Pay We Must
Posted July 15, 2012 by Julie Steenson
“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.” -Mark Twain Tuition is a small expense on the path to greatness. The tuition bill arrived yesterday, which is always a “Gulp!” moment around here. Having just finished paying for my daughter’s undergrad education, I never really allowed myself any breathing time before it was time to pay for my own education. My daughter and I are both attending grad school this year – different places and degrees – and we have both been blessed with some scholarship help, for which we are enormously thankful, but that falls short of what we both actually need. I am not here so much to share my money woes, the high cost of gasoline, food, and education…We all have these concerns. What I would like to do is share some of my solutions and hopefully ease the stress of that tuition bill sticker shock. Don’t let money stand in the…
Metadata and Street Art
Posted July 13, 2012 by Maya Bery
Metadata and street art. These are very distinct “things,” if you will, each with their own importance and meaning to those who are familiar with them, yet they exist in worlds that do not often crossover with each other, unless of course, you are an art librarian with a penchant for cataloguing. Metadata, for the uninitiated (or those who have not yet had the pleasure of taking Information Organization) is data about data. It doesn’t usually intrude upon our daily lives, but it’s vital in the work of librarians and those dedicated to making information accessible. When you’re looking for that thing that you want to know about on Google and you just can’t come up with what you’re looking for, it’s because you likely haven’t hit upon the right kind of keywords (which are part of metadata) to describe what you’re looking for, and thus make it appear. A friend from college, the wonderfully eloquent Laurenellen McCann, recently discussed this at a TEDxWDC talk entitled “Making Cyberspace for Public Art.” in the context of trying to…
A Conversation Starter…or Stopper?
Posted July 12, 2012 by Sarah Barton
Last week I was discussing my library school escapades in two different situations with two very different results. The first interaction was with a seventy-year-old uncle who said “I don’t understand library school, can you explain it to me in one paragraph?” This query presented several challenges, especially since the guy is not a library user. The conversation lasted less than a minute and I could tell that he wasn’t super interested in what I was saying. It was frustrating not only because I did not really know what to say, but also because whatever I said didn’t quite seem to resonate with him. It’s almost like he was trying to pick a fight, but neither of us was willing to throw the first punch. The next interaction was much more engaging and pleasant. It was between myself and three teachers from a prestigious private school in Connecticut. One of the teachers is currently being encouraged by the school library director to pursue a library degree, so he had all kinds of questions. Another worked…
Why Forbes is Wrong
Posted July 11, 2012 by Katie Olivo
So, if you haven’t heard about the article Forbes.com released at the beginning of June, you’re about to read all about it. The article is titled “The Best and Worst Master’s Degrees for Jobs” – and guess what is the No. 1 worst Master’s degree according to their “experts?” Library and Information Science. This comes as a shock to me – I’m pretty happy with my education. And after reading the article, I think there are some important things to point out. Obviously, I have a counterargument, but I’m not the only one. ALA President and Simmons GSLIS graduate, Maureen Sullivan, responded to Forbes.com’s claim on July 10th. I’ll pull out a quote from her press release, as it is a great starting point for my personal response – “The profit-centered, corporation-based measures valued by Forbes suggest that pay rates and growth are the only valid reasons for selecting a career or seeking an advanced degree. While it is true that for some individuals these factors are the principal focus, for librarians the primary motivation is job…
Adventures in the Social Law Library Archives
Posted July 8, 2012 by dunhame
My unplanned foray into the world of law librarianship has taken yet another unexpected turn: I’m working in an archives at a law library! A few weeks ago, my supervisor at the Social Law Library told me that, if I wanted to, I could spend a couple of hours each workweek in the Archives. Of course, I said “yes” with no hesitation. As I’ve articulated in a previous post, I’ve found a great deal of professional value in my circulation job at Social Law, even as an archivist-to-be. But I would be a fool if I didn’t jump at this opportunity to squeeze some more relevance out of my pre-professional job. I have quite a task ahead of me when it comes to the Social Law Archives. Due to budget/staff shortages, there is no professional librarian or archivist tasked with managing the Archives. To make matters even more interesting, the Library moved in the early 2000s, and whatever order that had been established in the previous Archives got jumbled up when it moved to the…
Missing June
Posted July 6, 2012 by Danielle Geller
One month down and 5 weeks to go at my internship with the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, and I’m really starting to feel the time constraints. I am in the process of compiling a report for the Repatriation Committee Chair of the Board of Trustees that creates a history of Board discussions and actions regarding repatriation since the enabling legislation of 1989 through the present day. I’ve been given access to a lot of confidential information, and I’ve also been given the opportunity to browse through some collections at the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives on the mall!In the middle of all this, I’ve also been assisting the repatriation staff in digitizing and organizing documents in their information management system, Client Profiles. It’s interesting because it’s intended for legal use, but it works really well for their purposes. It’s also capable of syncing Word and Outlook email, so you can link information from multiple points of origin. (You can even upload audio files.) I haven’t really been on the information creation side of things before,…
One of those librarians…
Posted July 3, 2012 by Julie Steenson
I had the recent misfortune to encounter one of “those” librarians in a public library. You know who they are. You have seen them and they are everything we don’t want to be. We are (or want to be) the kind of librarians who are friendly, want to help people, and are happy when the library is busy with swarms of people, and children are making joyful noise. I, for one, am delighted when the book drop is full, the carts need shelving, and a patron with three small children wants to check out a stack of 23 picture books. It means we are alive! We are thriving. But not “those” librarians. They complain when people use the outside book drop during open hours; Apparently they never had small children in the car asleep while doing errands after work. They complain when the library is busy because they really hoped to sneak personal computer time. They delight in informing patrons that they have overdue fines, while they delete fines for themselves. They ignore all opportunities…
Summer of Sarah
Posted June 26, 2012 by Sarah Barton
It is nearly July, and a few people have asked me if I have been busy so far this summer. The answer is yes, provided that vacationing qualifies as being busy. May was busy with volunteering and taking the Corporate Libraries course, and June has been busy with trips to Santa Barbara, San Francisco, and a quaint little New Hampshire lake. So yes, technically I have been busy, even though my time has been increasingly spent vacationing rather than working. I have spent the last three weeks hiking in Santa Barbara, exploring San Francisco, and lounging on an inflatable raft in New Hampshire. It has been glorious, and the gallivanting is set to continue through July with a visit to the Rhode Island shore, a road trip to North and South Carolina, and more inflatable raft time in New Hampshire. While all of this has been, and hopefully will continue to be, wonderful and cultural and relaxing, I must constantly remind myself that this Summer of Sarah is not real life. Coming to terms with…
To Tweet or Not to Tweet?: Using Social Media in the Professional World
Posted June 24, 2012 by dunhame
The title of this post is pretentious and misleading. I’m sure I’m breaking a cardinal rule of blogging by using a title that’s pretentious and misleading. But please bear with me anyway as, rather than producing the manifesto my title implies, I simply attempt to wrangle in all of the thoughts I’ve had about social media lately. As the Webmaster of the Simmons College Student Chapter of the Society of American Archivists (SCoSAA), I have taken on the responsibility of maintaining the organization’s social media accounts. As of now, SCoSAA has a Facebook page and a Twitter account. I’ve been thinking a lot about what I need to be doing with these accounts in terms of frequency of updating and content. Prior to taking on this role, I would sometimes get annoyed with how much discussion there was in library literature and online library communities about how to use social media. I snobbishly thought to myself, “Okay, we get it! Everyone knows how to use social media and we all know it’s important. Can we…
The Library as a Cool Space
Posted June 22, 2012 by Maya Bery
If you’ve been in Boston the past two days, you know that we have issued in summer with a bang. Record-setting temperatures of the high 90s (with the humidity making it feel like the low 100s) have made people seek cool spaces, whether outdoors in the shade or by a pool, or indoors, in the air-conditioning. Having air-conditioning can often be a life or death matter for people at high risk of heat stroke (the elderly, young children, the infirm, the homeless), but not everyone owns an air-conditioner, or has the means to adequately cool their residence (my own apartment currently has seven fans and a portable AC running). That is why Boston, like many cities, designates places as cooling centers, where people can go and escape from the heat for a few hours. Suggestions include hanging out in shopping malls, movie theaters, museums, or libraries. Now, I don’t know about you, but if I’m in the first three places, chances are high I’m going to be spending money while staying cool. Great for…