Librarians
Skills learned from SLT
Posted October 21, 2020 by Peggy Hogan-Rao
I am so close to being done with my studies at Simmons. When I look back at my courses at Simmons, I feel like all I want to say is thank you. I have one step into the door of working professional and one foot still in the door of graduate student. As I am slowly creeping into the role of a library teacher, I am using the skills that the Simmons School Library Teacher program has equipped me with to be a library assistant in an elementary school library. In my LIS 406 course Management of School Libraries, I learned valuable skills in outreach to the community. When you work in a school library, it is good to partner with local bookshops for book orders, but most importantly the local public library. In the school where I work now, we are working very closely with the public library’s children’s librarian to give children access to information resources. LIS 461 the Curriculum and Instructional Strategies for the SLT (School Library Teacher) gave an overview of…
Project Time!
Posted October 19, 2020 by Sarah Callanan
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…
A Tough Choice
Posted October 7, 2020 by Amie Grosshans
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
Posted September 30, 2020 by Sarah Callanan
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…
Books, Books, and More Books
Posted September 23, 2020 by Amie Grosshans
The semester is still young, but I’ve already read five books for my Young Adult Literature class! I definitely panicked when I saw this on the syllabus. The professor had sent out an email a few weeks before the semester began to let us know that we had to read three books for week 2, but since I signed up for the class late, I didn’t get the news until the first week of class. Thankfully, the books were quick reads, and I had more notice for the two books I had to read for week 3. While it requires a lot of reading, this class has been amazing so far. I signed up for it mainly because I love YA literature, but I also signed up because I wanted to read out of my comfort zone. I’m used to reading books of my choosing. I gravitate towards mysteries, fantasies, and other light reads. This isn’t a bad thing, but I think it’s important as a librarian to be familiar with all types of books. I wanted to get familiar with books and…
New School Year and New Job
Posted September 21, 2020 by Peggy Hogan-Rao
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…
Ready to Go!
Posted September 16, 2020 by Amie Grosshans
Classes started last week. I’m excited to get back into a normal routine again, especially since the world is still so uncertain. I might not be able to count on much right now, but I know I can count on my schoolwork and deadlines to give me a bit of normalcy, and I’m grateful for that. My classes run from Tuesday-Monday and Thursday-Wednesday, and I’ve started to plan out the days I work on each class. I like to create my own routine and get a little bit of work done every day so that I am not cramming everything in on the due date. This semester I’m taking LIS 458, Database Management, and LIS 483, Library Collections and Materials for Young Adults. I had intended to take LIS 532R, Reader’s Advisory, but it ended up being a synchronous online class—meaning each session was at a specific time—and unfortunately, the time didn’t work out with my schedule. While I’m disappointed about that, I am very happy with the classes that I chose. I can tell already that Database Management is going to…
New Semester, New Class
Posted September 14, 2020 by Sarah Callanan
Summer break is over, and the Fall 2020 semester has officially started! I didn’t do too much during the break—the pandemic sort of limits your summer break activities. I did a lot of baking, and I saw my sister for the first time since the pandemic started! We had a socially distanced picnic. I really enjoyed the time off from school, but I’m happy to be back in the saddle again! As I mentioned in my last post, I am taking LIS 454: Digital Information Services and Providers this semester, and we had our first class session this week! This is an exciting new experience for me as the class is being taught live over Zoom, and I’ve never taken a class taught in this particular format. I’ve said in several of my past blog posts that I’ve wanted to take an in-person class for a while, and this class was originally scheduled to be in-person in Boston—it was just adapted to an online synchronous live format because of COVID-19. While I have had a few live sessions in some of my…
Everything Changed
Posted March 20, 2020 by Peggy Hogan-Rao
I almost cried on Monday the 9th when I found out that the St. Patrick’s Day Parade was cancelled. My week did not get better from there. Of course, I watch the news and saw that a Corona virus was proving to be deadly in cruise ships, China, and Italy. I had student teaching last week. Tuesday was a normal day in the library, checking out books and doing read alouds with the K-2 grades. Wednesday was also pretty normal. There were no updates from the school and I went about my day as usual. Thursday came along and everything changed. I wore latex gloves when handling books, which definitely felt weird. I spent my day disinfecting books, laptops, tables, and everything in the library. Kids could not sit on the cushions for the reading nook. For a few minutes in the morning, the librarian was afraid the principal would tell her it was too dangerous to check out books. At the end of the school day on Thursday, one of the other teachers told…
Thankful
Posted November 26, 2019 by Amie Grosshans
I was struggling to find a topic for this week’s blog. I’ve been consumed with finishing year end projects and figuring out how to complete this week’s work in time because of the holiday. I won’t be able to do any work on Thursday (I’ll be too busy stuffing stuffing and pumpkin cheesecake in my face) and then I’m going away with my mom and sisters on Friday and Saturday, so those days are out, too. And then I started reminiscing about last Thanksgiving and found my topic. Because last Thanksgiving, I was just starting to get my application together to apply to SLIS. I had already figured out who to ask for references and was ready to fill out my application. I was thinking about how excited I was to possibly be starting school again, but I was also so nervous that I wouldn’t be accepted. Once I “discovered” the idea of becoming a librarian, I couldn’t think about doing anything else, and I would have been devastated if I wasn’t accepted at Simmons. …