SLIS West
SLIS West: A Few of My Favorite Things
Posted April 3, 2024 by Amy Argo
I love the feeling of being part of the smaller cohort out on the SLIS West campus! Since we’re smaller in numbers, classes feel like weekly gatherings to talk with friends about important issues surrounding librarianship. It’s been really cool to get to connect with like-minded peers and hear about their experiences from a variety of educational backgrounds, institutional settings, and life experiences. These connections build week after week and semester after semester. It is also an incredibly supportive and welcoming environment – on my first day in January 2023, I was worried about finding lunch companions between classes. While I was in line at Tailgate Picnic, the deli in the Village Commons, one of the people from my class invited me to eat lunch with them and their friends in the office. Little did I know how consequential that would prove to be, as it got me involved with LISSA West, our branch of the student organization out on the West Campus – fast forward a year, and I am the President of LISSA West! I…
A SLIS Boston Student Goes West
Posted February 7, 2023 by Claire Pask
This January, I began my spring semester in South Hadley, Massachusetts, where I completed my Preservation Management requirement over the course of two long weekends. Affectionately dubbed “Library Boot Camp” by Professor Donia Conn, the class consisted of six seven-hour days, during which my classmates and I studied old photographs and manuscripts, pored over different binding techniques, and learned more about pests and mold than I ever hoped to know. We (affectionately) handled old leather book casings, examined sheets of vellum from the eighteenth century, smiled at the rosy, painted-on cheeks of old tintype portraits, and held vintage Kodachrome film up to the light to reveal images of smiling families and pin-up girls—all in the name of understanding the makeup of the materials archives and libraries hold so that we may better preserve them. Our classes were held on the Simmons West campus at Mount Holyoke College, where we had the opportunity to visit and study two nearby libraries: the Williston Memorial Library, the college’s academic library, and the Gaylord Memorial Library, a small public…
Finals Approaching
Posted April 28, 2022 by Bryanne McArdle
My last set of finals is approaching and I’m both nervous and excited. But I’m not too worried about what lies ahead. I have a few group projects and to be honest, I’m really excited to work alongside my peers for this last set of projects. I am not the kind of person to like group projects. But I have built good friendships and working relationships with my classmates over the past 2 years, so working together with on these last things just feels right in a way. It’s a nice way to wrap things up. However, it has been a tough past few weeks for everyone in my classes. There has been some illness, stress, and just general life things that get in the way. Having people to work alongside, even though we are all dealing with these issues, helping each other cross the line, just feels right. So as things wrap up, I am excited to work together this last time with everyone and hopefully everything will finish up really nicely. Here’s to…
An Ode to Western Mass.
Posted November 8, 2021 by Erin Finn
Western Massachusetts is one of my favorite areas to explore in my free time! Maybe I’m a bit biased as I grew up here, but it’s an area rich with history, the arts, beautiful scenery, and plenty of other things to see and do. If you are a student at SLIS West, whether new to the area or visiting to take a library course on the Mount Holyoke campus for the first time, here are some of my recommendations of things to do in the surrounding area near the SLIS West campus! If you enjoy being out in nature, whether that be biking, hiking, walking, or your preferred nature activity, there are many trails and conservation sites to spend some time basking in the outdoors. My personal favorites are the following: Hiking up to the Summit House on top of Mt. Holyoke (if you want to see the beautiful views of the valley, but can’t do the hike, you can drive and park at the top when the road is open). Check out the view…
Welcome New Blogger – Erin
Posted November 2, 2021 by Lindsey Clarke
Hi everyone! I’m Erin, and this is my first semester in the DYO program at Simmons, where I’m studying at SLIS West. I grew up in Massachusetts, western Mass. to be exact! I’m quite happy to be back in the area for graduate school. I did my undergraduate studies all the way in northern New York at the Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam, where I studied Flute Performance as well as some Music Business. I’ve always loved libraries and books, but what really spurred my interest into thinking about librarianship as a career path was a library and education internship I did at Goodspeed Musicals in their Scherer Library of Musical Theatre (located in Connecticut!). I learned so much from that experience, and it really planted the seed in my head of combining two of the things that I love, music and libraries. And here I am now! Outside of grad school, I spend much of my time with music, in one form or another. These days I play the flute for fun….
Wrapping Up Two and a Half Years
Posted May 2, 2019 by Megan Ondricek
Now it really is my last week of class and internship. I’ve watched my long list of school things to do slowly dwindle down to the final item: a paper for metadata due on Monday. Once that is turned in, I’ll be finished. No more homework, no more classes, no more trips to Massachusetts. It has been an action-packed semester that has ended with a bang: last week’s tote bag ceremony at which I was honored as the recipient of the Terry Plum Leadership award, our conference presentation at CLA on Monday, and a part-time job offer at Fairfield University! I find myself in the bewildering position of having achieved everything I set out to do (and more) and feeling a tad overwhelmed and not sure what to do next. My time at Simmons has wrapped up in a manner far more exceptional than I imagined and I feel breathless – as if looking around and thinking, “did I really just do that?” To be honest I also feel like I want to crawl into…
It’s Not Easy Being Green
Posted April 11, 2019 by Megan Ondricek
My senioritis went out the window this week as my schedule really started heating up. I’m currently involved in two group projects: one for my online Metadata class and the other for a conference presentation! Way back in January, Eric Poulin, SLIS West program director and instructor for my User Instruction class, asked me if I’d be interested in presenting at one of the state library conferences with some other students. I said yes, of course, and nothing much happened until last week. Our proposal had been accepted for the Massachusetts Library Association conference to be held on May 21, but then Eric found out (unbeknownst to him) that we were also on the schedule for the Connecticut Library Association conference on April 29! Eek! So now I feel like I’m drowning in virtual group meetings and deadlines and everything is coming up so quickly. Fortunately, I just taught the last class for my internship this morning so at least that part of my work load is winding down. All told, I taught 8 sessions…
Enjoying the Journey
Posted February 28, 2019 by Megan Ondricek
As the semester goes on I continue to feel very pleased with the way that it has turned out. Taking that two-week preservation course at the very beginning was the best thing I could have done. I enjoyed the topic more than I thought I would, and it left me with just one class to worry about for the rest of the semester! It does feel a little strange to not be driving up to South Hadley every Saturday, but I am thrilled to have my weekends back and to spend them with my family. It is a good thing too, because the weekly class schedule for metadata makes all the assignments and discussions due on Monday – which means I’m pretty busy over the weekend. Fortunately my internship makes up for the missed classroom interaction and sociality I enjoyed up at SLIS West. On Thursday I got to observe Matt, the senior instruction librarian, teach the class that I’ll be teaching next week! The lesson plan, activities, presentation and materials are already provided for…
My Last Rodeo
Posted January 24, 2019 by Megan Ondricek
It’s been over a month since I last posted on the blog so Happy New Year everyone! I did survive last semester’s final week and I’m really proud of what I accomplished but boy was it tough. I needed a good break after that which is why I took a little hiatus from the blog. But now I am back in the saddle for what will be my last Simmons SLIS rodeo! In fact, I’ve been back in the saddle since January 10th which was the first day of the two-week long preservation course up at SLIS West. We met from 9-4, Thursday-Saturday for two weeks in a row and it was a blast. It was a large class too – probably the biggest I’ve had face to face – with a mix of students from Boston and SLIS West. I got a hotel in the area both weekends and it almost felt like a mini vacation. Preservation was so fascinating and what it did most of all was give me another “lens” through which…
Keep On Keeping On
Posted November 15, 2018 by Megan Ondricek
Well I survived “hump week” even though I had to drive up to class and back (and give a presentation) on about three hours of sleep. If you’ve been reading the other posts on this blog I think you’ll recognize a common theme: school is really hard and busy right now and we’re all exhausted. Actually I gave myself a tiny break from school work the first part of this week, mainly because I had so much housework and other things to catch up on. It was nice to have a short breather, but I am back at it today because the end of the semester is going to come up VERY quickly. At the SLIS West office on Saturday we had a special day-in-the-life guest speaker: Amanda Pizzollo! Amanda was the SLIS West blogger before me and graduated the same year that I started. It was great to see her again (I am kicking myself that I did not get a photo for the blog) and hear all about her job at Amherst College…