Resources
Mentee-ing 101
Posted April 13, 2020 by Adaliz Cruz
Today I’m going to hype up my mentors. I can honestly say that without them, I wouldn’t have even considered librarianship, let alone finish my degree (in a few weeks). I have many mentors from different parts and times of my life; some are “official” mentors, some are people I look up to, and some are even self-appointed. I even started a newsletter because there were too many to keep up with! At one of my conferences, I found myself surrounded by a crowd of people introducing themselves to each other as “I’m her mentor”, “I’m also her mentor”, “Wait, I’m a mentor too”. I’m not going to lie, it was stressful! I can’t emphasize enough what the value of having a mentor is. This is a person that you look up to and who has your back and your best interest. They help guide you in your professional career and provide moral support when things don’t go the way you planned. They talk you up to their peers and give you a reassuring push…
Ready to Go!
Posted January 14, 2020 by Amie Grosshans
It was nice to have a few weeks off but I’m ready for classes to start again. 2020 is going to be an important year for me. Not only is it a big birthday year (I’m entering a new decade!), but it’s the year I’ll be graduating. Since I have a lot to do between now and the end of the year, I started browsing the Simmons Career Education Center website to see if it offered anything to help me through the process. It turns out that the CEC offers a lot of services to students and alumni. I was a little overwhelmed by all the options, to be honest, but I found two things that seem especially useful: the resume review service and the career fairs. I could use some feedback on my resume. I am not sure it’s as strong as it could be, so I’m going to make an appointment to have someone from Simmons review it. This will be especially important because I’m planning on attending at least one of the…
Two Years Down!
Posted December 18, 2019 by Sarah Callanan
As I mentioned in my last post, I am now officially halfway through my program! I started at Simmons back in Spring 2018, and I have completed 18 of the 36 credits needed to get my MS in Library and Information Science. WOO!!! I’ve learned so much in these past two years, and I’ve grown a lot as a person. Last December, I did a post of the lessons I learned and my takeaways from the program, and I thought I would expand on that now that I’m halfway done. I’ve learned so much over the past two years. I came to Simmons with no library experience whatsoever, and getting this degree has been such an education for me. My first year I took all the core classes, so that really laid the foundation of learning about search strategies, information organization, technology, and professional standards in the LIS industry; whereas this year I took all electives that helped me explore different areas of LIS, and helped supplement my knowledge. I’ve learned the importance of having…
Moving Across the Country
Posted December 16, 2019 by William Crouch
In September, I moved to Boston from Texas so I could attend Simmons and try and get a real winter. I’m only 3 months in and it’s already way colder here than it ever gets in Texas. I wanted to go over some of the things that were part of the challenge of moving here and how Simmons helped me with the move. The major thing was finding a place to live which can be difficult wherever you go. Finding a comfortable space that is also affordable is a challenging process. Thankfully, Simmons has a really great listing that students can access that lists available places within the area. It took me a while but I managed to find a little place in West Roxbury that a Simmons alum owns and managed to find a great roommate. The next thing to deal with was how to get to school and figuring out public transportation for the first time. In Texas, there’s no real convenient transportation service because everybody has cars and because Texas is such…
How a Hungry Floridian Feeds Herself without Publix
Posted July 23, 2019 by Maria Reilova
Now as someone born and raised in Florida, I have very strong opinions on which supermarket is the best. Publix is the greatest gift that Florida has given to the Southeast and I will always make whoever picks me up from the airport come with a chicken tender pub sub in one hand, and a Publix arnold palmer in the other. So as nearly a cult member to the religion that is Publix, moving up to New England and not having access to my pub subs and near endless BOGO deals was honestly quite worrisome. But don’t fret fellow Floridians, or any folks who care to read my crazed musings about grocery shopping, I have taken it upon myself to visit the nearest grocery stores to me and let y’all in on all my crazy thoughts and opinions. I’ll not go to in depth since this is one of those weird topics that I could talk about for hours, but honestly I feel like this is helpful information for fellow foodies moving to the Boston area from…
Guest Blog Post – MLA Conference Experience – Professional Development
Posted June 13, 2019 by Lindsey Clarke
Hi Everyone! We are lucky enough to have a fabulous guest post from one of our current students in the program — Kerri MacLaury. Kerri was kind enough to share with us her input on the recent MLA conference she attended. I hope you enjoy this exciting guest post! One of the reasons why I chose to attend Simmons University’s School of Library and Information Science program was its support of students’ professional development. Every fiscal year, each SLIS student, courtesy of the Library and Information Science Student Association, receives $250 which they can put toward various professional development activities. Funds can be used to be reimbursed for professional association dues, workshop or conference fees, and travel and lodging expenses. This year I considered using my funds to pay for American Library Association, New England Library Association (NELA), and Massachusetts Library Association (MLA) membership dues, but ultimately decided to use the funds to attend the MLA conference. I made that decision because I know that I will remain in Massachusetts at the conclusion of my…
SLIS Career and Networking Fair – Come for the Networking, Stay for the Swag & Brownies
Posted April 29, 2019 by Maria Reilova
Every spring, SLIS Student Services puts on the annual SLIS Career and Networking Fair for the students and alumni of the program. I am have been looking for some summer internship or part-time opportunities in Boston and I really wanted to attend this event as an informative experience, and a chance to practice my networking skills (something that still stresses me out constantly and I am always trying to improve). I am so happy I went. Even though I did initially have to hype myself up a bit with some caffeine. It was really nice to attend a career fair that was actually catering to my specific field. In undergraduate, I attended one career fair and since my college had a lot of business and technology students I did not feel too well represented as an art history student. There were definitely ways I could apply my liberal arts degree to different careers at the fair but it was nice to have that taken care for me at the Simmons SLIS Career Fair. Some of the…
Meeting Connections and Chatting with Friends
Posted April 15, 2019 by Peggy Hogan-Rao
It’s early April, and you want to hang out with fellow book lovers. The obvious thing is to go to MSLA (Massachusetts School Library Association) on a rainy Sunday. MSLA is a chance for classmates you see in your classes to interact with school library teachers who are your professors, as well as other school librarians in the field. The day started off with an opening keynote on diversity, an issue very big among our community at Simmons and in public schools around the state. Many sessions were offered. I chose the talk on new AASL (American Association of School Librarians) standards, since I am working on creating lessons that align with those standards in my 461 Curriculum and Instructional Strategies class. The instructor of the session on AASL was the former Simmons SLT program manager, from about ten years ago. Half the school librarians in the session were alums of the Simmons SLT program. Throughout the guided exercises at the AASL Standards session, I was able to get good ideas for my future…
Registration Time!
Posted April 9, 2019 by Amie Grosshans
Registration for the Fall 2019 semester starts this week, and I know which classes I want to take. One of the many great things about the LIS program at Simmons is that we are required to fill out a form with all the classes we plan to take. It’s not a binding contract, but it forces you to think about what classes you want to take and when, because not all classes are offered every semester. I am a planner by nature, and I loved scheduling out my potential classes. I had to re-do my schedule when I switched from archives to the Design Your Own program, and it was a bit of a project. The archives program was relatively simple to plan out because eight of the twelve courses in the program were required. The difficulty was not what classes to take, but when to take them. The DYO, however, has only three required choices, and there are a lot more classes to choose from. This is where the Two Year Schedule came in…