Building Blocks

Posted January 28, 2020 by Amie Grosshans

One of the things I love about my classes at Simmons is that they build on each other.  It’s exciting when a topic I learned about in one class is referenced or expanded on in a different class.  It’s fascinating to go more in depth on certain topics and to see how they tie together.  Even though this semester is only three weeks old, it has already referenced a lot of what was covered in my previous semesters.  

Collections Development has built on many of the subjects covered by Introduction to Management (LIS 404).  This includes types of budgets used by libraries, how those budgets are used, mission statements, and vision statements.  It has also mentioned environmental scanning, which is a topic that came up in Digital Libraries (LIS 462).  Environmental scanning entails keeping track of what similar libraries are doing in order to measure what your library is or is not doing, and what it can do in the future.  It’s a way of staying competitive and relevant in the community.   

Metadata has expanded on topics introduced in Information Sources and Services (LIS 407) and will cover even more as the semester progresses.  Info Sources is one of our three required courses.  It gives an overview of many different methods and services used in libraries but doesn’t go in depth because of time constraints.  I finished that class wanting to know more about what we covered, and I am really happy that I get to do this in metadata.  This week we’re starting on Dublin Core, which is a standardized way to create metadata for a variety of objects.  It seems simple but it’s actually pretty complicated, and I am looking forward to examining it more closely. 

I love learning more about these topics.  Having a thorough background in these topics gives me a lot of confidence.  Librarians deal with a lot of different procedures and pieces of information, and the more I get to know those pieces, the more successful I will be in the future.