New Semester Nerves
Posted January 25, 2022 by Abbey Metzler
As a first Student Snippets’ blog post of the new semester, this is an admission of nerves. The first week of classes is never my favorite time of the academic year. I always feel a little lost, whether in the carefully arranged but still difficult to navigate online syllabi or when trying to find my new classrooms. This inaugural week of spring semester was hosted online. A brief but harrowing few days where I got to go back to the virtual learning environment I had escaped at the very end of my undergraduate career in 2020. We all grinned and got through it, seeing the lower half of our professors’ faces for perhaps the only time before summer arrives. These first week jitters alone would not warrant a blog post about them. What makes me take to this word document with a lingering sense of unease is my technology class. I have always imagined my archival ambitions through a haze of crumbling old paper and the smell of used books. It was always the History…
Returning to Campus, freeform style
Posted January 20, 2022 by Bryanne McArdle
The sound of the train pulling up to the platform, ~~~ The squeak of metal, ~~~ The quiet and noise of the people in the ancient subway, ~~~ So many people, but with so little interaction, ~~~ The way the car weaves and bobs, ~~~ Jerking me awake from time to time, ~~~ Until my stop comes, ~~~ And I walk the streets, ~~~ Filled with busy people, frantic cars, and bored buses, ~~~ The cold air feels refreshing, ~~~ Until campus looms, ~~~ The smiles of students, ~~~ the hum of excitement, ~~~ the murmuring of studies, ~~~ and the focus of lunch, ~~~ Makes this place feel like an oasis in the city ~~~ Of learning, of fun, and of community ~~~ I’m glad to be back.
Holiday Reading
Posted January 5, 2022 by Johnna Purchase
At the onset of any break, I create a mound of books that I hope to read. I know that I won’t quite get through all of them, but I make my ambitious pile nonetheless in the hopes that I might be able to squeeze in just one more book before the busyness of term begins again. Below is my booklist for the break. Happy reading! Fiction A Very Irish Christmas: the greatest Irish holiday stories of all time publish by New Vessel Press – This adorable collection of poems, songs, and short stories brought back many delightful memories of a Christmas I spent in Ireland! Fantasy The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang – I know that I am a little late to reading The Poppy War series, but after picking this up at Brookline Booksmith and starting it on the plane home, I am charmed with Rin’s grit and determination. Sistersong by Lucy Holland – I noticed this behind the counter at Barnes & Noble when picking up a Christmas present and then found…
That’s A Wrap
Posted December 20, 2021 by William Crouch
I am almost done with my last paper for the year. I just need to double check that all my citations were done correctly, and then I’ll be all set to turn it in! I had to choose six books (three nonfiction and three fiction) to include in my library’s collection. To do this, I read fiction and nonfiction book reviews from the January 2020 issues of Booklist and School Library Journal. It was a much more daunting task than I had anticipated. A lot of books were reviewed, especially fiction books, and it was overwhelming. Luckily, I printed out the reviews so I could write myself some notes. I highlighted the most important parts of the reviews and noted my overall impressions of whether to book would make a good addition to the collection or not. Otherwise, all the reviews would have run together. I was impressed with the variety of books that were reviewed. There were many genres and books that featured diverse or marginalized voices. I recognized several of the titles, but there were many more that I didn’t know about. I added several books to…
Wellness Week
Posted December 14, 2021 by Johnna Purchase
This past week LISSA – the student library organization here at SLIS – organized a week of activities to help promote wellness in the run-up to finals. Designed to facilitate relaxation, these bite-sized events were thirty minute moments every evening at 7:30 so that students could break seamlessly without needing the added stress of carving out an entire evening to practice wellness! On Monday, pet-owners and pet-lovers alike gathered to introduce their pets to their SLIS colleagues. Chris, a Ph.D. student studying accessibility in public libraries and LISSA Community Liaison, hosted the event with her two dogs Boomba and Lacey and foster dog Tripp. On Tuesday, students engaged in meditative journaling to reflect on the past semester, set goals for the semester to come, and remind themselves of their “why” for being in the SLIS graduate program. Rosie, LISSA President, provided prompts on dreamy powerpoint slides that participants could journal directly onto while the old at heart wrote out their intentions on paper. Wednesday evening turned physical as Johnna, LISSA VP of Events, helped participants…
Approaching the End
Posted December 10, 2021 by William Crouch
It’s less than a week until I’m going to be finished with my time here at Simmons. Reflecting back on where I was when I first came to Simmons and where I am now, it’s almost like night and day. Obviously, the pandemic changed so much for everyone and has really set up a new world to go out into. When I started, I knew so little about archives and library science. I’ve gained enormous experience with metadata, encoding systems and structures, preservation tools, archival processes, and management styles while here at Simmons. There’s so much depth to the archival world and so much to learn even after 2 and a half years of studies that it is honestly astounding when I think about how little I knew back in May 2019. The learning opportunities and experiences that this program has afforded me and taught me have really changed how I approach pretty much everything going forward. It cannot be stressed enough but the faculty here are incredible and have a true vested interest in…
Why I Enjoy Finals
Posted December 9, 2021 by Bryanne McArdle
I’m probably one of the few people who really enjoys when the end of a semester approaches and all our final projects and papers are due. I understand why others don’t share this sentiment; all of the deadlines are certainly stressful. But there’s something about that chaos that creates this comradery across the students. I noticed this at Simmons when my classes were online last year, but now that I am on campus, there is no denying it. There is something I personally enjoy walking through the hallways and seeing everyone studying, helping each other, offering seats to people who need them so you can go over those notes before the exam, to just letting people nap when they need it. There’s just something so, I would say magical, but really, it’s that sense of community everyone gets and encourages each other to push through it to make it through to the other side. And that’s what I really enjoy, this sense of community that everyone gets around this time. All of the students, regardless…
Travelogue
Posted December 2, 2021 by Abbey Metzler
I am no stranger to travelling home from university for the holidays. Whether by plane, train, or automobile, I have taken many midsemester journeys home for Thanksgiving. Some of them are longer than the others. Driving over thirteen hours from New York to Illinois does not get easier after four years of experience. But, armed confidently with a full set of vaccines, it was finally time to fly home for the break after a missed year. Leaving Boston, I headed to Logan International after a full day at my admin job. Not my very finest and most awake travel decision, but when you wait until the last minute to book your tickets you are at the mercy of airline gods far above your understanding. In the pursuit of the least expensive tickets home, I ended up leaving on Monday. Ask anyone what the airports were going to be like this holiday travel week, and you would receive a message of apocalypse. Crowds and the associated chaos of the likes that haven’t been seen…
Making Sense of Misinformation in our Everyday Lives
Posted November 29, 2021 by Bryanne McArdle
With Thanksgiving coming, here, or past (whenever you the reader are oriented date-wise), I’m always thinking about how when I was in elementary school in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Thanksgiving was always about turkeys with multi-colored tails, or pastel colored-fake Native headdresses, or black construction paper Pilgrim hats. All of which are wrong on many levels. And when you’re attending a school of library and information science, emphasis on the information part, the level of wrong only becomes more clear, and uncomfortable. As a native New Englander who grew up with wild turkeys in my backyard, even as a child I could tell you they do not have tail feathers that are bright yellow, red, green, and blue. Real turkeys are terrifying miniature dinosaurs that will attack you for so much as looking at them wrong. So why did I take that lie as nothing, and not think that maybe all of it was wrong, or at least off? The true answer was I was a child, and as much as I would…
SLIS in the World
Posted November 24, 2021 by Johnna Purchase
Welcome to our new feature, SLIS in the World, where we will be interviewing alums to see where in the world they are now, what they’re doing with their library degree, and what they loved the most about their time at Simmons. When people think of job opportunities post-graduation, they tend to think of roles like “middle school librarian” or “reference librarian.” Cybersecurity research tends not to be anywhere on the list of imagined roles, but for our inaugural alum, that’s exactly what her work at Forester involves! We’re happy to welcome to the blog Isabelle Raposo, a DYO (“Design Your Own”) concentrator who, after following her various passions through this flexible concentration, now describes herself as a “Swiss Army Knife” librarian ready to tackle all sorts of information needs after graduating in 2021. Read on to learn more about Isabelle’s work experience, favorite courses, and best study hack! The DYO track at Simmons allows students a lot of flexibility in how they shape their studies. How did you approach completing the DYO concentration? I…