Summer
Riding The (Heat) Waves – In Boston
Posted July 14, 2017 by Elizabeth Jarcy
It’s official: summer is HERE, and hotter than ever. Coming from Texas, I’m used to the humidity and heat, but not walking around in it – Texas is too big to walk so everyone drives! But here in the ‘Walking City’, I’ve had to adjust to hoofing it wherever I need to go. The MBTA is a blessing and a curse – sometimes the air conditioning is a gift, but other times when the AC is not working it can be a cruel joke. That said, summer in Boston is actually very lovely, as it not only gives me a reprieve from classwork, but lets me actually explore the city I’ve been living in for almost a year. As a SLIS student, museums and libraries are obviously at the top of my list of things to do, and Boston is jam-packed with incredible institutions. The Boston Public Library, the Boston Athenaeum, and the Cambridge Public Library are my top three, although I do like visiting local branches and see how everyday people like me are…
More On Why I Came To Library School
Posted July 12, 2017 by Megan Ondricek
So apparently, sitting around and talking about books is something librarians actually do, because that’s exactly what we’ve been doing in collection development class! On Saturday half of us presented our genre/topic discussions, in which we gave a brief overview of a book genre and talked about what’s hot/what’s not. Except in my case, it wasn’t a book genre. It was board games (a rising trend, wouldn’t you know it)! Someone brought cupcakes to celebrate her birthday, so the whole thing was basically a librarian party. It was pretty clear that everyone there loved discussing and learning about books, many of us becoming nostalgic or sentimental as we talked about our favorites. Which brings a nagging question to my mind that I’ve had since I began library school: is love of reading and books a necessary ingredient in the makeup of a good librarian? Now I think, in most cases, that librarianship is particularly attractive to those of us who do love books, and the two just naturally go together. I’m sure there are a…
On Catching Up, Belonging, and Library Stats
Posted June 29, 2017 by Megan Ondricek
As I wrote my last post it seemed as if summer was just beginning, and now I am watching the longest day of the year fade away over the endless, undulating lines of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I am in Virginia right now, and I can’t get over how awesome it is that I can be on vacation in the middle of my summer class at Simmons. I love this blended format. The days are sliding by just as summer days should, and I find my time agreeably divided between homework, leisure reading, and hiking. I’ve made several visits to my old library, the one I’m using for my assignments, and it has been so fun to chat with the librarians again now that I’m in library school. Suddenly I find myself interested in and caring about topics that had never crossed my mind back when I was the library assistant: things such as acquisition policies, weeding strategy, and the future of information literacy education at the university. The director and I had a…
Hellooo Summer!!
Posted June 7, 2017 by Megan Ondricek
June – the first real month of summer – has arrived and my summer class at SLIS West is almost two weeks underway. In the time since I last wrote, I have enjoyed about a month of no classes, took a family vacation to my beautiful hometown in southwestern Virginia, celebrated my 29th birthday, hosted my parents and little brother for Memorial Day weekend, and read two books in rapid succession (should’ve read more). It was a pretty glorious break. Just look at this picture I snapped from the Blue Ridge Parkway overlook down into my valley: Getting out of Connecticut every so often is good for my soul. I like a lot of things about where I live, but I’m a small-town, mountain-loving girl at heart, and Fairfield County, CT is just a little too urban, a little too crowded, and a little too rushed for my tastes. But I love the opportunities I have here, especially the opportunity to attend Simmons! Let me tell you about my summer class, LIS 453 Collection Development….