Change the Subject: Dartmouth Students Take on the Library of Congress
Posted September 16, 2019 by Katie Carlson
What better way to spend Friday the 13th than at school watching a documentary about the weight of — and potential harm associated with — naming as well as the intersections of subject headings and activism? I did just that, settling in for a viewing and panel discussion of “Change the Subject,” which follows “a group of students at Dartmouth College, whose singular effort at confronting anti-immigrant sentiment in their library catalog took them all the way from Baker-Berry Library to the halls of Congress. ‘Change the Subject’ shows how an instance of campus activism entered the national spotlight, and how a cataloging term became a flashpoint in the immigration debate on Capitol Hill.” You can check out the trailer for yourself here. The documentary was fabulous, but the high point was hearing from all of the panelists. Óscar Rubén Cornejo Cásares joined us via Skype. He is a former undocumented student activist who was involved with CoFIRED (Coalition for Immigration Reform and Equality at Dartmouth), and one of the film producers. He is currently…
A Break for Some Fun!
Posted September 12, 2019 by Peggy Hogan-Rao
This week, I tried to have some fun. I was assigned three books to read this week for my YA Library Collections class I spent most of my week studying and reading! The books are: Judy Blume’s Forever; Seventeenth Summer by Maureen Daly; and Looking for Alaska by John Green. I gave myself a goal on Monday. If I could finish all of the readings for my Writing For Children class, and get halfway done with Looking For Alaska, then I would do something fun on Tuesday night. Howdy, cowgirl! Out I went to a country bar. Walking from Simmons to Fenway, I had never realized how “hopping” the area is. Before heading to Fenway on a Tuesday night, I checked to make sure there was no Red Sox game. The crowds out in Fenway Park can get crazy on game night. With no game, I was good to go line dancing. Growing up listening to country music, I was really excited to learn that there is a country bar in Boston. With…
Keeping Track
Posted September 10, 2019 by Amie Grosshans
My first week of the semester went well. Usually the first week is a bit lighter than the rest of the semester, with the professors introducing themselves and giving a basic overview of the courses, and the students answering some forum questions to get to know each other and the course topic. Week two is where the more serious work starts. I certainly have a lot of work this semester, with several group projects, research papers, and presentations. I was overwhelmed when I first read my course syllabi. For my first two semesters, all my classes have followed a similar format, with Day 1 being the first day of class, and Day 7 being the due date for the assignments. I didn’t write down any deadlines, because I knew that I had to get everything done by the end of the week. It was pretty simple to manage. This semester, however, is different. All my classes have work due on Day 7, but two of my three classes have additional work due before the last…
Who Knew Fidelity Investments has a Library?
Posted September 6, 2019 by Maria Reilova
Hello, Student Snippet readers! Long time no see(read?)! Happy start of the new semester, I have had one of the busiest summers of my life this year. For a quick recap: I had to put my on-campus job in the SLIS admissions office on hold since I was working at Fidelity Investments full-time as their Research Services Intern, while also taking Metadata online which was offered this summer as the SLIS travel course to Yonsei University in South Korea! Since I could write about my trip to South Korea for ages, I thought I’d focus my first “back-to-school” blog post, on my internship this summer. I found and applied for my summer internship using the SLIS jobline. I was fortunate enough interview, and be offered the internship at Fidelity Investments in Boston, where I would be working with their research services team. Now I’m sure I am not alone in that I had no idea that Fidelity even had a library, and with it some super cool librarians! Because it was a corporate library, the…
Tidbits of the Week/end
Posted September 5, 2019 by Peggy Hogan-Rao
This has been quite the busy week! I started off my week with grocery shopping, and will finish the week with my LIS-483 “Library Collections and Materials for Young Adults” class. Grocery shopping may seem a very mundane chore, but I love finding new ethnic food shops around Boston. Boston is a city that welcomes people from all different cultures. In Allston, there are Asian food shops and even a market with a few different Asian restaurants called Food Connection. I am not your typical Asian, and most definitely not your typical American. My father is from India, and I was excited to find a huge Indian grocery store in Somerville, a suburb of Boston, so I did another round of grocery shopping Monday evening. Friday evening, I went to Kiki’s Market in Brighton. Kiki’s Market has specialty Irish foods, such as Irish brands of cookies and chocolates. After visiting Ireland only a few months ago, it was nice to see name brands I recognize, and my favorite Irish tea at a discounted price. Most…
Getting Ready
Posted September 3, 2019 by Amie Grosshans
Where did the rest of the summer go? I feel like I just finished my summer classes and now I’m starting my fall classes. I managed to pack a lot of reading and audiobook listening into the past few weeks (my favorite book was Daughter of Molokai by Alan Brennert and my favorite audiobook was Circe by Madeline Miller), which is great because I don’t think I’m going to be able to spare much time for recreational reading from now on. I’m taking three classes this semester and I’m a bit nervous that it will be too much. The good thing is that I don’t have to take three classes, and if I feel that the workload is overwhelming then I can drop a class. I’ll see how this week goes. But I’m very good at setting up a schedule for myself and I feel confident that I can juggle the three classes. Plus, each class seems very interesting and I really don’t want to miss any of them. The class I’m most excited about…
Focus on EBSCO
Posted August 29, 2019 by Katie Carlson
On August 13th I was able to participate in a focus group for the new EBSCO mobile app! I really love workshopping, and this felt like that to the extreme. It was awesome to have a say in a product that I will get to reap the benefits from, as well as pass on to patrons, friends, and future researchers alike. This particular focus group was definitely saturated with library and information science students. I personally knew half of the group members, and recognized most of the others! Involvement in LIS definitely informed our reaction to the EBSCO mobile app. Most people in this section of the focus group entered with an understanding of EBSCO’s products and an interest in user experience (at least enough to sign up for the study). It was great to hear the opinions of other library science students, but I would have also loved more input from people outside the field. Does the average Bostonian conducting research care about how many times a paper has been cited in other academic…
Getting Ready For Fall 2019
Posted August 27, 2019 by Peggy Hogan-Rao
Wow! It is hard to believe there is only one more week until classes start! It’ll be nice to get back into study mode after having a month break. The last few things I need to do before classes start are buy my textbooks for class, buy some notebooks, and get ahead on readings due the first couple weeks. In the School Library Teacher Program (SLTP), students are able to take two electives. I have always loved writing for fun, and one of the reasons I chose Simmons was due to their exceptional Children’s Literature department. (not to mention their very reputable School Library Teacher Program within the Library and Information Science department). My one fun elective for this fall semester is Writing for Children I. Some of my other SLTP friends are taking electives such as Storytelling and Medieval Manuscripts. My one required class for the fall is Library Collections and Materials for Young Adults, where I will learn about how to create and manage a library collection for teens. I am excited…
It’s LIT!
Posted August 6, 2019 by Katie Carlson
The truth is, sometimes I think of myself as a ‘bad librarian’ for how few books I’ve read in the past year! It may even be less that I’m not living up to the librarian stereotypes, and more because I feel like I’m missing a piece of myself! In middle and high school (especially over the summer), I would read two or three books a week. College kind of killed my reading bug. I’d find it almost impossible to read for pleasure after 200-some pages of theory, so Netflix it was! I had high hopes that the ease of reading would fly back to me post-graduation, but that was not the case! One book. I read one book! ALL SUMMER! After Karin Slaughter’s thrilling but terrifying Pretty Girls (highly recommend), I was overcome with moving to Boston, making my first apartment home, and finding a tribe. Kicking off grad school meant more prescribed reading, three jobs, and more exhaustion. But even though summer is almost over, I decided I’d had enough. I work at a…
End of Summer Term, Plus Beach Reads!
Posted July 30, 2019 by Amie Grosshans
It’s the last week of summer term! Yay! I am almost done with all my work. I submitted my final project for my Info Sources class, but I am still finishing my final paper for my Management class. It’s a grant proposal and I’m struggling with it. Grant writing is very different from academic writing. It needs to be very concise and to the point. I love to write and play around with words and sentence structure and having to pare down my language has been tough. I’m focusing on brevity but I’m also worried that I’m not explaining myself enough. I’m sure there’s a sweet spot between too little explanation and too much explanation, but I haven’t found it yet and I’m frustrated. It feels very sparse and cold somehow. Thankfully I have a solid base written out and I just need to make sure that I’m being addressing all the necessary points. But grant writing is something that I am probably going to be encountering in my library career, so it’s good to…