Student Snippets A Window Into The Daily Life & Thoughts of SLIS Students

Classes

Project Time!

Can you believe that we are six weeks in to the semester?  Six weeks!  We’re almost halfway done with the Fall 2020 semester everyone!   As promised, this post is going to be all about the semester-long project in LIS 454: Digital Information Services and Providers.  Our big project is an Electronic Resources in Libraries Case Study Project, where we split up in to teams to do a thorough investigation of an academic library’s electronic resources offerings and management.  We interview the library’s electronic resources librarian and learn more about the workflow, operation specifics and skills needed for managing electronic resources, and learn more about the library itself.  We will ultimately write a case study report based on the interview and investigate how the electronic resources are described and introduced on the website, how everything is connected and covered in research guides and tutorials online, and what library services are provided and offered.   This project really reminds me of LIS 453: Collection Development and Management, except for this project we are solely focusing on electronic resources and the role of the electronic…


First Weeks

Hey everyone. The current semester is rolling along just fine despite it being an unusual one compared to a typical SLIS semester. As I’ve been taking more archives focused classes, I’m starting to gain a better grasp of the fundamentals of the profession. In my class LIS440 or Archival Access, I’ve learned about many of the key principles of being an archivist. Some of them are ones that are building off of concepts I learned in previous classes about describing metadata and how you describe items within your archives. In addition, I’ve been learning about how to categorize items within an archive by series or collection level which builds off of previous librarian concepts like Work, Expression, Manifestation, or Item levels. It’s going to be a pretty important class for understanding how to use an archive as both an archivist and a user.  In another class, LIS 441, Archival Appraisal, I’ve been learning about how to best conduct appraisal within an archive. Appraisal is such an important part of the profession because it has to…


Compare and Contrast

I’m still feeling a twinge of disappointment after dropping the database class but overall I’m having a much easier time keeping up with schoolwork, and I’m a lot less stressed.  So, yay!  I’m also really enjoying being able to focus on a single class.  This week’s topic in Collections and Materials for Young Adults was particularly interesting, as we focused on young adult non-fiction adaptations.  We had to read Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi and its YA adaptation, Stamped by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi, both of which chronicle the history of racism in the United States.     While I read a lot of YA fiction, I don’t read YA non-fiction at all.  Truthfully, I never gave too much thought to the genre before this week.  I thought most young adults would gravitate towards reading adult non-fiction, because that’s what I did when I was younger, but that’s not the case for everyone.  I happen to love history and biographies, but I know they can be boring, depending on the author and style.  So adapting adult non-fiction for young adults makes a lot of…


A Tough Choice

I made the difficult decision to drop my database class last week.  Since I missed the add/drop grace period, I’ll get a “W” on my transcript, but luckily that won’t affect my GPA.  It will, however, affect my graduation date because it was too late to sign up for a different class.  Instead of graduating in December, I’ll now be graduating in May.  I’m bummed about that because I was so excited to be almost done.  In the grand scheme of things, waiting another five months to graduate is not a big deal, but I still feel disappointed.  However, I know this was the right decision because I was struggling with this class.  I could have pushed through, but ultimately I decided that I don’t have the time or energy to do that right now.  I am stressed enough with all the COVID stuff and this class was just adding more stress to my life.  Even though it stinks, my peace of mind is already better.  Now I only have to focus on one class, and I won’t be extra stressed trying to get everything…


First Weeks

The fall semester is starting to ramp up everyone!  We’ve only had three class sessions of LIS 454: Digital Information Services and Providers so far but I feel like I’ve learned so much!  We’ve been building on topics that we learned about in LIS 407: Information Sources and Services such as Boolean logic and nesting as well as learning new topics such as database structure and search techniques for specific databases.  We’ve started working with ProQuest databases, ProQuest Dialog, and Factiva so far.  I’m learning more about the particulars of how to search, and why it is best to search that way.  I really enjoy searching so this class is definitely my cup of tea!   Now that we’ve had a few class sessions, I can tell you that LIS 454 is very different than other classes that I’ve taken at SLIS before.  Then again, I suppose that most classes students are taking this semester (as well as in Spring 2020 and Summer 2020) have been a bit different because of the pandemic.  As I mentioned in some of my earlier posts, this was…


Fall 2020 and Welcome Week

It’s pretty crazy to think about how different the start to this fall semester is compared to last year. At this time last year, I was moving to Boston and now the whole world is somewhat frozen with the pandemic while Simmons is not having anything on campus this fall. But that hasn’t stopped us from trying to establish a community for our SLIS students as at the beginning of the month we had a series of digital welcome events for our new students. We had students talk with professors about the upcoming year, meeting with our Simmons librarians to help with research, a meeting for students to get to know each other and chat, and we even had a drawing for SLIS clothing at the end of the week. It was a lot of fun and if any incoming students are hesitant about attending these events the next time we have them, hopefully in person next fall, I would highly recommend going to help establish connections with professors and fellow students before your grad…


New School Year and New Job

   Hello, and welcome back to a new school year at SLIS. I have now been in this library science program for three years. I was originally planning to graduate with both my Masters of Library and Information Science this January with my certification to be a K-12 Library Media Teacher. As with lot of other things going on right now, that is not possible. I miss being on campus for classes, and so do the professors. My professor for my LIS 410 course on Library Services for Diverse Users did a live Zoom class with us last week, and we may have a couple more this semester. The “live” class sessions make it feel a little more like it is in-person.    As of early September, I have moved to a new apartment and started a new job. With public schools, there are some pros and cons right now for new teachers. The big downside is I could not find a placement for student teaching this fall. I came to this decision with lots of support…


Eight Classes Down, Four to Go!

We are done with the summer term everyone!  I finished LIS 475 right at the beginning of August, so I’ve had a little bit of time without having to worry about schoolwork, and I don’t start my next class until the beginning of September.  Eight classes down, four to go!  I can’t believe that I am two-thirds of the way done with my time at SLIS!  The fall semester is right around the corner, and because SLIS announced that classes are going to be online for the fall because of COVID-19, it opened up so many options in terms of classes.  In “normal times” I have to consider a lot of factors when I register, and it usually results in me taking online classes.  I’ve always wanted to take some of the classes that are only taught on campus but the timing and circumstances haven’t been right. For fall, having everything shift online has opened a lot of doors for me.   I’m currently registered for LIS 454: Digital Information Services and Providers.  I’m really excited…


Final Summer Thoughts

I finished all my work for Collections Management last week.  I can’t believe the summer semester is over already.  It went by so fast.  I loved this class and would recommend it to all SLIS students, especially those who like hands on activities.  It was a great introduction to book repair and definitely made me curious to learn more.  It will be very nice to have a few weeks off, but I’m looking forward to my classes in the fall.  Since SLIS announced that all of its classes for the fall would be online,  all the in-person classes that I normally would not have been able to take were suddenly available to me.  I had to rethink my classes a bit, and I ended up signing up for a new class, LIS 532R, Reader’s Advisory.  I wanted to take this class as soon as I saw it in the course descriptions, but I wasn’t able to because it was at the Mount Holyoke campus.  But now I get to take it, and I am excited.  …


Close to the Finish Line!

We are getting close to the end of the semester everyone!  We are in Week 7 and the summer term ends in just a few days!  As you can imagine, I am feeling the pressure!  Even though my class is ending in a few days, there is still so much left to do! As I’ve said in previous posts, summer classes are condensed courses—you are learning two weeks of material during a one-week period, so you are taking in a lot of information.  LIS 475: Organizational and Information Ethics has been a very interesting class.  The early weeks were less focused on library and information-related content, and were more focused on introducing us to the concept of what ethics is and ethical frameworks.  We didn’t really start talking about information ethics or anything super-related to libraries until later in the course.  We’ve covered so many topics in this class already, such as Ethical Frameworks, Ethics and Organizational Culture and Management, Ethical Decision Making and Legal Compliance, Information Ethics, Privacy and Access, Digital Equity, Intellectual Freedom,…


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