East Meets West

Posted November 8, 2012 by cdelnero

I bet many of you have seen this map before. It’s funny! And sort of true. But some of us out in the dragon-filled regions see Boston not so much as the center of the universe, but more as a big scary jungle. That’s why last week, LISSA West sponsored a field trip to the Simmons main campus in Boston. Our goal was to give GSLIS West students the opportunity to visit the Boston campus and become familiar with things like parking and the layout of the library. Our hope was to eliminate fear of the big city and encourage GSLIS West students to take courses at Simmons Boston.
There were four of us total and we had a busy afternoon! We started with a tour of Beatley Library led by the wonderful Linda Watkins, Liaison Librarian and Kate McGrath, Dean’s Fellow for GSLIS West. We got to see how things work in the stacks and behind the scenes. We had the opportunity to meet Justin Snow in the archives who let us into the vault where the library stores lots of historic goodies.
We then met Pablo Morales Henry in the tech lab who showed us the space there as well as the media lab and the usability lab. We even had the chance to speak with Pablo about what technology and workshops are most important to GSLIS West and how the tech lab could serve us better.
After that, we met with Em Claire Knowles, Assistant Dean, and a few students from the Boston campus for light refreshments. They told us all about their student organizations and some of the events they have planned which all sound so exciting! GSLIS West and some of the Boston students then left campus and walked to the Squealing Pig where we had drinks and dinner and got to really talk about the similarities and differences of our GSLIS experiences.

I wish more GSLIS West students had made it out that day. The Boston campus is not scary. It’s actually really friendly and fun! Maybe next semester we can get the Boston students out to South Hadley so we can prove that we don’t have any dragons…just a lot of trees.