Thoughts of Summer

Posted March 1, 2015 by Samantha Quiñon

This week I registered for summer classes and applied for a summer internship. I could hardly believe it. Summer seems so far off, especially given the amount of snow on the ground now, but it’s better to plan for it now than to be caught unprepared later.

As for classes, after much vacillation, I decided to take courses in XML, digital stewardship, and digital humanities. It is all very technology oriented. A year ago if you had told me I would focus on something like this for a career, I would have told you that you were out of your mind. It is really challenging, but I’m passionate about making information available and discoverable for everyone. That’s why concentrating on digital repositories seems like a good choice for me. The choice also fits very well the professional and internship experience I have. It’s tough, because I feel like my level of skill with technology isn’t as advanced as a lot of other students’, but I think I can overcome my deficiencies and learn more given how much I care about what I’m doing.

Fortunately, the summer internship I got fits really well with my goals. It’s at the State Library of Massachusetts doing cataloging. So far, most of my cataloging experience has been in archives, so this is a good opportunity to round out my skills. The library is in the State House, which is gorgeous, so that doesn’t hurt either. It also doesn’t hurt that my boss, the cataloging librarian, is a Simmons alumna.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia