Jobs
Looking to the Future
Posted November 6, 2014 by Hayley Botnen
I’m going to be honest. I have no idea what I want to do when I graduate. And around this time when we’re registering for classes and everyone is talking about their future plans, I feel so scared. I love YA books, and I love libraries. It seemed like a pretty obvious step to do the dual program. But when people try to ask me if I’m going to be a librarian or go into publishing–well, I have no idea. I think I would love to do either. Or both. I feel like the older I get the more I should know what I want to do with my life. I should be settling down, finding a long-term job and a significant other and a house. (Maybe I just think these things because my sister has already achieved most of these, and my parents keep pushing me to do the same.) But I don’t know what I want from my future. I would love to be a teen librarian. But. I don’t love a lot…
NEA Mentoring Program
Posted October 28, 2014 by Gemma Doyle
A few months ago the New England Archivists sent around an email to the Simmons email list looking for students or early professionals in the archives field to join a mentoring circle, wherein a few seasoned archivists will give career advice to people just starting out. It sounded like a great opportunity to meet people and learn a little bit about how the archives field in New England looks from the other side, once people have successfully gotten their careers in motion. That’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot anyway, as I begin to apply for actual professional jobs. A mentoring circle, I thought, would help. I’m not sure exactly what I expected, but at the very least I thought it couldn’t hurt to have a dialogue about what a career in archives really looked like, especially with informal discussion. I’ve already proven that I’m no good at conferences, but the small group aspect of this was much more appealing. We had the first meeting this week, and it was actually fun to talk…
Careers for MLIS Grads
Posted September 16, 2014 by Gemma Doyle
Most people who attend a Master’s in Library and Information Science program want to work at a library or archive when they finish. The degree tends to be centered on those types of repositories, but there are also other research-oriented jobs that an M.S. can be excellent preparation for, especially in the current job market. Here are a few different career tracks that I’ve seen advertised in the Boston area recently: Prospect Research involves finding potential donors for non-profit organizations. It can involve a lot of internet and database research, determining not just who is likely to want to give to an organization but also what their donation capacity is. Because prospect researchers are employed by different types and sizes of organizations, the pay and actual job can vary widely. I’m going to be doing a prospect research internship this fall, so I’ll probably end up writing a couple of blog entries about what it’s actually like to do this type of work. Rights and Permissions Research involves doing internet research to identify and locate…
Dressing for the Interview: Feel Unstoppable, Be Unstoppable
Posted September 11, 2014 by L. Kelly Fitzpatrick
You got the interview – high fives all around. Applying and interviewing for jobs is without doubt a big part eventually becoming the unstoppable librarian, archivist, or information scientist you have set your sights on. After scheduling an interview, you’re prepared, you’re qualified, but there’s another secret level to securing that job that can produce undue stress and unease the day of – what to wear. It’s a couple hours until your interview and you’re amid a hellscape of button down shirts and khakis trying to piece together a puzzle which will somehow reveal the perfect interview outfit. The interview that might get you the job. You’re interviewing for a job that you see as an important step on your path to becoming an unstoppable librarian, archivist, or information scientist, right? If you want to be unstoppable, feel unstoppable. Sitting down with your interviewer, it’s easy to become unsure of yourself, and wearing something which will make you feel more confident during the process can make a huge difference. Equip the threads which will remind…
Job Hunting
Posted July 16, 2014 by Gemma Doyle
I have about six months left until I get my degree, and that is both incredibly exciting and incredibly terrifying. The point of library school is, of course, to be able to get a job at the end of it, and these days the competition for that job is stiffer than ever – especially in the Boston area. I’m a little more fortunate than a lot of my peers because I have more than a decade of professional experience under my belt, but that’s no guarantee of anything. Luckily, the same class that gives me a dose of real world internship experience (LIS502) also gives students a crash course in resume, cover letter and interviewing dos and don’ts, then lets students discuss their own experiences. The discussions are really the meat of it, because we give each other encouragement and tips, everything from interesting job boards to tricks for combatting nervousness and professional dress (I have to admit that I am in my 30s and still can’t walk in heels particularly well. It’s an issue!). …
Serious Business
Posted June 17, 2014 by L. Kelly Fitzpatrick
Twenty-something and caught between earning that graduate degree and staying sharp in a competitive job market – I know the feeling. When navigating a sea of internships, interviews, and conferences while completing full or part time classes, that extra boost of professionalism and confidence can make a difference. While all of those qualifications featured on your well-rendered resumé speak for themselves, having a business card can help have your bases covered on the perilous and formidable frontier of professional networking. For a long time, the word business card alone evoked imagined landscapes of beepers and shoulder pads for as far as the eye could see. But sure enough, after seeing peers arrive to events with a business card in tow changed my ideas upon seeing their convenience and functionality in action. When you meet a someone that you’d like to collaborate with in a professional context, writing their number on a nearby receipt or popping them a friend request just won’t cut it – and that’s where business cards come in. Okay, we get the…
March Madness
Posted March 21, 2014 by Emily Boyd
Clever title, right? It’s fitting because of everything going on right now, I cannot believe March is almost over already! This semester ends in just about a month and I’ll have finished 10 of 12 classes to graduate. In fact, just this week GSLIS made an exciting announcement, August grads (like me) will be able to walk at the May graduation ceremony. Although it will feel weird to receive a (fake) diploma for a degree I haven’t technically earned yet, I’m so excited to participate in the graduation ceremony! The one downside of finishing in the summer was that I thought I wouldn’t get to walk at graduation, so props to Simmons for changing their policy. It wouldn’t feel real to me if I didn’t participate in a graduation ceremony to make it official. March madness doesn’t just refer to school and my basketball bracket, last week I accepted a full-time job starting in June! I’ll be working for a tech startup company called Green Mountain Digital working on an amazing (and free!) app called…
Write. Edit. Repeat.
Posted February 14, 2014 by Emily Boyd
I started writing this blog just over a year ago, right as I started at GSLIS. When I had been a prospective student I enjoyed reading the posts of current students and was happy to be able to contribute experiences when I became a student. Lately I’ve been happier than ever that I got involved outside of classes in the form of this blog because my job is requiring a lot of writing. When I first started writing blog posts that would be posted at the end of the week I would write an outline one day, a first draft the next day and edit a third day before finally submitting. I promise I’m not a perfectionist, very far from it, but writing has always taken me a long time, and in order to prevent typos I need to look at it more than once. While this may sound excessive, I’m ultimately glad I spent so much time editing and reworking my writing last spring while I had more time to devote to it. Not…
Corporate Archive
Posted January 30, 2014 by Gemma Doyle
I work in a corporate archive. When I took LIS438 (Introduction to Archival Methods and Services) last spring, one of the questions someone asked me was what the main difference is between a corporate archive and a historical archive, besides the obvious fact that the corporate archive only hosts documents pertaining to the institution I work for. The one I can think of, off the top of my head, is that our legal department gets to determine how documents should come to the archive, and what shape they should be in when they get there. One of the first things I learned while I was doing my first archival internship at the Worcester Historical Museum was just how much I should appreciate the lovely uniformity of the records that I got every day in the corporate archive – everything organized and arranged just so before they even got to me. Of course, at the historical archive there was always the excitement of opening a box and having only the vaguest of ideas what might be…
Let’s Talk About Being Poor
Posted January 28, 2014 by Carolyn Lucas
Let’s face it: deciding to pursue my graduate degree in Library and Information Science from a private college isn’t the most fiscally responsible decision I’ve ever made. When I informed my husband – who was at that time starting his own PhD program and netting around 30k/year for around 90 hours of work a week – that I wanted to get my LIS degree, and that we would ultimately be in the hole more or less 50k, it was…not received with great enthusiasm. Coming from Wisconsin, finances are viewed fairly differently there. 30k is more than enough money for a couple to live fairly comfortably; we rented a GORGEOUS lofted one-bedroom, two bathroom, apartment for $900/month. Then, stupid Carolyn…we moved into a tiny, 500 square-foot 1-bedroom for $2100/month, plus utilities and parking. That ranks among the all-time stupidest decisions I have ever made. Ultimately, though, we decided to move into a much more reasonably priced apartment – a 1 bedroom + den for $1650. Affordable! That’s a word I haven’t heard in recent memory. Let’s…