Events
DIY Archives: NEA Spring 2012 Meeting
Posted March 27, 2012 by dunhame
As Danielle kindly mentioned in her last post, she and I recently shared a blog-worthy experience; this past Saturday, we attended the New England Archivists (NEA) Spring 2012 Meeting. Running the risk of blog redundancy, Im going to spend a bit of time writing about my experience at NEA. Luckily, Danielle and I attended some different sessions and got different take-aways from the meeting, so Im thinking this post will be unique after all! The NEA Spring 2012 Meeting was held at Wesleyan University, which makes its home in the quaint city of Middletown, Connecticut. It was really nice to have the opportunity to get out of Boston for a day; I love the city, but getting out to smaller-scale America is something I really appreciate doing from time to time. As a bonus, Wesleyan University is a beautiful campus, and since the weather was somewhere in the realm of This cant be March! we were able to get some time outdoors between sessions. This was my first ever professional conference. It was very exciting…
Reflections on the NEA Spring Meeting
Posted March 24, 2012 by Danielle Geller
Lucky for me, I get to beat my fellow blogger, Elise, to posting about the NEA (New England Archivists) Spring Meeting! Though it was actually the first time I had ever met Elise, we and two others carpooled down to Connecticut and shared a hotel room this weekend. If you want to see the response on twitter, check out #neasp2012. And according to NEA, session handouts and presentations should be available on the NEA website soon if you werent able to attend yourself. This spring, I served as a session reporter for Funding Your Archives Project: Money Does Grow on Trees! which featured presentations by Linda L. Carroll, Gwenn Stearn, and Giordana Mecagni, who unfortunately, was unable to attend, though her presentation was given by her colleague Jessica Sedgwick. Ill be making a full report in an upcoming NEA newsletter, but there are some initial reflections I would like to make here. I found Giordana Mecagnis presentation on outreach and advocacy as the best potential fundraising resources the most interesting and relevant to where I…
National Bookmobile Day | Coming Soon
Posted March 22, 2012 by fox32
Brought to you by the American Library Association, the Association of Bookmobile and Outreach Service, and the Association of Rural and Small Libraries comes the (third?) annual National Bookmobile Day -April 11, 2010. Bookmobiles are currently one of the most expensive services of many public libraries so inevitably the first to be chopped when budgets are cut. Just a plain old fact there… and a mobile library may be slightly anachronistic for some, i.e. those that have the internets… My 2cents; bookmobiles fulfill several needs and beyond that are a fantastic visual reminder of the mission of a library -to connect people to information. Vintage photos below via the flickr of the Harris Country Public Library, TX.
Best. March. Ever.
Posted March 19, 2012 by Sarah Barton
During mid- to late-March you can find me parked in front of a television watching college basketball. I can unabashedly say that I have spent at least 24 of the past 96 hours either actively or passively watching college basketball, but that is about to change. Over the next few weeks, I will supplement my basketball watching with an array of library-related talks and panels. This could be the best March ever! It all starts this afternoon at Simmons with a talk called Developing Diverse Library Leadership in the 21st Century to be given by Molly Raphael, President of the American Libraries Association AND Simmons GSLIS alum. (If that doesnt go to show how far a Simmons GSLIS degree can take you, I dont know what will.) Then, as James posted a couple weeks ago, Wednesday is a kick-off meeting for the Friends of the Somerville Public Library, and I am definitely going to check that out. On Friday, I am going to MIT for a Panel Discussion on Libraries and Best Practices in Fair…
Kentucky pack-horse librarians
Posted March 15, 2012 by fox32
Converted bakery trucks are fine, a restored International Harverster Metro would be neat, but how about Appalachian mountain riders as your bookmobile service? As a feature of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) of the 1930’s that was the case. Thousands of people lived in the crooks and hollows of Kentucky’s mountains. Without newspapers, telephones, or radios, they were almost totally isolated from the outside world. Since there were not paved or even gravel roads, the only way in was by foot, horse, or mule. People followed creek beds and mountain paths to their tiny communities and homes in the hollows. Small one-room schoolhouses nestled in coves and mining camps were almost entirely removed from the outside world. These schools barely had enough textbooks for their students. Some had no books at all. In face of the daunting essential needs, food, clothing, medicine, employment, funding for libraries seemed a very low priority. Without enough money to feed their bodies, how in the world could money be found to “feed their minds?” asked First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt….
Spring Break and the Older Student
Posted March 13, 2012 by Julie Steenson
No bikinis for this forty-something .trust me, this is a good thing! For me, spring break was an opportunity to catch up on housework and have the time to go to NY to visit my adult daughter. I had told myself that I would get ahead on schoolwork, and while I did do some, there was no getting ahead. After six intense weeks, my brain needed to ease up, and my non-school life needed some of my attention. If you read my first post, you saw that I had some misgivings about returning to school as a full-time student. I would like to revisit those initial thoughts now, halfway through the semester. It has been so invigorating to be in school. While I sometimes feel like I am drowning in a sea of acronyms, I am learning so much. When I started the program full-time, I had quit my job, figuring that school, home, family, a long commute, and volunteer work would keep me busy enough. That was a good plan! When my volunteer work evolved…
Get out there -easy if in Somerville
Posted March 8, 2012 by fox32
Unless you are working full-time and taking 3 classes while commuting from Maine, I bet a lot of the readers are also volunteering in some kind of library-related function. “Friends of the Library” groups are great for this, and as a connected, energetic, knowledgable library student you are perfectly placed to led your enthusiasm to your local public library. Even if public librarianship is not your aim I would encourage it. You don’t need to sit on the board (though nice little line item on the resume…) but just being an upright and breathing volunteer can be useful. If you live in Somerville (or Cambridge or Medford) let me mention that the Friends of the Somerville Public Library are looking for extra volunteers and having a kick-off meeting on March 21st; why not attend? See the Facebook link. If you don’t care for FaceSpace, there is an EventBrite link as well; friendsofthesomervillelibrary.eventbrite. For those GSLIS students with little to no library experience this seems like an absolute no-brainer. Hope to see you then.
The Geisel Library Building
Posted March 1, 2012 by fox32
This brutal beauty of reinforced concrete and glass is a library for UC San Diego designed in 1970 by architect William Pereira. The library was originally called the “Central Library” until a renovation was completed and it was renamed the Geisel Library Building on December 1, 1995 in honor of Audrey and Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss) for the generous contributions they have made to the library and their devotion to improving literacy. UC San Diegos Mandeville Special Collections Library is the main repository for the papers of Dr. Seuss. The Dr. Seuss Collection, contains more than 8,500 items documenting the full range of Geisels work.
Why Metadata is like Pizza
Posted February 22, 2012 by Julie Steenson
Meta what? That was my reaction when I read the course description for my Information Organization class and first encountered the word METADATA. The classic definition seems to be data about data which is about as useful as well, nothing. There are many better definitions out there, but I dont want to spoil your fun as you learn about them, so for now, I will call it the stuff that describes a resource sort of like the stuff that goes on a pizza. When you ask your husband to bring home a pizza (because you have a project due in two days and you are freaking out), you dont just say, Honey, please get a pizza. You describe the pizza. Pizza metadata could include thin crust, marinara sauce, mozzarella cheese, feta cheese, pepperoni, red peppers, mushrooms, etc.
Friends From All Over
Posted February 21, 2012 by dunhame
Its pretty standard practice in the Simmons College GSLIS program for professors to have students go around the room and say a bit about themselves on the first day of class. The questions they ask vary–What interests you about this field? What program are you in? Whats something unique about you?–but something that almost always gets asked is simply–Where are you from? On my very first day of class, I was really excited about this question. I thought I was going to have the most unique answer in the room. I thought people would think, Missouri?! Thats SO far away! Having gone to a Missouri state university for undergrad, I was very used to functioning in an environment lacking diversity in the geographic-area-of-origin department; most of the people I knew were from the St. Louis or Kansas City areas, and anyone who hailed from out-of-state or country definitely received special attention of some kind on the first days of classes. The fact that I was moving across the country for school meant that I would…