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

Libraries

Visit a New Library

I haven’t been on a real vacation in over a year, but two weeks ago I unplugged completely and made the drive to Portland, Maine. Portland was everything I wanted it to be and more. I think I really needed to sleep and not look at my email for a stretch.  For anyone who hasn’t tried these highly attainable things…you really should. Sleep is luxuriously restorative.  Also, I never fully appreciated how much time I spend on email until I turned off my phone and spent time in the moment in the glorious outdoors. One of my other big takeaways from my mini-break was library tourism. I had never really been aware of this as a conscious act on vacation, but I realize it should be planned into almost any vacation. Check out the local library. See what they do differently. Open your eyes to the way they lay out their space. It’s fun to walk into a library that’s new to you. You have to experience it from the patron perspective and you can…


Tumblarians!

I spend way too much of my time every day online.  I am fully aware that it’s a problem, but not one that’s going away any time soon.  It’s gotten even worse lately, as I’ve been trying to use social media to learn more about archives and archivists, and have been working on networking through Twitter and tumblr (since I’m so terrible at doing it in person.)  I’m not entirely sure about the librarian/archivist community on twitter, but the tumblr community of tumblarians (tumblr+librarians) is vibrant and very friendly.  (I’m libromatic on tumblr, by the way.)  The wonderful thing about tumblr (and Twitter, too) is that if you’re shy and nervous about posting a lot when you’re not entirely sure you know what you’re talking about, reblogging (and retweeting) are completely acceptable ways to share ideas! If you’re not on tumblr already, and you’re looking for ways to meet people in the library/archives field, here’s how to get started.  After joining the site, find people to follow.  A list of library and librarian tumblrs can…


Being a Librarian 20 years ago… today

Today I worked in a library system 20 years ago. Ok, that’s a lie. I don’t wake up every day, hop in my time machine and travel back to the simpler age of the card catalog. Though, if I did have a time machine I would choose a much simpler time with cooler clothes and become friends with Billy Shagspar (see Bill Bryson’s biography of a certain Elizabethan playwright). No, today my colleagues and I were mostly immobilized by the World Wide Web (the birthday present it re-gifted to us). Our circulation program, Millennium, just decided not to work. We began running around like chickens with our heads cut off for a good fifteen minutes, calling every supervisor under the sun to no avail. What could be done? Without computers how do we run the library? Technology is not the maker and breaker of libraries these days, although it seems like it. If it were the only thing holding a library together then there would be very little point to getting an MLS degree.  The…


Little Libraries

One of the first things I learned from working in public and special libraries was that even though they all provided more or less the same services to the community they served, there were countless differences in how they functioned and what people even meant when they said “library.”  The wonderful thing about libraries is that they don’t have to exist in a certain way. They can be the giant buildings with borrowing cards and policies, but they can also just be a small shelf of books that people are invited to take and replace as they will, all for free.  Little Free Libraries are a network of tiny libraries set up on street corners and curated by anyone who wants to put in the work, who have free books that anyone can come along and take, and leave their own books in.  There are 10,000 – 12,000 Little Free Libraries set up around the world, including seven in the Metro Boston area, mostly in Cambridge and Somerville.  They each have their own eclectic selection of…


Weekend at the Boston Public Library

Sitting right outside of the Copley T stop are two connected buildings that couldn’t appear to be more different. The first building is old and scholarly, the type of historic landmark that is almost begging to have its picture taken. Its classic charm makes one feel as if they are about to enter some sort of sacred place, an historic institution where knowledge is both value and shared.  The second building seems to lack the romantic charm of its brother although that does not seem to hamper its popularity amongst the general public. Everyday, a wide range of people pass through this modern building’s rotating door, each looking for something different amongst the building’s vast collection and other offerings. Although both buildings might appear to be aesthetically different, they are actually one in the same. Together, these two buildings make up the Boston Public Library. Over this past weekend, I had the pleasure to visit the BPL not once, but TWICE! Starting with Saturday, I took a friend who’s lived in the city for the…


Papercut Zine Library

The Papercut Zine Library takes up the back corner of Lorem Ipsum Books in Inman Square, Cambridge. Zines have been around since the rise of punk subculture in the ’70s, and continue to thrive as small handwritten or typed booklets today.  There are zines on every topic imaginable, and thousands of new ones produced every year.  I’ve always loved the personal stories found in most zines, and the time and energy put into making them tends to mean more to me than simply reading a blog entry on the same subject. The Papercut Zine Library is home to more than 15,000 zines, with new arrivals constantly being added to the collection.  A year’s membership costs just $12, and unlimited zines are lent out for 4 weeks.  Better yet, at least for me, they are always looking for volunteers to help out with cataloging the zines and running the zine library, and that was what really interested me.  I still haven’t taken a cataloging class, but what better way to navigate the tricky cataloging rules than…


Get in Line for Story Time

 Are you sick of hearing me write about stories? Too bad, friends, because here comes another event too good to pass up. Next Saturday at Boston Public Library in Copley Square, MassMouth will host its 3rd Annual Storytelling event. Why do I get so amped about storytelling? I suppose it’s the rush I get when I go on stage and share an experience from my life with hundreds of people. It could also be the looks of surprise on the faces of the kids that come to my story time when I tell them that a WITCH has come to the window. BOO! Mostly, I tell you about these events and the glorious hilarity of it all because when it comes down to, it stories are meant for sharing. I tell this to you as I tell my 6-year olds at storytime: we are storytellers. All of us.  Come to a storytelling event at MassMouth. Stop by Copley next Saturday for a half an hour. In a half an hour you can hear 2 or…


Call Numbers: Why they are Awesome

For those of you who don’t know, when one enters the Simmons GSLIS program, there are a number of core classes that they must complete. Besides an introductory course, LIS 401, there is another core course that they suggest we take in our first semester, LIS 415, Information Organization. Within LIS 415, we learn about the processes behind information organizations, which includes topics like classification, descriptive metadata, and resource types. Whenever I’m asked by my non-library friends to describe this class, I summarize it by saying that, essentially, we are learning all the behind the scene processes that make a library function that way it does. Amongst the variety of things that help ensure that a library isn’t one massive chaotic mess, librarians use call numbers to make sure that every book has a place on a given shelf. If you have ever gone to a library to find a book, then I am sure that you are acquainted with call numbers. Without them, it would be like trying to find one specific needle in…


Rivalries

This whole week has had me thinking about competition, about the deep-seeded rivalry that forms for no reason other than loyalty and pride. I mean, let’s face it, why do we get so worked up? Most students aren’t from Boston who go to school here, so why are there so many heated exchanges at the bar? I think back on the golden years of SNL with Rachel Dratch and Jimmy Fallon as the diehard Sox fans. So this week and last we saw governors placing food bank bets, the St. Louis Symphony and the BSO brassing off, and other such competitions in defense of their beloved teams. Back to Jimmy Fallon: No, you aaaah! No, you aaaaah!! Nomaaaah Garciapaaaaraaa!!! So, my question is this: if competition is healthy, and rivalry is about demonstrating loyalty and devotion then where’s the rivalry in libraries? Who are the Sharks and the Jets in the ALA? Is it YALSA versus AASL? That would be a fun librarian-off to watch. Ok, it would be a fun competition to watch for…


The Reference Desk

My professor in Literature for the Humanities also happens to be a reference librarian at a large university.  He offered each of the students in my class an opportunity to shadow him for a day. I never pass up such great learning opportunities. My “typical” day had varied experiences, including a Library Instruction class and a meeting with a new faculty member to discuss how the library could support his research and students, but my favorite part of the day was our shift on the reference desk.   It was an exceptionally busy day at the reference desk, with both walk-ups and email chat questions, and so my professor just looked at me and told me to go to it.  Huh? Me? I appreciated the vote of confidence so without a missing a beat, I jumped right in to be a reference librarian, alongside my professor.  Here I was in an unfamiliar library, suddenly helping a student with an obscure search related to the reproductive systems of pigs and cows.  Yep, former history major turned librarian…


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