It’s Good to Be Back
Posted September 14, 2012 by Maya Bery
School is back in session, and though we’re only in the second week of the semester, December seems frighteningly close. Maybe it’s because I’m on a fairly strict deadline of when materials need to be due for my second teaching practicum experience, but there really is not that much time. But that’s not the point of this post. This post is to revel in how nice it is to be back in a school environment, doing my librarian thing. I have so far spent two days at my practicum site, and I’m already brimming with ideas and glowing with some successes from yesterday. An 11th grade science class had come in to do preliminary research for their science fair projects. The librarian I’m working with did a quick overview of Dewey, and then they were off to the stacks. Some students knew immediately what they were looking for, others grabbed books on science experiments and sat down to review their choices. But a few students looked puzzled, so I seized the chance to…
GSLIS West Book Swap
Posted September 13, 2012 by cdelnero
Even to those of us not swimming in student loans, money is often on our minds at the start of a new semester. With the cost of tuition, school supplies and transportation, the cost of books added to that can take a toll on our wallets! Most of us here at GSLIS West feel defeated by the outrageous cost of course materials. We buy over-priced, crummy copies of used books on Amazon.com or attempt to rent copies (which honestly doesn’t save us that much money). I’ve known students who go without required texts because of the cost. This fall, students are solving this problem with the first GSLIS West Book Sale/Swap. The idea is for all of us to come together and trade or sell our used books. Like many students, the text books of past courses are sitting like grave stones on my bookshelf, collecting dust. So today I lugged them to the GSLIS West office and sold two of them to students in need. I made a couple extra bucks, and the other…
The Tale of Two Campuses
Posted September 12, 2012 by Julie Steenson
I started my Simmons GSLIS career on beautiful West campus, at Mount Holyoke College. It was a long, two and a half hour drive, but other than a few dicey snowstorms, the commute through the meandering hills of NH and Massachusetts was a pleasant one. I enjoyed many great books on my MP3 player during the commute, and the faculty and students at GSLIS West were (and still are) a brilliant and supportive bunch. I had two classes that took place on campus and one online…I will blame my online one, with a remarkable Boston professor, for what happened next. Boston? I got it in my head to take advantage of ALL Simmons had to offer a library science student. Was I missing something by being on only one campus? Or is the choice simply one of geography? I decided to find out. So, last Saturday I attended my Database Management class on West campus, taught by a library professional and professor from Harvard (who also teaches the class in Boston), and on Monday, I…
Begin Year Two
Posted September 11, 2012 by Danielle Geller
I’ve been making a lot of trips back and forth between Boston, D.C., and my hometown in Pennsylvania since the end of my internship at the Smithsonian’s NMAI, and I feel like classes crept up on me out of nowhere. I decided to take three classes this semester (instead of two last year) in the hopes that I can finish my degree a little faster. I’m scheduled to take Access and Use; Records Management, and Establishing Archives and Manuscript Programs, and I’m really looking forward to them. I decided not to continue working towards my Masters in History, so I’m down to just the Archives Management concentration. I had a really great talk with my advisor, who was able to address all of my concerns and fears. I’m a much different person than I was when I first enrolled at Simmons, and a lot of my goals have changed. I may pursue a Masters in History somewhere further down the line, and I actually have a ton of ideas for my thesis, but I’ll probably…
Don’t Fear the Syllabus
Posted September 10, 2012 by Sarah Barton
One of my biggest issues at the beginning of the semester is that I get myself into a tizzy when the professor goes over the syllabus. I get all worked up about the assignments, even the ones that are due sometime in November. “How am I ever going to have that paper done before Thanksgiving?!” should not be a concern in early September. Thankfully, after the first class I never again need to look at the syllabus as a whole. Instead, it becomes a week-by-week guideline, which just seems so much more manageable. Once the semester gets going, everything more or less falls into place. Readings get read, papers get written, and assignments get done. Sometimes it’s all a blur, and sometimes I decidedly labor over things that are miniscule in the scheme of things. For example, when posting to online class discussion forums I have been known to incorporate parallel structure, consult a thesaurus, and vacillate between using a semicolon or a dash. (Note: the posts are almost never graded on content and never…
Another Semester Begins…
Posted September 7, 2012 by Maya Bery
It’s hard to believe the semester’s start is already upon us. Just yesterday, it seems, I was luxuriating in the post-semester haze of sleep and excitement for a full summer that stretched in front of me, gloriously empty. Well, it didn’t quite work out that way (for the better), but I’m back and ready to take on my second round of practicum teaching (HS level), and my VERY LAST GSLIS CLASS EVER! Ahem. It’s the last of the required “core” classes, Evaluation of Information Services, which should hopefully prove interesting as well as giving me my annual exposure to people outside the SLT program. Yet, even though the semester hasn’t officially begun yet, things are already in motion. The fabulous new officers of the MSLA-SIG group are hard at work, preparing for the back-to-school introductory meeting, I will be on campus in two short hours to share my practicum experience, tips and tricks learned to the newest crop of first-time practicum students, and my own practicum meetings with my cooperating librarian and practicum supervisor are…
My Campaign to Save the Dust Bunnies
Posted August 27, 2012 by Julie Steenson
I approached this summer, off from classes, but busy with work and family, as a chance to catch up on many things. I had the best intentions to read the many publications, both professional and recreational, piling up in the living room. I had planned to maintain my gardens beautifully, and my house would be clean and organized before Labor Day. Well, you know what they say about good intentions… I did get through about half of the publications awaiting my attention. My gardens were beautifully maintained until about mid-July, and then the lack of rain dried up my enthusiasm. I had big plans for the house maintenance issues…I always have big ideas and never enough time or money to implement them. My cookbook shelf is clean and organized…does that count? I did manage a long list of excuses for myself. I didn’t get through all the professional development I had planned because I did explore a different field of librarianship (prison libraries) on my own time. I also dedicated quite a bit of my…
A New Semester: Reference
Posted August 25, 2012 by Maya Bery
To those of you about to start your Simmons GSLIS careers in two short weeks, welcome! It’s going to be a great experience, I promise. Now, if you’ve been a diligent student and read the handbook, you’ll know that Reference is one of the required core courses that everyone at GSLIS must take. I really enjoyed reference, in part because my professor gave us a series of assignments with puzzling questions that we then had to find the answer to. Let me tell you, I knew I had found my calling as a librarian when, after six hours of intense search strategies and different keyword combinations, as well as an extensive perusal of the Simmons’ databases (since all the answers were to be found therein), I made the internet yield the correct answers. It was a moment of pure and sweet triumph, and made me think for the first time “hey, maybe I really can be good at this whole librarian thing!” So, to get you into the spirit of the new semester and sharpen up your…
The Tale of a Reformed Networker
Posted August 21, 2012 by Sarah Barton
As I mentioned in my last post, this semester brings me the joys of a part-time job and an internship. After months of what amounted to futile job searching, I eventually managed to land not one, but two library-related opportunities. Based on this recent experience, I have come to terms with the fact that networking can go a long way. For years I assumed that my unique (read: incongruous) résumé and undeniable charm (read: propensity for awkwardness) would force the job market to bow down to me in reverence. Incorrect. Rather, I have found that just about every job I have ever held was because of an acquaintance who already had a foot in the door. So finally, after months of wondering why I wasn’t hearing back from library job postings to which I had responded, I set my pride aside and resorted to some good old fashioned networking. In the midst of volunteering at the Somerville Public Library, I applied for a few part-time vacancies and was offered one which starts next week. I…
Flying Solo!
Posted August 12, 2012 by Julie Steenson
Yes, I am a GSLIS student, but first, I am a Mom, and so the purpose of this post is to give you a parent’s perspective as you head off to grad school. My daughter is heading to the University of Rochester for graduate school, and at the time this is posted, my husband should be safely seated behind the wheel of the Penske truck, and my daughter’s room at home will be empty, and some of my furniture will be missing. I will have an empty nest, and I am not sure how I feel about that. If you are 25, you probably don’t really care about how I feel about it, and that is okay, except your mom probably feels this way, too, as you make your big decisions to travel cross-country or around the corner to pursue your librarianship dreams. What my daughter and I learned this summer is that we are both stressed about the big changes, both excited about the big changes, and both eager for them to happen… But…