End of the Semester is Coming!
Posted November 14, 2019 by Peggy Hogan-Rao
It’s getting to the end of the semester, which for means lots of school visits for someone in the School Library Teacher program like me. I started off my week at Watertown High School early on Monday morning. Even with leaving my house a little after 7:00, I didn’t get to the high school library until almost 7:45. Surprisingly, the library was quite crowded! I spent a few hours taking notes on how teens were using the library for an assignement for my YA Library Collections class. It was interesting to see that no students were checking out books, but rather making use of the technology resources in the library. Some of the technology that I observed students using were Vinyl sticker printers, 3-D printers, poster printers, copiers, Chrome Books, and Chrome Book chargers. My Tuesday was not spent at a school, but I did make a quick visit to the public library in my neighborhood’s town square. I visited the children’s librarian there, who helped me to find some more nonfiction picture books in…
Registration Time!
Posted November 13, 2019 by Sarah Callanan
Guess what time it is? Registration! This is Registration Week for SLIS! I have officially registered for the Spring 2020 semester! Woo! I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was working on going through the course description list and the two year projected schedule, and I’ve been trying to think about what I want to get out of the rest of my time in my program here at SLIS. The whole registration process has always been a bit stressful for me for a few reasons: not every class is taught every semester, and then some classes are only taught in specific locations specific semesters or are only online or only in-person, and then adding in the fact that I’m only taking one class at a time it can feel like if I don’t jump on an opportunity to take a class now I will miss my chance. It was a bit easier when I was taking the core classes (LIS 407, LIS 415, and LIS 488), because those are taught Fall, Spring, and Summer,…
Reality Check!
Posted November 12, 2019 by Amie Grosshans
I couldn’t believe it when I logged into my classes this week and saw that it was week 10 of the semester. By the time this blog is posted, it will be week 11, and there will be less than a month left in the semester. Yikes! So of course, I’m focused right now on all the projects I have to complete before then. I have two papers and a small group project to finish, as well as my ongoing project work for Digital Libraries. I don’t have any projects for my Intro to Programming course, but that’s because each week there are several very time-consuming labs to complete. I’m thankful there’s not an extra project on top of that because that would be a little too much to handle. As usual, I want to try and finish some projects early if I can. I think this is especially important for this semester because of all the holidays coming up. This is my first Fall semester, and the first time I’ve had to think about…
Welcome to William!
Posted November 11, 2019 by Lindsey Clarke
We have added William to our blogging team. A little about William from his bio: “Hi everybody, I’m William Crouch. I am from Denton, Texas and moved up to Boston in September 2019 so that I could experience a real winter. I am part of the History and Archives Management Dual Degree program. I chose to attend Simmons because of the opportunity to get a strong education in both History and Library Science at the same time. I completed my undergrad in 2019 at Austin College (Go Roos!), a small school in Sherman, Texas, where I spent most of my time playing for the Roos Tennis Team. In 2018, I had the opportunity to work at Walt Disney World through the Disney College Program and found that I wanted to further my career with Disney. I wanted to use my love for history at Disney and found the Disney Archives which led me to a Library Science program. In my free time, you can find me watching tennis, playing video games, or exploring the many…
Influencer for a Day?
Posted November 8, 2019 by Katie Carlson
On Monday, October 28th, I was thrown into the world of large scale social media, as I was put in charge of Simmons University’s Instagram story! EEEK! While longtime readers know that I was a blogging queen back in the day, I only have 710 followers on insta, and had NEVER posted an original story — only shared content I was tagged in. I logged into the Simmons instagram, and suddenly had 6,000+ semi-captive listeners. Let me tell you, it was exhausting. While my takeover was largely authentic — yes, I do sometimes go to the Gardner on my lunch break, but NO I don’t always have on a full face of makeup at 8 a.m. — it took some planning and creativity to brainstorm just how to share my experiences with Simmons’ insta-sphere. I will admit that I definitely had a storyboard for my day, mapped out with what I thought would be good video opportunities. I was pretty proud of my “What’s in the bag????” section, where I went through what I have…
Creating a Digital Library
Posted November 5, 2019 by Amie Grosshans
I wanted to write about LIS 462: Digital Libraries, because it is unlike any class I’ve taken before. It’s not just about studying digital libraries, it’s also about creating one. For our semester-long project, we are creating a digital library highlighting a late 19th century children’s scrapbook. The scrapbook, which was donated to the Boston Children’s Museum, contains drawings of different rooms of a house, with lots of color images that were cut and pasted into the book. There are also a few paper dolls. It’s a darling little scrapbook and I can imagine a little child having a lot of fun putting it together. To handle all aspects of the digital library’s creation, we have a project manager and several committees. These committees are responsible for different parts of the library. For example, the digitization committee scanned, digitized, and posted the scrapbook on our shared class Google Drive. The systems committee is creating the website and layout, the metadata committee is creating metadata for all the images, and the environmental scan committee looks…
Happy (almost) Halloween!
Posted October 30, 2019 by Sarah Callanan
Happy (almost) Halloween everyone! You know, I really think time seems to fly by much faster when you are in school. During the short breaks between classes, time goes so slowly but now it feels like just yesterday we were starting classes, and now it’s almost Halloween. So we’re starting Week 9 of the Fall 2019 semester this week! This week we’re focusing on Evaluating Information Services, which is a really important topic, and it’s really interesting too. I’ve been excited for this week since I saw it on the syllabus–the library I work at did a Library Experience Survey last spring, and hearing about it and the methodology behind it has made me really interested in evaluation. Every library does evaluation and it’s really been interesting to learn more about this topic, and I think I’m definitely going to add LIS 403: Evaluating Information Services to the list of classes I want to take before I graduate. This class has been really interesting so far! Some of the other topics we’ve learned about include…
Librarians are Resources!
Posted October 24, 2019 by Peggy Hogan-Rao
My assignment for yesterday was to bring a picture book of my choice that was published within the last five years, along with 6 assigned picture books, to my Writing for Children class. To prepare for class, I went to my local branch of the Boston Public Library. The children’s librarian there is very helpful for students of all ages. She is a Simmons grad and loves working at the library with the youngest patrons. This is just one example of how everywhere I go in the Boston Public Library – whichever branch I visit – I find a Simmons grad. Hoping to utilize the expertise of the librarian, I told her that I needed an exemplary picture book written in the last five years. I was hoping for a book that could teach me about a picture book’s narrative structure. The children’s librarian searched for notable picture books from 2018, and suggested A Perfect Day by Lane Smith: a hilarious book inspired by animals visiting the author and illustrator’s backyard. Knowing I had a…
Thinking of Spring
Posted October 22, 2019 by Amie Grosshans
Yes, I know it’s only October, but the Spring 2020 course list came out last week and it’s all I’ve been thinking about. I love looking at the course list each semester. There are so many interesting classes I could take! I’m taking two classes in the Spring, and I already know that one of them will be LIS 445: Metadata. I’m very excited for that class, because metadata is the key to many library services and is the foundation of information retrieval. I am curious to learn more about how that metadata is created and how it is applied to different objects. I already have a good foundational understanding of it from LIS 415: Information Organization and LIS 462: Digital Libraries, but I’m looking forward to a whole semester’s worth of lectures on the topic. It should be very interesting. Choosing my second class is going to be tough. I could take LIS 450: Public Libraries or LIS 451: Academic Libraries. Either of those would be interesting because they would give more information about…
Referencing Spook
Posted October 21, 2019 by Katie Carlson
I recently moved from circulation up to reference at the Watertown Free Public Library where I work! It was interning at the reference desk at my local public library in college that sparked my desire to be a librarian in the first place, so it felt a bit like coming home! It’s already been fun to help people that I recognize from working in circ with some of their more in depth questions. My first shift on desk (after my training) was Wednesday night, and I was able to help patrons with flyer making, provided information on literacy classes, completed some reader’s advisory, and updated some bib records. But my favorite thing by far was getting to design a book display! Whenever I do displays, I make sure to showcase the voices of authors of color and of various gender alignments. Displays are a chance to recommend books — even to people who don’t engage with you at the reference desk — and a fun challenge! I wanted to create something spooky, but not overtly…