Events, Conferences, and Lectures, Oh My!

Posted April 25, 2025 by Aurora Daniel

April is a busy time at SLIS: It’s career month, there are professional conferences, and it’s a time for capstone presentations and other culminating events. Although I’m not graduating this year and thus not required to attend any of these things, I’m still going to get a sense of what they are like so I can be better prepared for them next year. Additionally, as the Library and Information Science Student Association (LISSA) president I want to be present as many things as I can on-campus to show my support for current students as well as to spread the word about opportunities for student engagement and leadership.

I volunteered to speak at both the in-person and online Accepted Student Day events early on this month. As the LISSA president I wanted to make sure that potential incoming students were aware of the kind of clubs that we have and that they’re able to put a face to the person behind the weekly emails they’ll get if they start in the fall. It was wonderful to talk with folks from all over the country who were interested in everyone of the concentrations we have at SLIS. This was the first time they had an in-person accepted student day since 2019 and I’m grateful to have been a part of it. As someone who started Spring 2024 I had wished there had been something like this, so if taking the time to help talk about clubs, answer student questions, and follow-up with them via email makes this a more-regular occurrence then I’m more than happy to do it.

The first major event this semester was the Center for Information Literacy’s open house on April 9th. Simmons received a Mellon grant to start the CIL which will provide opportunities for students and faculty to conduct research and work on projects related to information literacy. The open house itself was so much fun! A couple of students from accepted student day were there and it was nice to see how excited they were to get engaged on-campus when they started. Additionally, I was able to meet some of my classmates from online classes last semester in person and I loved being able to catch up. I signed up for some of the existing projects but I’m considering a project focused on visual literacy and creating some sort of materials to help art libraries and public libraries provide resources for their patrons. I’m still kicking around ideas on this so nothing is set in stone.

I also attended the Library Summit on Social Cohesion on April 11th that was organized by the Massachusetts Library System, the Massachusetts Libraries Board of Library Commissioners, and SLIS. SLIS provided free registration and travel reimbursement for SLIS students that applied. They also arranged for us to be paired with a mentor attending the conference. Overall it was a great experience in that my mentor is a great resource, even beyond the conference, and I gained insight into some of the ways libraries are attempting to address society’s loneliness epidemic and burnout within the profession. I was able to mingle a bit with other librarians at the conference and this has made me excited for the ARLIS/NA conference that I’ll be attending next month!

Students and Mentors from the Library Summit on Social Cohesion

Finally, there are all of the events. Some of these are student org events, including the ones LISSA is hosting, and some are sponsored by SLIS. Due to my own packed schedule I haven’t been able to attend as many as I would like but there’s been a series on AI’s impacts on the LIS profession, several movie nights, zine making sessions, and next week SCoSAA will be hosting a panel of SLIS faculty to discuss the current impacts of this presidential administration on the Institute for Museum and Library Services.

It’s been great to have a balance between lowkey social gatherings and lectures and discussions on the current major changes to the profession. I need to stay up to date but appreciate the reprieves from stressful news and events. As the semester winds down I’m looking forward to having a break from work and classes, but simultaneously I’ll be sorely missing all of the excitement. Yet, it’s making me excited for summer engagement opportunities that I can fully savor and to be able to have more time to put towards fall event planning. Having those things to look forward to is what will get me through finals!