Real World
Internship in the Outer Banks: Collection Closing
Posted August 1, 2022 by Johnna Purchase
Twelve papercuts. Four knuckle abrasions. Three split cuticles. I have finally finished unboxing, foldering, labeling, alphabetizing, and reboxing my collection. 161 archival boxes and 905 folders. In seven weeks. My hands and fingers took a much-needed break this past weekend! While I’m trying to revel in my sense of accomplishment, I still have two weeks left in my internship. I want to soak in as many additional experiences as possible. There’s a four-shelf display cabinet for an exhibit on my collection in wait. A finding aid that wants to be written. A coffee with my collection’s donor to share. A podcast with the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources to record. An oral history with a descendant of the original Outer Banks seafood empire to conduct. Just as my to-do list has reached zero, I have filled it back up. When I accepted this position for the summer, I made a promise to myself to embrace the slower pace of rural, island life as an antidote to the frenetic energy of studying for…
Internship in the Outer Banks: Learning from Leaders
Posted July 18, 2022 by Johnna Purchase
This past week ended with a two-day visit from the Special Collections Section Head for the State Archives of North Carolina, Judy Allen Dodson. Earlier in the week she had led a virtual monthly staff meeting, and I was impressed by how encouraging and supportive she and the rest of the archivists were. They genuinely wanted to learn more about the projects their colleagues across the state were working on and nerded-out together over new acquisitions like a collection of Civil War era photographs and sheet music from a nineteenth century Black composer. Used to the endless complaining and storm-cloud-gathering of department meetings from when I was a high school teacher, the enthusiasm for work and the curiosity about their colleagues took me by surprise. Later that week when Judy came to visit, all of her joy for her work doubled in-person. She took the time to really listen to each staff member, asked detailed questions to understand ways she could better support each member in their specific roles, and added in doses of humor….
Interning in the Outer Banks: Personal Information Organization
Posted July 11, 2022 by Johnna Purchase
Although almost a year has passed, I still remember the first Moodle discussion board topic for the course 415: Information Organization. It was my first course in graduate school, and I did not know what to expect. The discussion board topic itself asked us to classify our personal information organization style based on three criteria researchers derived that had been the subject of one of our readings that week. (Yes, you do have readings for your first week of grad school.) I struggled with this post. Not because of the content – I knew exactly where I fell along the personal organization orderliness spectrum – but because this, my level of computer file organizing, was how my classmates would first meet me. I have returned often to the ideas in that discussion board this summer as I have worked through my internship collection. On the one hand, I have been heartened by the fact that even though the best-laid organizational plans can crumble – life, the passing of time, other unknown factors get in the…
Interning in the Outer Banks: An Archival Analogy
Posted June 28, 2022 by Johnna Purchase
An analogy for archival work that they don’t teach you in 438 is this: archival processing is cleaning up other peoples’ messes. Without a key, without a blueprint, without any inkling of what, potentially, the original organizational system that the donor, maybe, possibly, hopefully attempted to follow for at least part of their document-generating life. You, the intrepid archivist must venture through boxes, pulling out sheaves of paper that seem to share nothing in common except the rusty paperclip holding them together, dusting your black pants with the glitter of deteriorating fax paper, and puzzling over the names of repeat characters in the documents like a crime scene detective building profiles for each murder suspect. Or so I’ve felt these past few weeks processing my first collection. In the midst of the chaos, though, I stumble across little gems that make me forget about the filing conventions my donor seemed to create and then drop on a whim or the fact that desperately-relevant online records for certain local government officials don’t exist. An inspirational quote…
Summer Plans and Projects
Posted June 17, 2022 by Ivy Noonan
Hello and happy (almost) summer! I hope everyone is resting and recuperating from the semester and enjoying their break! I’ve been adjusting to my new work schedule and taking advantage of my free time to spend it on passion projects. I enjoy playing Dungeons and Dragons with my friends so I have two campaigns starting next week and will be starting my own campaign in the coming months. It’s definitely been a stretch outside of my comfort zone to run my own campaign since I am in charge of creating the entire world and subsequent creatures, but I wanted to challenge myself and ultimately get better at it. My campaign is run through Monster of the Week, which is less mechanically heavy than D&D and is more beginner friendly. It definitely has my recommendation if anyone is interested in games similar to D&D but finds D&D overwhelming. I also recommend this to anyone who enjoys writing and world building, definitely allows for skillset growth! I’ve also been adjusting to my new move with my partner…
Mental Health and Graduate School
Posted May 4, 2022 by Katie Dillon
There’s no shortage of advice about how to manage mental health as a graduate student. Googling my title returns over 52 million results. And it’s no wonder – a 2017 study found that 25% of surveyed master’s students currently experienced moderate to severe anxiety symptoms, 12% experienced moderate to severe depression, and 22% experienced high levels of stress (Allen, et al., 2022). I wasn’t surveyed for the study, but I’ve struggled with my own mental health. Happily, I’m in a good place now and able to reflect on a few strategies that have helped me navigate my first year of graduate school: Schedule Downtime For me, it’s important to have both “sociable” downtime and “alone” downtime. Get Moving Yoga, spin, and Zumba are my favorites, and I’m hoping to try out rollerblading this summer. Careful with Caffeine I’m currently trying to replace one coffee with a fruit smoothie a few times each week. Sleep The single best and biggest thing I can do to improve my mood and resilience is to get at least six…
Simmons Students Present at Boston College Conference
Posted May 2, 2022 by Johnna Purchase
Over the weekend, the Boston College History Department hosted their first annual graduate student conference entitled “Grad Student Voices.” The student leadership team possessed a simple yet bold vision – a conference for graduate students by graduate students. Especially as a student just finishing her first year of her M.A. in History, I found it refreshing to attend an history conference that uplifted graduate voices rather than relegating their voices – and the students themselves – to the corner. Since the dual degree Archives and History program here at Simmons pairs the M.A. in History as a complement to the M.S. in Archives Management, at times I have struggled to engage with my peers as fellow historians. The dominant attitude is that we are archivists first. And while I take my role as an archivist seriously because of the authority it invests in me in determining what records make it into the archives that future historians will rely on, sometimes I just want to dive deep into the theoretical frameworks and dizzying array of possible…
MBTA Pro Tip
Posted April 27, 2022 by Abbey Metzler
When I think about it now, in front of this blank word document I am typing out to any prospective SLIS students reading this blog, it had to have been around this time last year that I received my admittance letter. I can’t remember the exact date. But I can tell you I was in the network room of what at the time was my new job here in Boston. I was a part time and temporary employee; with no idea this would stretch into at least a year of work in that brown stone near the Commons. There are probably countless things that I could go back and tell myself; things that would have prepared me for the next steps and next few months after I opened my decision email from Simmons that afternoon. I think I’ve done okay without any of that hindsight advice. Maybe my future graduated self will wish to go back and inform this second semester History & Archives student of something. Right now though, the only concrete advice I…
Future Plans
Posted April 15, 2022 by Ivy Noonan
I feel like I blinked, and all of a sudden I’m registering for classes for my third and final year at Simmons! My graduate History thesis is right around the corner, and I can hardly believe it. I’m still deciding on my topic, but I think I’m starting to build a pretty good idea. It feels like the true adult world is coming quicker than ever. Speaking of, this past week I attended the annual Spring SLIS virtual career fair and got to meet with several awesome employers and get some ideas for my job prospects next spring. It’s exciting to hear about all the opportunities that are available for me when I graduate and all the places I can potentially work at. Until then though, I’m happy to announce I got into all the classes that I wanted for next semester. I will be taking History 562 taught by the new faculty they hired, and LIS 442, one of the required archives courses. I did experience true senioritis though: I kept forgetting that my…
Spring Sprint
Posted April 4, 2022 by Abbey Metzler
From the basket of laundry next to my bed, to the hundreds of unread and unorganized emails in my inbox, the evidence of this semester’s time crunch is everywhere I look. The workload from my first semester at SLIS didn’t feel like a particularly far jump from the end of my undergraduate career. The reading was heavy, and the papers forced me to slow down and remember back to the kind of academic writing I hadn’t practiced in the year I took between my graduation from Syracuse and starting at Simmons. The three classes did keep me buzzing from one day to the next. But, in a mid-March reflection, I’m realizing now that this semester has been a whole other beast. I run, often literally, from work, to class, to my LIS 438 field placement. Each of these pieces to my schedule is vital. I can’t miss class, or else then I’ll be behind in content and deadlines. Can’t afford to miss work and still be able to order the delicious food found…