First Semester End
Posted April 28, 2022 by Elizabeth Poland
With only 2-3 weeks left of my first semester, I am feeling the pressure. Though I don’t have to take any exams or write any 20-page essays, the projects I have to complete are just as time consuming and intellectually taxing. I tried to get a head start on them a while ago, but it’s difficult to balance short-term deadlines with longer-term ones. As soon as I finish my weekly work and am ready to jump on bigger projects, another week comes around and I have new assignments due. It’s probably because I’m taking four classes (which once again, I do not recommend!!), but it’s a great learning experience and I know the future version of me three weeks from now is celebrating with a very long nap.
One project I am about to finish is for LIS 432, Concepts in Culture Heritage Informatics. We were tasked with creating a prototype of a digital exhibition that would go along with a cultural heritage object that we have each been individually studying over the past semester. My object is Crazy Quilt, a brightly colored pictorial quilt made circa 1880 in Boston by Celestine Bacheller. The quilt is comprised of 12 blocks each showing a different scene from Bacheller’s hometown of Lynn, MA before she was forced to move during the Civil War when her father was killed.
My prototype juxtaposes each of the 12 blocks with an archival photo from late 19th-century Boston when Bacheller would have been living there. Users can switch between the two images to create a patchwork quilt of Bacheller’s past and present, and click on each picture to learn more about her life and the work she did.
I also have to complete two projects that almost everyone at Simmons SLIS is faced with near the beginning of their graduate careers: creating a LibGuide and coding a website.
A LibGuide is an information guide created for a specific purpose or on a particular topic, containing various types of resources. I’m making my guide about vintage sewing patterns; I still have a long way to go and it’s due in a week, but I have a plan-ish. It’s fine.
In terms of the website, I have three weeks to complete it and I’m feeling confident. It’s a website highlighting my painting, printmaking, and sewing skills, and I’m honestly very impressed with myself based on how it’s coming out. Sometimes I like to show the html or css pages to my boyfriend and scroll through them fast to make him think he’s dating some genius woman in STEM who is a part-time hacker.
All in all, I’m excited about the work I’m doing, but even more excited for the semester to be over.