End of the Semester and End of the Year
Posted December 17, 2020 by William Crouch
Hey everyone. It’s been a long time since I last posted a blog. My semester has been pretty crazy as I imagine everyone else’s has been. Trying to keep up with the election, the pandemic, and continuing classes fulltime has been pretty stressful so I began to limit the amount of time I am on social media each week to basically zero which has been pretty helpful I would say. In my Collective Memory course, our final project was a group presentation on a historical event, person, or group that our understanding of has been affected by the idea of collective memory. My group chose to do our project our Crispus Attucks, the first victim of the Boston Massacre, and how his identity as a runaway slave and martyr helped with the abolitionists and even in the Black Lives Matter protests. In Archival Access, our final project is to create a MARC record and Finding Aid for a collection. We’ve been learning about how to create Finding Aids with XML code and MARC records so…
That’s a Wrap!
Posted December 16, 2020 by Amie Grosshans
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…
The End is Near
Posted December 14, 2020 by Sarah Callanan
Can you believe it’s almost the end of the semester? The end of the semester is always such a crazy time, with due dates and projects. Since my last post, I’ve had two assignments due, and my big semester-long project is due next week. It is definitely crunch time! As I discussed in an earlier post, my semester-long project is the Electronic Resources in Libraries Case Study Project where we do a thorough investigation of an academic library’s electronic resources offering with a partner. My team is investigating the resources of MCPHS University, as that is where both of us work. It’s a huge project—we’ve had to interview the electronic resources librarian, thoroughly investigate the databases, the research guides, the different ways to search the library’s resources, and more. My team has been working really diligently throughout the semester and having regular virtual meetings to check in and go over our project, so we’re doing pretty well progress-wise. I’m not too worried about our actual written report, the thing that I am nervous about is our presentation. I’ve done plenty of presentations at Simmons;…
End of the Semester
Posted December 7, 2020 by Peggy Hogan-Rao
This week has been crazy busy, especially Wednesday. For my first time working almost full time while in grad school, balancing school and work this semester has been hard. And this struggle is only with only one class! Next week is my last weekly meeting for the semester-long group project in my Information Services for Diverse Users course. This project has been an interesting study on how to work with the information needs of those who have low digital literacy skills. Work at the elementary school library is now very busy. Instead of 3-5 kids having library class once a week and checking out books during library class, kids get a book as soon as they return a book. So, if a student returns a book they finished reading on Tuesday, then they will get a new library book when they are back in school on Friday. This is more work for me and keeps me running down the halls to bring books to each of the classrooms! By the time I finished running around…
Almost There!
Posted December 2, 2020 by Amie Grosshans
I’m on to my third (and last!) paper of the semester. It’s not due until December 15 but I want to complete it early so I can get it done and enjoy the holidays. Plus, the assignment has several parts and is better done one step at a time. The assignment incorporates much of what we’ve learned in class throughout the semester, and deals with collections development, which I love. In the first part of the assignment, we choose a library and examine its collections development policy. Each library has a unique collections development policy that explains how it will build its collection. The policy is heavily geared towards the library’s community. For example, a school library will tailor its collections development policy towards its students, and a public library will tailor its policy towards its community. If a community has a large Spanish speaking population, the library might focus on buying Spanish language materials, whereas a community that does not have a large Spanish speaking population would not focus on this area. This is where the community statistics from the census come…
Back to Class
Posted November 23, 2020 by Sarah Callanan
We’ve had some time off from live (Zoom) classes since I last posted, and it’s felt really weird. We had two weeks off—the first week we had off because of the election, and the next week was planned in the syllabus. I’ve gotten really accustomed to the live classes, so not seeing everyone each week has been odd. I know, this is the first live class I’ve taken at Simmons–I should be used to not being in class each week! However, in the absence of live classes, things have been quite busy with some recorded lectures to watch in lieu of being in class, readings to do, and we have two big assignments to work on, not to mention our big semester-long project, as well as registration for Spring 2021! This week marked our return to live classes, and a start to what I consider to be Part Two of LIS 454: Digital Information Services and Providers. Part One was all about learning about different types of databases and search strategies. I’ve briefly spoken about this before, but this was a…
One Month Left
Posted November 18, 2020 by Amie Grosshans
I was surprised when I looked at Moodle the other day and saw that there were only four more weeks left in the semester. It’s only three weeks of class, though, since there are no readings or assignments over Thanksgiving. It’s really getting down to the wire! I have two papers to write between now and the end of the semester, and luckily both of them are very interesting. The paper due first deals with analyzing a fictional library’s collection of young adult materials. To do this, we’ll be using a spreadsheet from our shared Google drive. The spreadsheet is a list of 25 books and corresponding information about publication dates, checkout data, renewal data, and various circulation information. We can use this information to determine a lot of about the collection, including which books are the most popular, the least popular, or the oldest. We can also use it to find areas of the collection that need to be weeded or expanded, or to deduce whether the collection is adequately meeting the needs of the community. But this assignment deals specifically with…
More Statistics!
Posted November 13, 2020 by Amie Grosshans
I was introduced to the fascinating and overwhelming world of statistics in my Collections Development class last year. I used data from the US Census and the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners for an assignment that and got to see a wealth of data about all aspects of libraries. I loved doing that work, so I was thrilled to have another statistics-based assignment for my YA class. This time, I have a new source: the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (MDOE). The MDOE has a ton of statistics about public and charter schools in Massachusetts, including a breakdown of student enrollment by race, gender, and ethnicity; the amount of money spent per student and where that money comes from; standardized test results; and average class size. There is also attendance and discipline information, as well as information about advanced coursework opportunities. Each school also has an “accountability profile” which rates it in relation to other schools in the state. This information is very useful, but also very overwhelming. Luckily, the assignment has clear directions of what information is needed. It involves…
Graduating Soon
Posted November 12, 2020 by Peggy Hogan-Rao
Trying to graduate and get a job is my goal. One of the main reasons I chose Simmons University for my MLIS (Masters in Library Science) is because of the vast network of connections in the Boston area, and the 100% job placement rate for library teachers. Yes, you heard that right: 100%. I had two close friends in the program with me since the start of my studies in 2018, and they were both offered library teacher jobs within two months of graduating from the Simmons Masters in Science SLT program in May. I’ve been put in the deep end struggling to stay afloat with my first library job in a Boston suburb, not too far from where I live in Newton. Creating a new process for book checkout with COVID restrictions (no students can browse the shelves in the library), book returns, safely quarantine the books, and lots of other details that were not a part of the job before COVID-19 came along. The teachers have to get used to having students at…
It’s That Time Again!
Posted November 2, 2020 by Sarah Callanan
We’re coming up on everyone’s favorite time of the semester—registration! We’re going into the registration period for Spring 2021 with a bit more information than we did for Summer 2020 and Fall 2020 regarding COVID-19. When we were registering last spring, it felt like we were going into this huge unknown, and admittedly it still kind of feels that way, but at this point we have a lot more information about what next semester is going to be like both from Simmons and from SLIS. After this semester, I have three classes left so I have to really think carefully about what class I choose for Spring 2021. Here’s the problem: there are a lot of classes that I want to take being offered next semester. As of right now, here’s what interests me: LIS 408: User Instruction and Information Literacy, LIS 414: Special Libraries, LIS 417: Subject Cataloguing and Classification, LIS 445: Metadata, LIS 450: Public Libraries, LIS 490: International and Comparative Librarianship, and LIS 532: Reader’s Advisory. I think I’ll probably end up taking LIS 408—it was my back up class…