Classes
End of Semester Reflections
Posted May 6, 2019 by Amie Grosshans
I can’t believe my first semester is over! It sounds cliché but I really did learn a lot. When I first read my course syllabi, I was very intimidated by everything we were going to cover. I had no idea what most of the topics even were, so it’s really gratifying to be able to identify and understand them now. While I might not have mastery over all the concepts, I do feel like I have a strong foundation for my remaining classes. Even better, my brain has started to think like a librarian! I’ve been paying a lot more attention to how the library catalog is set up, examining the call numbers, and thinking about descriptions and relationships between authors and their works. There is a whole complex structure of organization and classification that I never paid attention to before. It’s exciting to be able to “read” and understand some of that code. And speaking of coding, I can’t believe I not only survived but thrived in my tech course. I would not have…
One Week Left!
Posted May 4, 2019 by Sarah Callanan
My final group project for LIS 451: Academic Libraries is done! Completed! Turned in! As I’ve mentioned in a few previous posts, the final project for LIS 451 is a Committee Group Project which you work on with a group throughout the semester. The final product was a written report as well as a recorded presentation. As this is an online class, my group collaborated via Google Docs and presented our project using Voicethread. I was on the Space Planning Committee, where our charge was to assess the current use of first floor space in a library and make specific recommendations for improvement. One of our group members is actually a library director at an academic library (she is a Ph.D. candidate) so we chose to use the library she works at as our model. This project was really interesting and useful as this task is something that a Space Planning Committee could have actually been given in an academic library. Additionally, this project was great in another way that I didn’t think of until…
I Can’t Believe How Many Books I’ve Read!
Posted April 26, 2019 by Peggy Hogan-Rao
Reflecting on the end of the semester, I keep thinking ‘I can’t believe how many books I have read!’ I created my goodreads.com account in December or November, after hearing about a local high school librarian who used it to track books she read. I thought it would be good to set a goal in January, around the time of the new year. This was before I enrolled in LIS 481: Library Collections and Materials for Children. I thought to myself ‘I’ll create a goal of 50 books. It’ll be super hard to read 50 books by the end of 2019.’ Well, our final reading journal assignment in LIS 481 was due a few days ago. I checked my Goodreads account, and I have read 31 books so far. Wowza, that’s a lot! Want to know the secret? In Library Collections and Materials for Children (a required course for anyone in the School Library Teacher Concentration or Children’s Literature Dual Degree) we are required to read 27 books throughout the semester. Children’s literature qualifies as…
Crunch Time!
Posted April 23, 2019 by Amie Grosshans
It’s almost the end of the semester and I can’t believe it. Where did the time go? I am really looking forward to having a break, but I still have a lot of work to do before I can relax. I have two big projects due the last week of classes: a group project for my info organization class, and an individual project for my tech class. My goal is to complete the tech project early, partly because I want to use the last week to focus on finishing up my group project, and partly because I just plain want to get it done! Our assignment is to create a personal website for prospective employers. It’s a really great project because it requires us to use and showcase all the skills we’ve learned in class this semester. I have learned so much this semester, and I am definitely using everything I’ve learned, and more. Right now, I have the formatting all set up, and I just need to play around with the wording…
Baptism by Twitter Fire
Posted April 22, 2019 by Katie Carlson
Somehow I never caught twitter fever. I’ve technically owned a twitter since 2013, but I’ve done very little in terms of operating it. Paging through the archive, I can tell I was stressed about starting college, because the summer of 2014 was by far my most active and angst-filled twitter period! Even so, I only tweeted 50 times. I bring this up because my Collection Development and Management course (LIS 453) had a social media assignment due this week! We had to tweet about promotions, publicity, displays, and other relevant & useful information related to libraries. Some posts had to feature original content in the form of photos, while the rest could be exceptional retweets with commentary. While I like taking photos and think I’m funny (sometimes), brevity has never been my strength. Starting this assignment, more often than not I was hitting (or going over) the 280 character limit. That meant making four or five drafts until the tweets were slimmed down and ready to post. According to this TechCrunch article, twitter’s limit used…
Group Work Thoughts
Posted April 18, 2019 by Megan Ondricek
My family and I have been spending the kids’ spring break down in southwestern Virginia at my parents’ house and absolutely loving it. Spring is farther along in Virginia than it is up in Connecticut and all the burgeoning green and flowering trees are simply gorgeous. This trip has been so good for my soul. Having grown up in small towns and fresh country air I honestly feel suffocated living along the crowded, overdeveloped I-95 corridor. If I couldn’t get out every now and then I think I’d burst. Anyway, we are one week closer to the end of the semester with just about two weeks left of class! Things aren’t exactly winding down yet, but I’m hoping that having the end in sight will give me the strength to get through this last final push. One thing is wrapping up though, and that’s my group project for the Metadata class. We’ll be turning it in this week and viewing the presentations of the other groups for class. I used to hate group projects in…
Spring Is Here!
Posted April 17, 2019 by Sarah Callanan
Spring is here! The birds are chirping, flowers are starting to bloom, and most importantly, it is not cold outside! There is still (still!) a pile of snow in my yard that refuses to melt, but I think it is on its way out. With the weather getting warmer, it makes me think about how close the end of the semester is. We’re in Week 12! Where has all the time gone? It feels like we just started! I think a part of the reason why this semester has flown by so fast is because I’ve been so busy. I usually try and take time to relax, and lift my head out of my books, but I haven’t been doing that lately as my schedule has been getting more intense. The busier I am, and the more stressed I am, the faster time seems to go (even though it really isn’t moving quicker). I really should work harder on scheduling time for relaxation–at the beginning of each semester I start out strong and schedule time…
Participation
Posted April 16, 2019 by Amie Grosshans
I’ll start with good news. I was able to register for all the classes I wanted! Yay! I also signed up for two summer courses: LIS 407, Info Sources & Services (my final required course), and LIS 439, Preservation Management. I might switch out 439 for LIS 404, Principles of Management, but it was full and I had to sign up for the waitlist. I don’t know if I’ll end up getting in, but I won’t go wrong with either course. I’m not too worried about it. Now, onto this week’s topic. One of my main questions heading into this semester was how the participation part of my classes would work, since both of them are online. The answer is: discussion forums. Each class has forums for instructor announcements and general help questions, but how many other forums there are, and how often to post to them, can vary. For my technology class, we have one main board in which we discuss current technology trends and articles. I don’t usually keep up with technology…
Meeting Connections and Chatting with Friends
Posted April 15, 2019 by Peggy Hogan-Rao
It’s early April, and you want to hang out with fellow book lovers. The obvious thing is to go to MSLA (Massachusetts School Library Association) on a rainy Sunday. MSLA is a chance for classmates you see in your classes to interact with school library teachers who are your professors, as well as other school librarians in the field. The day started off with an opening keynote on diversity, an issue very big among our community at Simmons and in public schools around the state. Many sessions were offered. I chose the talk on new AASL (American Association of School Librarians) standards, since I am working on creating lessons that align with those standards in my 461 Curriculum and Instructional Strategies class. The instructor of the session on AASL was the former Simmons SLT program manager, from about ten years ago. Half the school librarians in the session were alums of the Simmons SLT program. Throughout the guided exercises at the AASL Standards session, I was able to get good ideas for my future…
It’s Not Easy Being Green
Posted April 11, 2019 by Megan Ondricek
My senioritis went out the window this week as my schedule really started heating up. I’m currently involved in two group projects: one for my online Metadata class and the other for a conference presentation! Way back in January, Eric Poulin, SLIS West program director and instructor for my User Instruction class, asked me if I’d be interested in presenting at one of the state library conferences with some other students. I said yes, of course, and nothing much happened until last week. Our proposal had been accepted for the Massachusetts Library Association conference to be held on May 21, but then Eric found out (unbeknownst to him) that we were also on the schedule for the Connecticut Library Association conference on April 29! Eek! So now I feel like I’m drowning in virtual group meetings and deadlines and everything is coming up so quickly. Fortunately, I just taught the last class for my internship this morning so at least that part of my work load is winding down. All told, I taught 8 sessions…