Students
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…
Week 12 — Almost the End of Another Semester!
Posted November 28, 2019 by Peggy Hogan-Rao
It’s Week 12, which means there are only a few more weeks left of this busy semester. Although I do need to start planning for my elementary practicum, the semester is still manageable. I only have 2 big papers and one project left until I’m done with the fall semester! At this point, it can be a struggle to not take a nap once a day or every few days. I also need to remind myself that leaving the confines of my desk is important! Almost every day last week, I felt like I was trapping myself in my room with two big papers due and a wedding to prepare for. After feeling down on Monday and being hard on myself for doing nothing, one of my friends reminded me that I need to take time for myself. After all, we are “human beings” and not “human doings.” Some ways that I am taking time for myself is writing poetry for fun and making time to read for pleasure. Reading different YA and children’s books…
Thankful
Posted November 26, 2019 by Amie Grosshans
I was struggling to find a topic for this week’s blog. I’ve been consumed with finishing year end projects and figuring out how to complete this week’s work in time because of the holiday. I won’t be able to do any work on Thursday (I’ll be too busy stuffing stuffing and pumpkin cheesecake in my face) and then I’m going away with my mom and sisters on Friday and Saturday, so those days are out, too. And then I started reminiscing about last Thanksgiving and found my topic. Because last Thanksgiving, I was just starting to get my application together to apply to SLIS. I had already figured out who to ask for references and was ready to fill out my application. I was thinking about how excited I was to possibly be starting school again, but I was also so nervous that I wouldn’t be accepted. Once I “discovered” the idea of becoming a librarian, I couldn’t think about doing anything else, and I would have been devastated if I wasn’t accepted at Simmons. …
Bits and Pieces
Posted November 19, 2019 by Amie Grosshans
I thought I’d give some updates on things I’ve been working on lately! I registered for my spring classes last week. I had always planned to sign up for Metadata (LIS 445) and I did, but I was uncertain on my second class. I took an leap and signed up for Info Services for Diverse Users (LIS 410). This wasn’t on my list of classes I wanted to take, but it struck me as very interesting and worthwhile, and I’m glad I chose it. I’m excited to learn about all the ways libraries address people with different backgrounds and abilities, and what can be done in the future to make them even more inclusive. I’m really excited for it. I finished paper #2 for Social Informatics! I submitted it on Sunday even though it was due on Tuesday. It ended up coming together faster than I thought but I spent a lot of time editing. I love the editing process, particularly playing around with wording and making my sentences cleaner and clearer. I went through…
End of the Semester is Coming!
Posted November 14, 2019 by Peggy Hogan-Rao
It’s getting to the end of the semester, which for means lots of school visits for someone in the School Library Teacher program like me. I started off my week at Watertown High School early on Monday morning. Even with leaving my house a little after 7:00, I didn’t get to the high school library until almost 7:45. Surprisingly, the library was quite crowded! I spent a few hours taking notes on how teens were using the library for an assignement for my YA Library Collections class. It was interesting to see that no students were checking out books, but rather making use of the technology resources in the library. Some of the technology that I observed students using were Vinyl sticker printers, 3-D printers, poster printers, copiers, Chrome Books, and Chrome Book chargers. My Tuesday was not spent at a school, but I did make a quick visit to the public library in my neighborhood’s town square. I visited the children’s librarian there, who helped me to find some more nonfiction picture books in…
Reality Check!
Posted November 12, 2019 by Amie Grosshans
I couldn’t believe it when I logged into my classes this week and saw that it was week 10 of the semester. By the time this blog is posted, it will be week 11, and there will be less than a month left in the semester. Yikes! So of course, I’m focused right now on all the projects I have to complete before then. I have two papers and a small group project to finish, as well as my ongoing project work for Digital Libraries. I don’t have any projects for my Intro to Programming course, but that’s because each week there are several very time-consuming labs to complete. I’m thankful there’s not an extra project on top of that because that would be a little too much to handle. As usual, I want to try and finish some projects early if I can. I think this is especially important for this semester because of all the holidays coming up. This is my first Fall semester, and the first time I’ve had to think about…
Welcome to William!
Posted November 11, 2019 by Lindsey Clarke
We have added William to our blogging team. A little about William from his bio: “Hi everybody, I’m William Crouch. I am from Denton, Texas and moved up to Boston in September 2019 so that I could experience a real winter. I am part of the History and Archives Management Dual Degree program. I chose to attend Simmons because of the opportunity to get a strong education in both History and Library Science at the same time. I completed my undergrad in 2019 at Austin College (Go Roos!), a small school in Sherman, Texas, where I spent most of my time playing for the Roos Tennis Team. In 2018, I had the opportunity to work at Walt Disney World through the Disney College Program and found that I wanted to further my career with Disney. I wanted to use my love for history at Disney and found the Disney Archives which led me to a Library Science program. In my free time, you can find me watching tennis, playing video games, or exploring the many…
Influencer for a Day?
Posted November 8, 2019 by Katie Carlson
On Monday, October 28th, I was thrown into the world of large scale social media, as I was put in charge of Simmons University’s Instagram story! EEEK! While longtime readers know that I was a blogging queen back in the day, I only have 710 followers on insta, and had NEVER posted an original story — only shared content I was tagged in. I logged into the Simmons instagram, and suddenly had 6,000+ semi-captive listeners. Let me tell you, it was exhausting. While my takeover was largely authentic — yes, I do sometimes go to the Gardner on my lunch break, but NO I don’t always have on a full face of makeup at 8 a.m. — it took some planning and creativity to brainstorm just how to share my experiences with Simmons’ insta-sphere. I will admit that I definitely had a storyboard for my day, mapped out with what I thought would be good video opportunities. I was pretty proud of my “What’s in the bag????” section, where I went through what I have…
Thinking of Spring
Posted October 22, 2019 by Amie Grosshans
Yes, I know it’s only October, but the Spring 2020 course list came out last week and it’s all I’ve been thinking about. I love looking at the course list each semester. There are so many interesting classes I could take! I’m taking two classes in the Spring, and I already know that one of them will be LIS 445: Metadata. I’m very excited for that class, because metadata is the key to many library services and is the foundation of information retrieval. I am curious to learn more about how that metadata is created and how it is applied to different objects. I already have a good foundational understanding of it from LIS 415: Information Organization and LIS 462: Digital Libraries, but I’m looking forward to a whole semester’s worth of lectures on the topic. It should be very interesting. Choosing my second class is going to be tough. I could take LIS 450: Public Libraries or LIS 451: Academic Libraries. Either of those would be interesting because they would give more information about…