Get lost in the Reference stacks
Posted April 4, 2011 by turcios
This semester for my Reference (407) class, I have two sample reference question sets. These have been my favorite assignments so far because they let me practice something I’m really starting to enjoy doing. My favorite question to research so far: What are some variations of the old saying a penny saved is a penny earned? Now, this isn’t necessarily because I love random knowledge (although I do), but more because of HOW I found the answer. By the time I’d reached this question in the sample set, Id spent lots of time just sitting and looking through several online databases. I deserved a break! I got up just to stretch my legs and browse the shelves for fun. I started browsing through the New York Times bound collection of film reviews to try to find the print version of the Gone With the Wind review I cited for another assignment question (no luck) when a nearby title caught my eye: The Facts on File Dictionary of Proverbs: Meanings and origins of more than 1,500…
Dictionary of American Regional English
Posted March 29, 2011 by fox32
Flip through the Dictionary of Regional English (DARE) once and you will never forget it. Maps of where words are used? Fantastic. Text below from the University of Wisconsin (who have been the host institution creating DARE); Like other dictionaries, the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) is arranged alphabetically by headword, from A to Z. What is different about DARE is that it shows where people use the words that are included. We all know, for example, that Americans have many names for the kind of sandwich that includes meats, cheeses, lettuce, tomatoes, etc., served in a long bun. What DARE can tell you (and can often illustrate through the use of maps based on fieldwork) is where the words hero, hoagie, grinder, sub, torpedo, Cuban, etc. are the local terms for this sandwich. And what about the words people use for the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street? Boulevard, devil strip, grass plot, neutral ground, parking, parking strip, parkway, terrace, tree bank, tree belt, and tree lawn are just a…
The Yearbook of the United States Department of Agriculture
Posted March 18, 2011 by fox32
The main purpose of the Yearbook of the United States Department of Agriculture was to summarize USDAs research developments. However, the Yearbook, which was published (with a couple of exceptions) annually from 1894 to 1992, has a broad appeal outside of the scientific community. In fact, Congress passed a law to provide for its publication as part of an effort to make agricultural information more readily available to farmers and other interested citizens. -via the National Agricultural Library Digital Repository (NALDR) The format of the yearbooks was to take a certain subject each year (e.g. 1940: Farmers, 1966: Protecting our food, 1967: Outdoors USA, 1982: Food from farm to table, 1990: Americans in agriculture…) and include essays, photos and papers on various facets. The NALDR has digitized almost the whole run (from 1938-1992). Have to admit they are a little dry… not quite as fun as the USDA Handbooks. The covers though! They are fantastic. The Massachusetts State Library blog ran a feature on them the other week, and the Preservation Librarian there (Lacy Crews…
Kindle for school!
Posted March 16, 2011 by turcios
Last November I received a Kindle as a birthday present. I wasnt sure if I really wanted one when I first got it and actually considered swapping it for a Nook. I ultimately decided to go with the Kindle because, even though I cant borrow books from the library with it, it felt less buggy and I knew that some of the features that made the Nook a strong competitor were being made available soon (by February) on the Kindle. (This includes real page numbers and the ability to borrow and lend books from and to other Kindle users.) Like most e-reader users I know, I now think of my Kindle as a great alternative to carrying around a heavy book or trilogy, but not a full replacement for physical books. It is possible to love both! I also love how much easier the e-ink is on my eyes than staring at a computer screen for hours. But the problem is that these nifty features didnt seem readily compatible with Library School. For one, none…
Diversion from LIS
Posted March 14, 2011 by homerj
While I am not a childrens or young adult literature person, I am obsessed with the Hunger Games trilogy. They are getting closer to casting Katniss for the live action movies (I am very okay with the current top choice of Jennifer Lawrence see Winters Bone) but I thought I would describe the time these novels consumed my life, because it was during finals week. I read the first book because it was one of the summer reading assignments for the middle school in the town I work for. Our library purchased around twenty copies and our Childrens Librarian was very excited about this book. I could not take the book out during the summer because there were so many children who needed it for credit. So, September came and I was consumed with school work, and reading another leisure book. By the time I got around to checking out the Hunger Games it was already finals . I picked up the first book 2 days before a paper was due. I intended to…
Workin’ 9 to 5…and taking a courseload of all core classes?
Posted February 28, 2011 by turcios
We are well into the semester, almost at Spring Break even, and classes are in full swing. So far, my second semester has been quite different from the first in that this time around Ive had to balance the demands of a new full-time pre-professional library job in addition to my GSLIS course-load. I am absolutely excited about the opportunity to gain some valuable experience while Im in pursuing my degree, but this also means that Ive had to really take a step back and re-think my approach to school. I initially signed up for two courses for the Spring semester, just to keep the momentum going from the Fall. A few days into my job, though, I had to face that maybe taking two courses while I was still learning the ropes might be a bit more challenging than I thought. Especially since those two courses happen to be two core classes that I was told could be quite a mental workout to take together: 407 (Reference) and 415 (Information Organization). When I registered,…
A year ago Susan Glover went on WEEI. Great stuff.
Posted February 22, 2011 by fox32
1 year ago almost to the day, the Acting Keeper of Prints, Rare Books, Manuscripts and Archives from the Boston Public Library (Susan Glover) called in to WEEI’s Dennis & Callahan to explain what she does. Quick context; this came up after the release by the Boston Herald of the salaries for all state employees; which led to a discussion (if you listen to WEEI you might use that term loosely) of “why do taxpayers pay for the Boston Public Library”, i.e. “what is so great about libraries, why should MY hard earned tax dollars go to a library. WHY!! So kids can play World of Warcraft? Old books suck!” etc… For all the hackle raising this might produce, Callahan reveals a crucial point; if people are asking these kinds of questions, then someone at the library is not doing their job. If the popular belief is that google and wikipedia can reveal the answer to everything then libraries are not doing their job (if just joining, then due to intellectual property rights alone, the…
Last semester… OH NO!
Posted February 16, 2011 by homerj
The semester is in full swing and I thought I would write about some of the classes I am taking. I have already finished my requirements and now I get to pick some electives! This is my last semester here at GSLIS (and I am devastated) and I am taking three (3) classes to close out my Masters of Science in Library and Information Science. Class 1: Medical Libraries I am very much interested in Special Libraries (my career goals involve government libraries). Medical Libraries sounded immensely interesting and was recommended to me by a number of GSLIS Alums. We are a few weeks into the class and I love it. Everything about Medical Libraries is interesting. We just took a field trip (yes this building is on the same street as the Palace Road building but still it was a grad school field trip!) to the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences Library. There we spoke to the director of the library and its head of reference services. It was interesting to…
Ripped from the Metro… Libraries Are Invisible
Posted February 7, 2011 by fox32
Had not thought of this point recently raised by Marilyn Johnson (author of This Book is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All) but worth noting, and potentially tough to reverse. Libraries are invisible to people in power. Politicians [and corporate bodies generally i would say -ed.] have their own research staffs and IT support and newspaper subscriptions; they dont see how dependent the rest of us are on that shared information. –Marilyn Johnson Endnote: I always come back to a quote from my tutor Alan Smith, worth repeating; “Show me a town that denies funding to a library, and I’ll show you a librarian who stays in the office. Show me a town that funds its library, and I’ll show you a librarian who takes donuts down to the fire department. Who goes down to the city hall and goes into offices asking if they need anything. You have to be proactive. It might come as a shock to some of you, but a large part of the success of that library…
GSLIS Mixer and Trivia
Posted February 7, 2011 by homerj
On Friday LISSA (Library and Information Science Student Association) had a GSLIS Mixer and Trivia night at the Bell in Hand Tavern here in Boston. LISSA is a student group you are automatically entered in once you start here at Simmons GSLIS and they plan different types of events, everything from Guest Speakers to Trivia nights. Let’s just state that my group had the best name of the night. I had some pretty funny names (being somewhat of a trivia connoisseur) but we decided to go with “This is how we Dewey it” (which I thought was weak to my other suggestion: “Junk in the truncation” [which is hysterical I might add]) but majority rules and we went with Dewey. Clearly we won the name contest. Then the trivia began. What do you ask a bunch of Library Science students you ask? Oh just some facts about Libraries/Librarians. The first round asked pop culture related questions. One such example is the quote: “Look, I… I may not be an explorer, or an adventurer, or a…