Students
Boston Book Collector Weekend
Posted November 18, 2012 by lazylibrarian
Yesterday was Boston’s Book Collector’s weekend. There were two shows, the bigger one being the 36th Annual International Antiquarian Book Fair and the other was the Boston Book, Print and Ephemera Show. I spent a little time at both. The Antiquarian Book Fair is more for serious collectors; way out of my price range but it was quite fun to look around and ogle at the beautiful things money can buy. Dealers were there from Europe as well as all over the US. Out of curiosity I sought out the English dealers. I am a HUGE fan of Baroness Orczy’s The Scarlet Pimpernel. Many people know of the book and have had to read it at some point in their school career but few realize it is actually the first in a 20-some book series. Only the first one ever made it into print in the U.S. For years I have been scouring used book sales for copies (Yes I could buy them offline but it’s not as fun). Sure enough, the third English dealer I found had two of the…
East Meets West Part II: The Details
Posted November 14, 2012 by cdelnero
After last week’s post, I got a comment from a prospective GSLIS student, Jodi. She writes, “As a prospective student (probably West), I would love to hear more about the differences between the two, especially from a student’s perspective. Anyone care to summarize that discussion at the Squealing Pig?” Jodi, and all who are curious (this is certainly a frequently asked question!), I will do my best to answer your question. We did talk a lot about some specific differences. I personally have not yet taken classes on both campuses, but I am taking a course in Boston at the main campus next semester. After talking with GSLIS Boston students, it really seems that the biggest difference between the campuses is class size, with the smaller classes at GSLIS West. My classes have never had more than 20 students, and only the core (required) courses were that large. Last Spring, I had a class with only 8 total students. According to the Boston students I spoke with, classes there tend to have at least 20…
East Meets West
Posted November 8, 2012 by cdelnero
I bet many of you have seen this map before. It’s funny! And sort of true. But some of us out in the dragon-filled regions see Boston not so much as the center of the universe, but more as a big scary jungle. That’s why last week, LISSA West sponsored a field trip to the Simmons main campus in Boston. Our goal was to give GSLIS West students the opportunity to visit the Boston campus and become familiar with things like parking and the layout of the library. Our hope was to eliminate fear of the big city and encourage GSLIS West students to take courses at Simmons Boston. There were four of us total and we had a busy afternoon! We started with a tour of Beatley Library led by the wonderful Linda Watkins, Liaison Librarian and Kate McGrath, Dean’s Fellow for GSLIS West. We got to see how things work in the stacks and behind the scenes. We had the opportunity to meet Justin Snow in the archives who let us into the…
Ladies and Gentlemen, Hannah Gomez
Posted November 3, 2012 by Maggie Davidov
I met Hannah while dissecting the motherboard of a PC in LIS 488. I think we had the most fun of anyone in the class because we made up names for the parts we didn’t know. She is a dual degree Children’s Literature/Library Science student here at Simmons, so she’s a superhero in my mind. Enjoy meeting Hannah Gomez, with these incredibly serious interview questions that really get to the heart of who GSLIS students really are. 1) If you could be assume a role in a book who would you be? As I kid I was always jealous of Dinnie in Sharon Creech’s Bloomability because she got to go to international school, which seemed so much more exotic and intellectual and independent than plain old school. Now that K-12 school is behind me and that’s not an option, I can’t think of anyone in a book I really love whose life I’m not already living (hence my liking them). 2) What’s been the most exciting part about being in the dual degree program so…
Current Trends and Topics in School Librarianship
Posted October 29, 2012 by Maya Bery
One of the best ways to get a sense of whether or not school librarianship (or really, any aspect of LIS) is right for you is to explore what the current trends and topics are in the field. The school library field is a particularly rich one to investigate from the comfort of home because even if you don’t have database access to the leading journals, there’s a lot of great stuff out there that can give you a sense of what we school librarians spend our time thinking and talking about, and better yet, they’re free! Blogs: The wonderful (really, I’ve met her in person, she’s fabulous!) Joyce Valenza can be found over at NeverEnding Search, her blog at School Library Journal. Buffy Hamilton blogs at The Unquiet Librarian, and closer to home, Michelle Luhtala publishes her thoughts at Bibliotech.me. SLTP Professor Rebecca Morris is also active in the blogosphere at School Library Monthly. There’s so many more diverse and interesting voices from the field out there, so go explore! Webinars: YALSA offers webinars, both for free and for a…
“Library” Cataloging Experience
Posted October 22, 2012 by Sarah Barton
I thought that cataloging would be my jam. My calling. My future. This assumption, for better or worse, was based on one thing: my iTunes library. Ever since I can remember, I have been militant when it comes to organizing my music. I have carefully constructed playlists by genre (Country, Hip-Hop, Rock, etc.), but I also have some that are not quite so easily categorized, such as “Chill,” “Random,” “Strange,” and “Guitar Hero” (thank you, junior year of college). My basic cataloging method is as follows: For every song in each of my playlists, the “Genre” field in iTunes contains the name of the playlist that the song is in. That way, if a playlist gets accidentally deleted, or I can’t remember whether I put a song in “Strange” or “Chill,” I can easily figure out where it lives. It isn’t sophisticated or foolproof, but it forces me to make deliberate categorizing decisions and gives me peace of mind. One thing that I love about my iTunes library is that many of the choices that…
Librarian Stereotypes
Posted October 21, 2012 by lazylibrarian
So everyone knows the “Marian the Librarian” stereotypes. The big glasses, the bun, the pencil skirt, and the finger always ready to shush you. (If you haven’t seen the Music Man, watch this!) Hopefully, those stereotypes are on the out. In fact there is a great Tumblr called This is What a Librarian Looks Like that shows that librarians are anything but that. One stereotype that seems to persist though at Simmons is that librarians love cats. It has a basis in fact I guess since everyone around me seems obsessed. There are multiple GSLIS professors who use Lol Cats in their powerpoint presentations, my friends spend dinner oohing and aahing over cute animal pictures and even the “Be a Sweetie, Wipe the Seatie” sign in my hall’s bathroom is a kitten…I don’t know, perhaps I have no heart but that is one professional stereotype I do not represent. Cute children? Yes. Puppies? A lot of the time. Cats? Uh, no. Sorry cats. However, I have noticed something interesting about all the librarian friends I’ve…
GOOOO Team!
Posted October 20, 2012 by Maggie Davidov
To be a GSLIS student is to be a team player. Group work, as I am finding out, is an essential part of this program. In my undergrad years I was a theater major so I guess I was working on group project, or plays, all the time but I never thought about it that way. Lately, as I wind down one group project and start up two more, it truly has been tickling my fancy, this whole idea of a paper or project’s success or failure linked with someone else’s. I think it pushes us to do better, forces us to swim harder because we’re buoyed to one another and it’s sink or swim together. Being the eternal optimist that I am, I am constantly dreading the evaluation at the end where my fellow teammates will rip me to shreds and tell the professor I was one very bad person to work with and I should be shunned to the dungeons of Moodle to await trial by Zotero (seriously, don’t those programs sound like fairytale locations…anyone?)….
What Does a Library Lesson Look Like?
Posted October 19, 2012 by Maya Bery
It’s a question I get asked over and over again, by strangers and by those closest to me. My friends and family know that I love what I’m doing, some of them know I get to do cool tech things like play with Glogster, or Prezi, or VoiceThread, and iPads, but they don’t really know what happens during a library lesson. The short answer is, of course, not very helpful: many things. Our core goals as school librarians are to foster a love of reading (naturally), but in today’s “information overload” age, our job is also to teach students key information literacy skills while meeting state curricular standards. “What does that mean?” I hear you asking. Well, to give you an example, the past two weeks I’ve worked with several high school classes in my practicum to help them with different research projects. Part of this process has involved teaching a refresher on how to use the OPAC to find books relating to their topics. Part of it has been website evaluation – a recap…
Yoga – You Won’t Regret It
Posted October 18, 2012 by cdelnero
For those of us who, like me, are buried in the depths of this program we can truly understand the need to keep our mental and physical health at the forefront. I do feel strongly that we deserve to reward ourselves for all of our hard work. But sometimes we reward ourselves in the wrong way. For example, I tend to treat myself with spending money and eating delicious food, which is a bad choice for my wallet and my waistline. I should be making better choices; after all, I’m paying for a gym membership that I never use and I have a bike collecting dust in the closet. This week however, I discovered what has been missing from my life all this time: Yoga. My first ever yoga class was on Monday and I am completely hooked! Not only did it feel so good to stretch, but I could feel my muscles working and I could feel my breathing becoming even. At the end of the class, we spent about 15 minutes doing guided…