Laura Kiely
Photo of Laura Kiely
Hello! My name is Laura Kiely and I’m in my second year of the master’s program here at SLIS. I moved from Iowa to Boston to study library science and archives management, a move inspired both by the school itself and by my desire to uproot my life and try living somewhere new. I grew up and went to school in Iowa, so living in Boston is a brave new world for me! I will be writing about my classes, the process of moving to Boston, and the variety of jobs I have found here to support myself in my day to day life. I may also toss in a book recommendation or two—I am a librarian, after all!
Entries by Laura Kiely
In my last post I told you about the courses I took during my first semester here at Simmons SLIS. In this post I’ll discuss my second semester courses! After getting required courses out of the way, there’s a lot more wiggle room for which classes you want to take. I’m working on the Archives Management concentration, which has a more prescribed series of courses. My second semester I went from taking more general library courses to archives courses! I rounded out my central three required courses with LIS-488, the course on technology. Now, I have mixed feelings about this class. It’s a phenomenal course for people who come in with very little computer science knowledge or background, so I figured that having only taken a couple of courses in undergrad meant I fit into this category. The good news is that I know more about computer basics than I thought! The bad news is, I did have several days in that class dedicated to information I already knew. That’s not the end of the…
My first and second semesters here at Simmons were dedicated largely to completing the required courses here at Simmons. I am attending Simmons full-time, meaning I am taking three classes per semester each Fall and Spring. There are three courses that everyone here at SLIS are required to take: 407, 415, and 488. In the archives concentration, there is a similarly prescriptive set of three classes, but these are to be taken in sequence: 438, 440, and 442. My first semester here at Simmons I took 407, 415, and 438, which I think was the best introductory set of classes for the archives concentration. For more context, I am taking classes in-person in Boston, so some of my class selections have been made based on course availability, as I find I learn best in person, but this selection of first semester classes would be equally effective online. LIS-407 is truly the most introductory class to the concept of libraries and library science, so I find it is most valuable in your first semester. The three…
