Three Courses and a Practicum
Posted September 30, 2022 by Elizabeth Poland
It’s been a while since I last posted; I moved out of my old apartment in Allston, moved into a new one in Needham, and started the semester off on a very rocky foot. Who knew having a lease end on August 31st and the next lease not starting until September 15th would be so stressful? I also have a habit of completely rethinking all of my classes the second the semester begins. Thankfully (and hopefully), I feel like I’ve reached the point where I’m really enjoying all my classes, have cemented my schedule in place, and can now thrive! I’m currently taking two online classes and one in person. On campus I’m taking LIS 443/HIST 527: Archives, History, and Collective Memory. It’s a fascinating class that dives into how record-keeping and the writing of history entangle with the complexities of social memory. The course culminates in a semester-long project in which groups must break down an event, person, or era in terms of how it has been collectively remembered over time. In terms of…
Fall Thoughts
Posted September 16, 2022 by Ivy Noonan
I’m 100% sure it was only two days ago that I attended my first 407 class and turned in my website for 488. But here we are, almost two years later and I’m starting my final year at Simmons. I’ve pondered the idea of continuing my education (Dr. Ivy sounds pretty awesome), but post-graduation I’ll be retiring my hw planner and fully entering the workforce. I’m excited for the opportunities this will bring, as well as the potential prospects of moving out of Massachusetts (for a little bit) and really working within the field. There are so many different avenues that librarians can take for work and I find that super exciting. But before May comes around, I have classes to attend, jobs to work at, and clubs to run. I have some very excited ideas for events that Panopticon will hopefully put on later this fall. If anyone has had any thoughts on joining student organizations, I would highly recommend it. They’re a wonderful way to meet people and get more leadership skills. Now that…
Back to School: Apprehension & Anticipation
Posted September 6, 2022 by Johnna Purchase
Today marks the start of the another school year at Simmons. For me, it is the start of the in-between year as the dual-degree program is three years. For many of my friends in the single-degree program, today is the beginning of the end as they will graduate in the spring. I will use this year of transition to focus on the topic for my history thesis, to become more intentional with my “yes-es” to opportunities that align with my professional goals, to better articulate my professional goals. Already I’m thinking about how best to use the upcoming summer – an LIS course? an internship in a new city? researching abroad for my thesis? volunteering at the National Book Festival in D.C.? Single-degree students face a different set of tasks and questions. Their year is one of job applications and savoring grad student life, of apprehension at the application-interview cycle, of anticipation of fulfilling professional careers and proper paychecks. We are each in different places on the apprehension-anticipation spectrum, but we all share one common…
Saying Goodbye to LIS 439 and Hello to Beatley Library
Posted August 4, 2022 by Elizabeth Poland
I am about to finish the last week of my summer course, LIS 439: Preservation Management. It honestly really flew by, and I kind of wish a lot more of my classes were presented in seven-week increments like this was. Each week had one or two overarching topics, taught through numerous written lectures, videos, readings, discussion forums, and a few written assignments. I really enjoyed the practicality of the course; instead of pondering abstract concepts, we were taught the history of paper making, the chemical make-up of photographs from different decades, exactly how and why temperature and humidity aid in the deterioration of objects, and so much more. My favorite assignment was to write a memo as though I were an archivist at a library whose basement collection had experienced water, mold, and pest damage. We were given a very comprehensive look at the building’s layout, heating and cooling systems, recent renovations, source of collection materials, outdoor landscaping, geographic location, etc. It was fun to solve the mystery of how this damage occurred, what the…
Internship in the Outer Banks: Collection Closing
Posted August 1, 2022 by Johnna Purchase
Twelve papercuts. Four knuckle abrasions. Three split cuticles. I have finally finished unboxing, foldering, labeling, alphabetizing, and reboxing my collection. 161 archival boxes and 905 folders. In seven weeks. My hands and fingers took a much-needed break this past weekend! While I’m trying to revel in my sense of accomplishment, I still have two weeks left in my internship. I want to soak in as many additional experiences as possible. There’s a four-shelf display cabinet for an exhibit on my collection in wait. A finding aid that wants to be written. A coffee with my collection’s donor to share. A podcast with the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources to record. An oral history with a descendant of the original Outer Banks seafood empire to conduct. Just as my to-do list has reached zero, I have filled it back up. When I accepted this position for the summer, I made a promise to myself to embrace the slower pace of rural, island life as an antidote to the frenetic energy of studying for…
Internship in the Outer Banks: Learning from Leaders
Posted July 18, 2022 by Johnna Purchase
This past week ended with a two-day visit from the Special Collections Section Head for the State Archives of North Carolina, Judy Allen Dodson. Earlier in the week she had led a virtual monthly staff meeting, and I was impressed by how encouraging and supportive she and the rest of the archivists were. They genuinely wanted to learn more about the projects their colleagues across the state were working on and nerded-out together over new acquisitions like a collection of Civil War era photographs and sheet music from a nineteenth century Black composer. Used to the endless complaining and storm-cloud-gathering of department meetings from when I was a high school teacher, the enthusiasm for work and the curiosity about their colleagues took me by surprise. Later that week when Judy came to visit, all of her joy for her work doubled in-person. She took the time to really listen to each staff member, asked detailed questions to understand ways she could better support each member in their specific roles, and added in doses of humor….
Interning in the Outer Banks: Personal Information Organization
Posted July 11, 2022 by Johnna Purchase
Although almost a year has passed, I still remember the first Moodle discussion board topic for the course 415: Information Organization. It was my first course in graduate school, and I did not know what to expect. The discussion board topic itself asked us to classify our personal information organization style based on three criteria researchers derived that had been the subject of one of our readings that week. (Yes, you do have readings for your first week of grad school.) I struggled with this post. Not because of the content – I knew exactly where I fell along the personal organization orderliness spectrum – but because this, my level of computer file organizing, was how my classmates would first meet me. I have returned often to the ideas in that discussion board this summer as I have worked through my internship collection. On the one hand, I have been heartened by the fact that even though the best-laid organizational plans can crumble – life, the passing of time, other unknown factors get in the…
Warm Weather and Future Plans
Posted July 8, 2022 by Ivy Noonan
Happy Summer! I hope everyone has been enjoying the weather and has had a restful July so far. I will say I love living in New England but the short summers definitely make me sad. I do appreciate everything snow has to offer but sometimes I ponder moving to a more southern state post graduation. The four seasons can stay but just have slightly longer summers. Speaking of graduation, I’m also starting to look at jobs! While I will be graduating next May, I am a planner and can’t resist starting to see what possibilities are available. My partner and I have started discussing places we would be willing to move to if I got any job offers and D.C. so far has been my top choice. It’s wild because I feel like I just moved to Boston to start the program and now my graduation is on the calendar! I know that it’s over 10 months away but it feels so close. Any other final year students feel the same? I will say pondering…
Interning in the Outer Banks: An Archival Analogy
Posted June 28, 2022 by Johnna Purchase
An analogy for archival work that they don’t teach you in 438 is this: archival processing is cleaning up other peoples’ messes. Without a key, without a blueprint, without any inkling of what, potentially, the original organizational system that the donor, maybe, possibly, hopefully attempted to follow for at least part of their document-generating life. You, the intrepid archivist must venture through boxes, pulling out sheaves of paper that seem to share nothing in common except the rusty paperclip holding them together, dusting your black pants with the glitter of deteriorating fax paper, and puzzling over the names of repeat characters in the documents like a crime scene detective building profiles for each murder suspect. Or so I’ve felt these past few weeks processing my first collection. In the midst of the chaos, though, I stumble across little gems that make me forget about the filing conventions my donor seemed to create and then drop on a whim or the fact that desperately-relevant online records for certain local government officials don’t exist. An inspirational quote…
Summer Courses
Posted June 27, 2022 by Elizabeth Poland
June 20th marked the first day of an online summer course I’m taking at SLIS. The course is LIS 439: Preservation Management, and involves seven weeks of lectures, projects, and discussions on the topic of collection preservation mainly within archives. I am extremely excited for this course because preservation and collections management is what I want to do for a long-term career goal; my concentration is Cultural Heritage Informatics and I am trying to follow the Preservation track. I ultimately want to be caring for a museum collection or historical site’s archive, making sure that cultural heritage artifacts can continue being used to educate. This first week has focused on classmate introductions and a preview of the theoretical aspects of preservation: why do we preserve archives? How do archivists’ biases affect our cultural history? What is permanence and can it ever be achieved? What does preservation look like in the 21st century? Many people are sharing their real-world experiences with archival preservation, whether it be at a job or internship, and what that exposure has…