Andrea Everett
Photo of Andrea Everett
I’m Andrea, a DYO student who recently moved to Boston from central PA! Since graduating from Vassar in 2020, I’ve been searching for ways to bring my somewhat disparate interests together. I think of librarianship as something we as people are always practicing, and I’m more than excited to think through the implications of how we seek, sort, and use information—both within library walls and beyond. Other passions include learning new languages, listening to music, and crafting recipes around my impulse grocery purchases.
Entries by Andrea Everett
After co-facilitating a class discussion about ready reference resources, I was inspired to revisit a text from my past: an A-Z children’s biography book from 2001. The Kids’ Fun-Filled Biographies book contains 500 illustrated entries about famous people worldwide, from Billie Holiday to the Medici family to Rudolph Valentino. I read this book obsessively from the ages of five to eight. I impressed—or, more likely, scared—many adults with my ability to recall obscure celebrity trivia, especially birth and death dates. When Hank Aaron’s recent passing made the news, I recognized his name because he was the first entry in the biography book. (If there was any remaining mystery, I don’t know much about sports.) This slim volume went out-of-date about five minutes after hitting bookstore shelves; now, twenty years later, it is an ancient artifact. However, my mother has forbidden me from getting rid of it, and my Student Snippets audience will rejoice to learn that I brought it with me when I moved for grad school. Over the weekend I sat down and reread…
I don’t need to tell you that grad school is hard, nor do I need to explain the challenges our current global realities present. Going into the SLIS program, I knew that I would have to protect my energy and proactively build downtime into my schedule. Also, given my borderline masochism type A personality, I am working to avoid the chronic burnout I endured during undergrad. In the rush to finish assignments, snag the perfect job, and otherwise “make the most” out of grad school, it can be easy to neglect things like relaxation and basic self-care. However, I (finally) recognize the necessity of creating structures that nourish me. In an ideal week, I stop all Simmons-related work at 6 pm every evening and take time to cook, FaceTime my friends, and partake in pleasant tomfoolery. Delineating strict boundaries between work and play, incidentally, has made me a more thoughtful and efficient student. These practices, more so than my readings about MARC records and RUSA behavioral guidelines, will guide my trajectory as a librarian and…
After an hour of arranging files, furiously Googling, and pleading with the technology gods, I thought I had it. With trepidation, I typed the following line: <img src=”Springsteen.jpg” alt=”Cover art for Born in the USA” width=”500″ height=”500″> I refreshed the page. BOOM! I’d successfully embedded Bruce Springsteen’s iconic backside into an HTML document. I looked at my fair-use image, set against a white background and flanked by black Times New Roman font, with pride: it was rudimentary, but I made it! Could you accurately list the number of websites you’ve visited in the past week? Of course not. Technology has been so seamlessly integrated into our lives that we are often unconscious of its influence. This has only become truer since the lockdowns began: between virtual happy hours, classes, and job application portals, most of us are conducting more of our lives online than ever before. Like the face mask, the computer has become an ever-present defining symbol of this era. I’ve spent so much time online. And yet, before taking LIS 488, I had…
