I’m Back!
Posted October 4, 2019 by Sarah Callanan
It’s been a little while since my last post! At the beginning of August (literally less than 12 hours after my summer class ended) I was in the hospital getting major surgery. Unfortunately, the recovery time for this surgery is rather lengthy, and I’ve been staggering my return dates, but now I’m back in the saddle for school, work, and now blog writing! Woo-hoo!
Thus far at Simmons I’ve taken all of my core classes (LIS 407: Information Sources and Services, LIS 415: Information Organization, and LIS 488: Technology for Information Professionals), and two of my electives (LIS 451: Academic Libraries and LIS 404: Principles of Management). I mentioned back in April that I had registered for LIS 421: Social Informatics for the Fall 2019 semester. Since then, I ended up switching classes to LIS 401: Foundations of Library and Information Science. This class was recommended to me when I was talking with someone late last year about switching out of archives, and had the two year projected course schedule that SLIS puts out been a little different, and if I took more than one class at a time, I probably would have taken this class a bit earlier. If you’ve read some of my past posts, you know that I’ve been kind of at a crossroads because I came in to Simmons doing the archives concentration, and then I realized through doing research, informational interviews, and discussions with colleagues that I didn’t really think it was the right fit for me, and I’ve been equivocating over what path to take, and how to structure the rest of my time at Simmons.
I know that I love academic libraries because I currently work in one, and taking LIS 451 reaffirmed my interest. I know I enjoy reference and instruction because of LIS 407 and LIS 451, and a large part of my job is doing reference work. I also really enjoyed my time in LIS 415, so I’m interested in information organization. However, I know there are a lot of things under the LIS umbrella that I don’t know about or only know minimal details about, and before I chart my course for the rest of my time at Simmons and dedicate individual classes to areas of interest, I want to see what’s out there and what I’m interested in, and this class is providing me with a good introduction and overview. For example, we’re going to have a unit on Evaluating Information Services in a few weeks, and if that’s something I’m interested in, Simmons has a class on it–LIS 403: Evaluation of Information Services! We had a unit on the History and Evolution of LIS two weeks ago, and guess what? Simmons has a class on the History of Libraries (LIS 452) if I want to explore that further! Additionally, one thing that this class goes over is all the different settings that LIS professionals can work in, and types of jobs I could possibly have when I graduate. This has been touched on in previous classes that I’ve had, and I know there are devoted classes to specific areas (such as LIS 451: Academic Libraries), but as I’m really interested in hearing about this as a general topic. I think choosing to take this class was really good idea for where I’m at in my MSLIS right now, and it will help me figure out my journey for the rest of my time here at Simmons.
It’s great to be back, and I’ll keep you updated on how things are going!
If you are interested in learning more about the courses at SLIS, click here!