Projects
Libraries, Twitter, and Me!
Posted March 25, 2020 by Amie Grosshans
It’s week two of life during coronavirus, and I’m still struggling to focus on my schoolwork. I’ve been using my phone calendar to set reminders for things I need to do, because I keep getting distracted. I’m stuck in an endless cycle of hand washing, freaking out about the news, going to work, doing schoolwork, and stress eating ice cream. That being said, I haven’t needed any reminders for one particular project for my collections development class: our Twitter assignment. The initial assignment called for us to tweet pictures of interesting things at the library, like themed displays, or links to events at the library. Sadly, I had only been tweeting for three days before all the libraries started cancelling events and eventually closed entirely. But there has still been a lot to tweet about! Because so many people are stuck at home and need things to do, they are turning to their libraries for help. Libraries in turn are doing everything they can to help, and this is where Twitter comes in. Libraries can…
Presentation Time, and a Lucky Coincidence
Posted February 18, 2020 by Amie Grosshans
I finished my first project of the semester this week. It was a Power Point presentation for Collections Development on a book genre of our choice. We had to research current trends in our genre, identify helpful resources, and analyze publishing statistics. We also had to create a two-page handout with a brief overview on the topic. This allows us to discover and share what is trending in the book world, so that ultimately we can build a library collection that satisfies user needs. Before I was back in school, I thought 5-7 minutes was a long time for a presentation, but it turns out it is not a lot of time at all. It goes by fast, especially if you have a list of items that you need to cover. Whittling down all the information into a narrative that is thorough, concise and makes sense is not easy. I’ve completed audio presentations for other classes and I’ve never recorded anything within the time limit on the first (or even second or third) try. It…
Let’s Talk About Books!
Posted February 12, 2020 by Sarah Callanan
This week I have one of the most fun projects that I’ve had since starting at Simmons! I get to talk about BOOKS! I know, I know, this is library school, shouldn’t this be a common thing? Actually, no, this is not a usual assignment. I don’t think I’ve actually had an assignment where I’ve gotten to wax poetic about books, genres, publishing, or anything of that nature since we talked about readers advisory waaaaayy back in my first semester when I was taking LIS 407: Information Sources and Services. This week is my Genre/Topic project for LIS 453: Collection Development and Management. For this project, I get to talk about a particular topic or book genre and discuss publishing trends, what’s hot and what’s not, popular books, any books that are going to be released as movies and/or TV shows in my genre, etc. Doesn’t that sound like fun? I’m excited for this project for a variety of reasons. First, as I mentioned earlier, I GET TO TALK ABOUT BOOKS! Like many others who…
Public Art in Providence
Posted January 13, 2020 by Katie Carlson
At the close of last semester, I was able to participate in one of my favorite final projects I’ve ever done! For LIS 446: Art Documentation with Ann Graf we were tasked with cataloging three instances of public art in a location of our choosing. I partnered up with my good pal Willa, and we decided to explore Providence. I took the commuter rail from Boston (how does Willa do it every time we have class?) to Providence on a frigid but sunny day, and we set off to observe and take pictures of the works we had selected. The first piece we chose was Dear Urban Females (2019) by AGONZA. It is located on the back of the Weybossett Facade if you want to take a look for yourself! AGONZA is the truly rad woman and artist of color responsible for this piece, which was created as a tribute to strong urban women of all backgrounds. Dear Urban Females is a self-portrait of sorts. AGONZA was born in Providence, but spent her formative years…
Creating a Digital Library
Posted November 5, 2019 by Amie Grosshans
I wanted to write about LIS 462: Digital Libraries, because it is unlike any class I’ve taken before. It’s not just about studying digital libraries, it’s also about creating one. For our semester-long project, we are creating a digital library highlighting a late 19th century children’s scrapbook. The scrapbook, which was donated to the Boston Children’s Museum, contains drawings of different rooms of a house, with lots of color images that were cut and pasted into the book. There are also a few paper dolls. It’s a darling little scrapbook and I can imagine a little child having a lot of fun putting it together. To handle all aspects of the digital library’s creation, we have a project manager and several committees. These committees are responsible for different parts of the library. For example, the digitization committee scanned, digitized, and posted the scrapbook on our shared class Google Drive. The systems committee is creating the website and layout, the metadata committee is creating metadata for all the images, and the environmental scan committee looks…
Putting Theory into Practice: Tackling Information Literacy for Incarcerated Students
Posted October 2, 2019 by Katie Carlson
One of the components for my Information Services for Diverse Users class (LIS 410) this semester is a service learning project. I did a lot of community based learning in undergrad, so this was right up my alley! I signed up to work with the Tufts University Prison Initiative of Tisch College (TUPIT), which brights Tufts faculty and students “together with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, corrections staff, educators, and scholars of criminal justice to facilitate creative and collaborative responses to the problems of mass incarceration.” Because I have a background in restorative justice and a vested interest in the rights of the incarcerated, getting to combine these passions with my library studies was a dream come true! This past Friday, I was able to meet with my project supervisor to get a better idea of what our goals are for the semester. As it turns out, we will be creating an annotated bibliography and miniature lit review on the subject of education and information literacy in prisons, as well as the book to prison…