Libraries
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…
Happy (almost) Halloween!
Posted October 30, 2019 by Sarah Callanan
Happy (almost) Halloween everyone! You know, I really think time seems to fly by much faster when you are in school. During the short breaks between classes, time goes so slowly but now it feels like just yesterday we were starting classes, and now it’s almost Halloween. So we’re starting Week 9 of the Fall 2019 semester this week! This week we’re focusing on Evaluating Information Services, which is a really important topic, and it’s really interesting too. I’ve been excited for this week since I saw it on the syllabus–the library I work at did a Library Experience Survey last spring, and hearing about it and the methodology behind it has made me really interested in evaluation. Every library does evaluation and it’s really been interesting to learn more about this topic, and I think I’m definitely going to add LIS 403: Evaluating Information Services to the list of classes I want to take before I graduate. This class has been really interesting so far! Some of the other topics we’ve learned about include…
Project Time!
Posted September 24, 2019 by Amie Grosshans
I can’t believe we’re already into the fourth week of classes! I’ve gotten into the rhythm of classwork and due dates (thanks in part to my awesome new planner), and I’ve been balancing everything well. I have two individual projects due in early October and I’ve already started my research for them. The first is a presentation on a digital library for my Digital Libraries course, and the second is a paper on the influence of technology during a specific time period for my Social Informatics course. They are both very interesting, but I wanted to focus on my digital libraries project in this blog. One of the first topics we discussed in class is how digital libraries are difficult to define. Is a digital library literally a collection of digitized objects? Does it need to be limited to books only? Does it need to be organized by time, subject, object, or location? Should it be easy to search through? My classmates and I get to answer some of these questions by each evaluating a…
America’s Test Kitchen Library Site Visit
Posted October 30, 2018 by Katie Carlson
Araceli Hintermeister ’16MA/MS was gracious enough to give us a tour of the America’s Test Kitchen facilities. We were able to follow her through the pantry, onto the various sets, and of course, into the America’s Test Kitchen library. I made sure to fangirl over the beautiful and sleek set kitchens, but was equally as drawn to the photography studio. Araceli shared that the studio puts out thousands of photos a day. They have a plate and bowl collection that I am still having dreams about. Once in the library, the books were predominantly cookbooks, with a few reference texts thrown in here or there. In a move I’ve never seen before, but greatly enjoyed, the books were organized by cuisine origin, with each area of the world being assigned a color combination, as indicated by tape placed on the book’s spine. Araceli then brought in fellow information professionals who work at ATK, and we were able to grill them about their intersecting food and information interests. After our tour had concluded, a tall…
Here a Library
Posted March 16, 2018 by ShanTil Yell
This may not come as a surprise to you, dear readers, but ever since I started at SLIS I have gotten really, really into all things library-related. Who would have thought? I’ve been most enthralled by the idea that there are so many different types of libraries that exist. My own experience with libraries before coming into the program was primarily through public and academic institutions, so it’s exciting to see how much else is out there. I’ll give you a few examples… I was visiting a good friend of mine in North Carolina last week during spring break, and we passed a sign on the highway pointing to the Billy Graham Library. A quick search told me this particular library, a blend of religion and history thematically, was designed to look like a dairy barn mirroring Graham’s upbringing on a farm near Charlotte. We later drove through the University of North Carolina School of Arts campus in Winston-Salem where I caught a glimpse of the gorgeous Semans Library. Yes, this is an academic library,…
Leadership in Libraries
Posted February 26, 2018 by Megan Ondricek
Nature is teasing me right now with some shockingly mild and beautiful weather for February, making everyone think that spring is coming. As such, I’ve been thinking about seeds. Not the kind that are already trying to sprout in my backyard, but rather, the kind that germinate in one’s mind to invoke new ideas and ways of thinking. This semester has planted the seeds of some new ideas in my mind – ideas that I never thought I’d have. Our professor for Academic Libraries is currently the Dean of Library Services at her institution, which is academic-speak for “the boss.” As such, she brings the very interesting perspective of library management and library administration – one that I have not gotten much of in my other courses at Simmons. What makes this doubly interesting for me is that my dad, who has spent his entire professional career as an English professor, has also recently found himself in a position of leadership and administration. Both my Academic Libraries professor and my dad have been thrust into…
Ethics in the Library and the Archives
Posted November 20, 2017 by Megan Ondricek
I’ve been enjoying some very engaging readings and discussion in both of my classes the past few weeks, as our units on ethics happened to coincide. According to my professors, the ethics lesson is always everyone’s favorite, and I soon found out why. Believe it or not, the archives and library professions are veritable minefields of fascinating ethical quandaries! As we discussed these topics in class on Saturday, I realized that library ethics are essentially about protecting and enabling people’s right and freedom of choice. We believe that everyone has the right to choose what to read, what to think, what to do, and what to say. We might not agree with their choice, and other people in the library or the community might not agree with their choice, but it is not our place to restrict or pass judgement on that choice. It is important to remember that we cannot know what use a patron intends for a particular book, or what reaction they may have to any given piece of information. Of course,…
Put People First
Posted September 25, 2017 by Megan Ondricek
I was sitting in church this past Sunday listening to a woman tell a story about a piece of advice her older sister had given her which had become a guiding principle in her life. The piece of advice was, “put people first.” This axiom could apply to all areas of life and for me, I’ve been thinking about it in relation to library work. We’ve begun learning about the reference interview in LIS 407 and on Saturday we watched videos of a “bad” reference interaction and a “good” interaction and discussed the behavioral performance guidelines set out by the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA). RUSA’s guidelines read a lot like the basics of being a kind, considerate, caring person with a few library-specific points thrown in. Stuff like: make eye contact, acknowledge patrons with a friendly greeting, focus complete attention on the patron’s need, and communicate in a “receptive, cordial, and supportive manner.” One of my classmates said that most of the guidelines were common sense, and another said that they were basically…