clever #neafall12 
One on how to use Social Media and other free/cheap online tools.
Paige Roberts@paige_roberts
Abe Miller: Don’t just swim with the tide of erecords, become a hydraulic engineer. Work with records creators to control tide#neafall12 
Dealing with Electronic Records 
Melissa Gonzales@gonzoarchivist
Time can be a bigger obstacle than money.#SNAPnea #NEAfall12 
There’s lots of free stuff out there to utilize but time is a valuable resource too! You have to plan ahead to make sure you aren’t wasting time in unprofitable activities.
ENC Learning Commons@ENCLC

There’s a film short in this story somewhere. I mean- Converse floated down the street!#neafall12 
One of the most entertaining presentations IMHO was Sam Smallidge of the Converse Archives. Before Sam was hired the Converse Archives was basically a large storeroom of old shoes that ended up largely ruined in a flood. Sam now has the interesting job of trying to put back together a historical record by innovative means such as buying old negatives and shoes off Ebay!
Claudia Willett@_cfwillett
Smallidge: “No matter how big or small a collection is, there are always pictures of naked people.” #neafall12#thingsididntlearninschool 
Entertaining and informative – that was NEA, Simmons and the Archival profession for me. 
If you want to learn more about NEA or the NEA Fall Meeting visit their website athttp://newenglandarchivists.org/ or look at the hashtag #NeaFall12 on Twitter!