Katie Beth Ryan

Printing, Pronto!

We’ve all been that person. You know, the one who completes an assignment minutes before it’s due, not giving a second thought to printing until the very last minute. I was that person Wednesday night. I spent the last hour-and-a-half before class riding the T and furiously typing the first draft of my lesson plan due for LIS 426 that night. When I arrived at Simmons at 5:30, I’d more or less finished the assignment, but only had a half hour to get that Google Drive document into paper form. Naturally, I went to Beatley Library to accomplish this task. I see plenty of 11th hour printing woes in my job. Helping someone print their document is equal parts instruction in how to navigate the nuances of printing protocol, and therapy (“Don’t worry! You can do this! You will get this printed in time for your class that begins in three minutes!”). In an ideal world, we would allow ourselves ample time to complete an assignment and print. But the way our lives are structured…

A Brown Bag Special for Banned Books Week

Even if you haven’t entered library school, you’ve probably noticed that us librarians like to get our geek on for different celebrations. Certain events in the library calendar are designed to unite library and informational professionals near and far, make us feel a little less alone in our geekiness, and get us thinking creatively about the larger purpose behind the event. If the ALA annual conference is like our Christmas, Hanukkah, or Festivus, then Banned Books Week is akin to a Fourth of July weekend, minus the raucous festivities. We mourn the inclusion of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and The Perks of Being a Wallflower on the ALA’s “Top Ten Challenged Books List.” And then we celebrate the qualities we cherish about these books, and the privilege of living in a country whose constitution protects our right to read freely. In the school library where I work, we’ve scoured our collection for the books the ALA says get people in a tizzy. We then covered those books with brown lunch bags…

Two Hundred Miles, A T Ride, and A Couple of Llamas

My days begin and end with llamas. “Huh, what?” you ask. “I thought this was a blog about all the joys and challenges of being a SLIS student in Boston! What’s this llama nonsense?!? I want my money back!” Let me explain. Rest assured: This is definitely a SLIS “student experience” blog, and I’m very much a SLIS student. But as a SLIS West-er who takes the majority of her classes at Mt. Holyoke, most of my days are spent far from One Palace Road — 99.9 miles, if Google Maps’ accuracy can be trusted. The place I call home isn’t a Back Bay brownstone, or a walkup apartment in Brookline or the Longwood area. It’s an old white farmhouse with green shutters in a Western Massachusetts hill town. The Connecticut River is a stone’s throw away. And there’s a llama farm next door. Having llamas as my closest neighbors isn’t something I reflect on often. I’ve pet them a couple times. At least once a day, usually in the morning when I’m headed to…