Touring the Library of My Dreams
Posted October 18, 2019 by Maria Reilova
A few weeks ago, the Panoptican and Special Libraries Association student groups, put on a joint field trip to tour the Museum of Fine Arts’s library that is located not too far from campus! As a new officer of Panoptican and especially as an aspiring art librarian, I was very excited to attend but also to meet and chat with other Simmons students with similar interests and goals in the library profession. Getting back into the swing of things at the start of a new semester can be overwhelming but I knew this was an event I did not want to miss! While the actual MFA is basically diagonal to campus, the MFA’s library is offsite on Mass Ave by the Symphony T stop. While the main purpose of the library is to be a resource for the museum staff, they are also open to the public Monday through Friday from 1-5 pm. However, the stacks are closed and anyone interested will need call slips in order to view any materials, which I thought was…
Classes and Events at SLIS
Posted October 17, 2019 by Peggy Hogan-Rao
It’s that time in the semester when all you do is study, eat to take a break from studying, and try to get in some sleep. As a library student in the SLT school library program, I need to start preparing for next semester. Next semester, I will be doing my first of two practicums, which consists of 150 hours of student teaching in an elementary and then high school library. I have the placement school picked out, and in a few weeks the paperwork will begin. With my classmates figuring out their course preferences for Spring 2020 registration that happens in a few weeks, it is nice for me not to have to worry about what courses I will be taking. Those in the School Library Teacher concentration at SLIS plan out their course outline in their first semester, and will stand by that course outline as they make their way through the program. The first course I am taking this spring will be a Writing for Children class in the…
Planning for the Future!
Posted October 17, 2019 by Sarah Callanan
We are now in Week 7 of the Fall 2019 semester! When I was watching my professor’s introductory lecture for this week and she said we were halfway through the semester I almost couldn’t believe it! Then, a couple of days ago, the Spring 2020 course schedule dropped. My goodness this semester is flying by! As the Spring 2020 course schedule just dropped, I’m now intensely studying the course schedule, course descriptions, and trying to figure out what my game plan is for next semester (and beyond). Registration isn’t until November, so I have some time to think about what I want to take, and to strategically plan. I mentioned in my last post one of the things I was hoping to get out of my current class (LIS 401: Foundations of Library and Information Science), was to sort of get an overview and introduction of what’s out there in the LIS world and see what I’m interested in before I dedicated individual classes to topics. This class has been really interesting, and I’ve learned…
Live Session!
Posted October 15, 2019 by Amie Grosshans
I had a live session of my Social Informatics class last week, and I really enjoyed it! There were three sessions available, each on different days and times, and we were required to choose one. I chose the evening session that started at 9pm. This made me a little nervous because I’m usually wrapping my day up at that hour, but I’m pleased to say that I made it through without yawning every two seconds. The worst thing about the meeting was that I looked horrible on the camera (laptop cameras do not do anyone any favors), but I’ll take that over a technical malfunction or brain freeze any day. We didn’t do anything major in the live session. It was more about allowing us all to talk and interact in real time. We started out talking about any questions we had about the course or the assignments, and then talked more about how information is transmitted and used. One of the most important themes of this class is recognizing that there is always someone…
Book Bound in Boston
Posted October 10, 2019 by Peggy Hogan-Rao
Perks of living in Boston and being a library school student: meeting famous children’s/YA authors. Just a couple weeks ago, my Writing for Children professor ended class early so a couple students can go meet Rainbow Rowell at Brookline Booksmith. Rowell is the author of Eleanor & Park, Fangirl, and Carry On! About a week ago, Brown Girl Dreaming author Jacqueline Woodson was at Harvard Book Store, and then last Saturday, they hosted R.J. Palacio. If that name doesn’t sound familiar, R.J. Palacio is the mastermind behind the Wonder books, and is known for her character Augie Pullman. Before I was able to meet R.J., I had the privilege of meeting six authors at an amazing awards ceremony and reception for the Horn Book hosted at our very own Simmons University. My Writing for Children professor had strongly encouraged us to attend last Friday, and I’m am so glad she did! While I met so many amazing authors, I unfortunately wasn’t able to meet Angie Thomas, the famous woman behind The Hate U Give. Although…
I’m Back!
Posted October 4, 2019 by Sarah Callanan
It’s been a little while since my last post! At the beginning of August (literally less than 12 hours after my summer class ended) I was in the hospital getting major surgery. Unfortunately, the recovery time for this surgery is rather lengthy, and I’ve been staggering my return dates, but now I’m back in the saddle for school, work, and now blog writing! Woo-hoo! Thus far at Simmons I’ve taken all of my core classes (LIS 407: Information Sources and Services, LIS 415: Information Organization, and LIS 488: Technology for Information Professionals), and two of my electives (LIS 451: Academic Libraries and LIS 404: Principles of Management). I mentioned back in April that I had registered for LIS 421: Social Informatics for the Fall 2019 semester. Since then, I ended up switching classes to LIS 401: Foundations of Library and Information Science. This class was recommended to me when I was talking with someone late last year about switching out of archives, and had the two year projected course schedule that SLIS puts out been…
Connections and Libraries
Posted October 3, 2019 by Peggy Hogan-Rao
With a big paper due this week, I knew I was going to need a few study breaks. On Tuesday night, I went back to Loretta’s for a good workout of fast-paced line dancing. Wednesday was a busy day for me with meeting with a professor for my paper due this week, class, and then a conference called Connect Boston. The first conference of its kind, Connect Boston has a goal of connecting Catholic young adults to like-minded professionals around the Boston area. The event started with opening keynote speeches from the founder of Young Catholic Professionals and the CEO of the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS). After these two opening talks, there were breakout sessions for networking with Catholic professionals in similar fields. As a school library student, of course I went to the education panel. As I expected, I was the only library student in a room full of teachers. The three panelists in my breakout session were a constitutional law professor at Harvard University, the headmaster of St. Benedict Classical Academy…
Putting Theory into Practice: Tackling Information Literacy for Incarcerated Students
Posted October 2, 2019 by Katie Carlson
One of the components for my Information Services for Diverse Users class (LIS 410) this semester is a service learning project. I did a lot of community based learning in undergrad, so this was right up my alley! I signed up to work with the Tufts University Prison Initiative of Tisch College (TUPIT), which brights Tufts faculty and students “together with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, corrections staff, educators, and scholars of criminal justice to facilitate creative and collaborative responses to the problems of mass incarceration.” Because I have a background in restorative justice and a vested interest in the rights of the incarcerated, getting to combine these passions with my library studies was a dream come true! This past Friday, I was able to meet with my project supervisor to get a better idea of what our goals are for the semester. As it turns out, we will be creating an annotated bibliography and miniature lit review on the subject of education and information literacy in prisons, as well as the book to prison…
When to Stop
Posted October 1, 2019 by Amie Grosshans
I had a very busy weekend. I finished most of my digital libraries project and I am very happy with it. The only thing I haven’t done is write up my annotated bibliography, but that shouldn’t take too long. I also spent a lot of time on an assignment for my programming course, which I was not expecting. We have a lab and an assignment each week, and they both take time, but nothing like this. I simply could not get my code to work. I spent more than two hours just on the first question. I tried over and over to make it work. I changed my names, variables, punctuation, formulae, and it still didn’t work the way it was supposed to. It was almost there, but not quite, which was even more frustrating. I decided to take a break and try next question, but I could not get that to work all the way, either. So I put the assignment away for the day. When I picked it up the next day, I…
Lots of Reading
Posted September 27, 2019 by Peggy Hogan-Rao
I was very busy this past weekend getting readings done, and my first written assignment for my YA Library Collections class was due on Wednesday. The assignment was to read a Young Adult book. Figuring out what is Young Adult is the hard part. I went to talk to my local children’s librarian at the neighborhood branch of the Boston Public Library, and she showed me her recommendations for good YA books in the collection. Sitting down with the pile of books, it was hard to choose just one. Instead, I chose to read one for the assignment and bring two other books home to read later. Spending all weekend reading Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass by Meg Medina was quite fun, especially when you can lounge in the library’s comfy chair. But after reading that, I realized I have another task to do. When I was in the library this weekend, I saw a teen hanging out in the adult section and the teen section. I asked her to show…