Spring Courses!
Posted October 28, 2020 by Amie Grosshans
It may be the end of October, but I’m already thinking about January because the Spring 2021 course list is out! And thus beings my analysis (or over analysis, because I’ll be honest, it could be either one) of all the course listings. First off, LIS 458, Intro to Database Management is indeed being offered online. I’m still undecided about whether I want to give it another chance. I’m leaning towards not taking it, because I don’t think I’m a database person, and because there are a few other options that I think I would enjoy more. There are two classes about digital objects: LIS 448, Digital Stewardship, and LIS 447, Digital Asset Management. I’m not exactly certain what the difference between the two is but they are both taught by the same professor, and I’ll probably send him an email asking for more explanation. I am interested in finding out more about how to manage digital collections, because I took LIS 462, Digital Libraries, last year and really enjoyed it. But that was about creating a digital library, not about managing…
Book Reviews!
Posted October 23, 2020 by Amie Grosshans
This semester we are required to write three book reviews and post them to our class Google site. We can read any YA books we want, but one of them has to feature a minority and/or LGBTQ+ character and one has to be a non-fiction or an informational text. There are two parts to the reviews: the first is a very short blurb, two or three sentences, that explains the gist of the book, and the second is a more thorough review. I have written one review so far and am working on the second. Surprisingly, I had a much easier time writing the small blurb than I did the full review. For me, it was fun to think of how to condense the book down to two or three sentences. It forced me to think of the overarching theme of the book and what the main character is experiencing. I knew I only had a limited amount of space to use and that helped me focus on the most important details and themes. I love playing with words, so I really enjoyed…
Skills learned from SLT
Posted October 21, 2020 by Peggy Hogan-Rao
I am so close to being done with my studies at Simmons. When I look back at my courses at Simmons, I feel like all I want to say is thank you. I have one step into the door of working professional and one foot still in the door of graduate student. As I am slowly creeping into the role of a library teacher, I am using the skills that the Simmons School Library Teacher program has equipped me with to be a library assistant in an elementary school library. In my LIS 406 course Management of School Libraries, I learned valuable skills in outreach to the community. When you work in a school library, it is good to partner with local bookshops for book orders, but most importantly the local public library. In the school where I work now, we are working very closely with the public library’s children’s librarian to give children access to information resources. LIS 461 the Curriculum and Instructional Strategies for the SLT (School Library Teacher) gave an overview of…
Project Time!
Posted October 19, 2020 by Sarah Callanan
Can you believe that we are six weeks in to the semester? Six weeks! We’re almost halfway done with the Fall 2020 semester everyone! As promised, this post is going to be all about the semester-long project in LIS 454: Digital Information Services and Providers. Our big project is an Electronic Resources in Libraries Case Study Project, where we split up in to teams to do a thorough investigation of an academic library’s electronic resources offerings and management. We interview the library’s electronic resources librarian and learn more about the workflow, operation specifics and skills needed for managing electronic resources, and learn more about the library itself. We will ultimately write a case study report based on the interview and investigate how the electronic resources are described and introduced on the website, how everything is connected and covered in research guides and tutorials online, and what library services are provided and offered. This project really reminds me of LIS 453: Collection Development and Management, except for this project we are solely focusing on electronic resources and the role of the electronic…
First Weeks
Posted October 14, 2020 by William Crouch
Hey everyone. The current semester is rolling along just fine despite it being an unusual one compared to a typical SLIS semester. As I’ve been taking more archives focused classes, I’m starting to gain a better grasp of the fundamentals of the profession. In my class LIS440 or Archival Access, I’ve learned about many of the key principles of being an archivist. Some of them are ones that are building off of concepts I learned in previous classes about describing metadata and how you describe items within your archives. In addition, I’ve been learning about how to categorize items within an archive by series or collection level which builds off of previous librarian concepts like Work, Expression, Manifestation, or Item levels. It’s going to be a pretty important class for understanding how to use an archive as both an archivist and a user. In another class, LIS 441, Archival Appraisal, I’ve been learning about how to best conduct appraisal within an archive. Appraisal is such an important part of the profession because it has to…
Compare and Contrast
Posted October 14, 2020 by Amie Grosshans
I’m still feeling a twinge of disappointment after dropping the database class but overall I’m having a much easier time keeping up with schoolwork, and I’m a lot less stressed. So, yay! I’m also really enjoying being able to focus on a single class. This week’s topic in Collections and Materials for Young Adults was particularly interesting, as we focused on young adult non-fiction adaptations. We had to read Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi and its YA adaptation, Stamped by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi, both of which chronicle the history of racism in the United States. While I read a lot of YA fiction, I don’t read YA non-fiction at all. Truthfully, I never gave too much thought to the genre before this week. I thought most young adults would gravitate towards reading adult non-fiction, because that’s what I did when I was younger, but that’s not the case for everyone. I happen to love history and biographies, but I know they can be boring, depending on the author and style. So adapting adult non-fiction for young adults makes a lot of…
A Tough Choice
Posted October 7, 2020 by Amie Grosshans
I made the difficult decision to drop my database class last week. Since I missed the add/drop grace period, I’ll get a “W” on my transcript, but luckily that won’t affect my GPA. It will, however, affect my graduation date because it was too late to sign up for a different class. Instead of graduating in December, I’ll now be graduating in May. I’m bummed about that because I was so excited to be almost done. In the grand scheme of things, waiting another five months to graduate is not a big deal, but I still feel disappointed. However, I know this was the right decision because I was struggling with this class. I could have pushed through, but ultimately I decided that I don’t have the time or energy to do that right now. I am stressed enough with all the COVID stuff and this class was just adding more stress to my life. Even though it stinks, my peace of mind is already better. Now I only have to focus on one class, and I won’t be extra stressed trying to get everything…
First Weeks
Posted September 30, 2020 by Sarah Callanan
The fall semester is starting to ramp up everyone! We’ve only had three class sessions of LIS 454: Digital Information Services and Providers so far but I feel like I’ve learned so much! We’ve been building on topics that we learned about in LIS 407: Information Sources and Services such as Boolean logic and nesting as well as learning new topics such as database structure and search techniques for specific databases. We’ve started working with ProQuest databases, ProQuest Dialog, and Factiva so far. I’m learning more about the particulars of how to search, and why it is best to search that way. I really enjoy searching so this class is definitely my cup of tea! Now that we’ve had a few class sessions, I can tell you that LIS 454 is very different than other classes that I’ve taken at SLIS before. Then again, I suppose that most classes students are taking this semester (as well as in Spring 2020 and Summer 2020) have been a bit different because of the pandemic. As I mentioned in some of my earlier posts, this was…
Fall 2020 and Welcome Week
Posted September 23, 2020 by William Crouch
It’s pretty crazy to think about how different the start to this fall semester is compared to last year. At this time last year, I was moving to Boston and now the whole world is somewhat frozen with the pandemic while Simmons is not having anything on campus this fall. But that hasn’t stopped us from trying to establish a community for our SLIS students as at the beginning of the month we had a series of digital welcome events for our new students. We had students talk with professors about the upcoming year, meeting with our Simmons librarians to help with research, a meeting for students to get to know each other and chat, and we even had a drawing for SLIS clothing at the end of the week. It was a lot of fun and if any incoming students are hesitant about attending these events the next time we have them, hopefully in person next fall, I would highly recommend going to help establish connections with professors and fellow students before your grad…
Books, Books, and More Books
Posted September 23, 2020 by Amie Grosshans
The semester is still young, but I’ve already read five books for my Young Adult Literature class! I definitely panicked when I saw this on the syllabus. The professor had sent out an email a few weeks before the semester began to let us know that we had to read three books for week 2, but since I signed up for the class late, I didn’t get the news until the first week of class. Thankfully, the books were quick reads, and I had more notice for the two books I had to read for week 3. While it requires a lot of reading, this class has been amazing so far. I signed up for it mainly because I love YA literature, but I also signed up because I wanted to read out of my comfort zone. I’m used to reading books of my choosing. I gravitate towards mysteries, fantasies, and other light reads. This isn’t a bad thing, but I think it’s important as a librarian to be familiar with all types of books. I wanted to get familiar with books and…