Guest Blog Post – MLA Conference Experience – Professional Development
Posted June 13, 2019 by Lindsey Clarke
Hi Everyone! We are lucky enough to have a fabulous guest post from one of our current students in the program — Kerri MacLaury. Kerri was kind enough to share with us her input on the recent MLA conference she attended. I hope you enjoy this exciting guest post! One of the reasons why I chose to attend Simmons University’s School of Library and Information Science program was its support of students’ professional development. Every fiscal year, each SLIS student, courtesy of the Library and Information Science Student Association, receives $250 which they can put toward various professional development activities. Funds can be used to be reimbursed for professional association dues, workshop or conference fees, and travel and lodging expenses. This year I considered using my funds to pay for American Library Association, New England Library Association (NELA), and Massachusetts Library Association (MLA) membership dues, but ultimately decided to use the funds to attend the MLA conference. I made that decision because I know that I will remain in Massachusetts at the conclusion of my…
Summer Reading
Posted June 12, 2019 by Sarah Callanan
Summer Reading Summer is here! My summer class (LIS 404: Principles of Management) doesn’t start up until next week, but the course materials are online, so I’ve been trying to get head start by looking at the readings and seeing what my assignments are. I remember how busy last summer was as summer classes at SLIS are shorter than actual semester-long classes (my summer class this time is only seven weeks long). Even though I’m looking ahead to my summer class, I’ve been enjoying my last few days of summer break by reading and relaxing. I’ve been reflecting on what I used to do during summer break when I was a child. One of my favorite activities was the summer reading program at our public library. I was a voracious reader as a child (I still am–not an uncommon trait for someone in the SLIS program), and I not only did the summer reading program at the library, but also at all of our local bookstores. One of the reasons why I’ve been thinking about…
Finding and Landing a Summer Internship
Posted June 7, 2019 by Maria Reilova
I had been worried about finding another job or internship over the summer months since I knew that I was going to be staying in Boston the whole time and did not want to just laze about until my South Korea trip. To be honest I was applying to almost every viable job that was popping up on Jobline. I was lucky enough to be asked to interview for 3 positions at 3 very different libraries. It was a hectic fews weeks in terms of every job I applied for emailing me at the same time, while I was also dealing with my general classes and internship deadlines, in addition to also preparing for a trip home to run the Star Wars 5k at Disney World! It was a lot to handle, but I somehow made it through with only slight strain on my sleep schedule (it is always those 5am flights that are the cheapest unfortunately). Which leads to my big news, everyone…I scored my first job in a real library! This is huge…
Reading and Volunteering
Posted May 20, 2019 by Peggy Hogan-Rao
It has been about two weeks since classes ended for the semester, and I celebrated with friends last Thursday in a bit of an unusual way: by giving out food to the homeless. Back Bay Mobile Soup Kitchen is a group organized through St. Clement’s Church, located on Boylston Street in the Back Bay area of Boston. A couple of SLIS friends and I met at six a.m. in front of the church, and we prepared to go out into the streets. Carrying bags of bananas, granola bars, sandwiches, socks, and water bottles, the group of us enjoyed conversations with the people we encountered while handing out whatever they needed from the items we had on hand. I hope to volunteer with Back Bay Mobile Soup Kitchen on a weekly basis this summer. Back Bay Mobile Soup Kitchen is just one way to get involved in volunteering when I am not swamped with studying. After my friends and I volunteered in Back Bay, we went out to dinner in the Prudential Center. The Prudential Center…
Fourth Class: Complete!
Posted May 15, 2019 by Sarah Callanan
Last week was my final week of class! My fourth semester, and fourth class of grad school is over! I’m done with LIS 451: Academic Libraries! I originally thought it was a bit strange having our big final group project due, and then having one final week of class with lectures, readings, and participation after that, but as our final week was about academic library careers and job interviews, as well as future trends in academic libraries, I think it was a nice way to wrap up the class. In all of my other classes, the final week has been this big stressful build up, and then I turn in my final project, and then that’s it, we’re done. While sometimes that’s very cathartic, I really appreciated the opportunity to reflect and think ahead in the final week of this class. I ended up completing my final week of class on the road because I’m currently on a short summer break for my job! Yay for intersessions! As I work in an academic library, I’m…
Trying my Hand at Student Leadership
Posted May 13, 2019 by Maria Reilova
Taking online coureses this semester has been really great in terms of flexibility in my schedule for my part-time job, and for my internship, but it has been not so great for socializing and being involved at campus events. Since I did not have to come to campus as often for class or meetings for group projects, I spent way more time these past few months in my bed then I’d like to admit. So to get out of my comfort zone and really try to challenge myself, I decided to run for a leadership position in Panopticon,(the student art librarianship student organization). Which means you can now call me Madame Secretary! I knew I wanted to get more involved since time is going by so fast and I want to experience as much as a can in grad school before it’s over! Panopticon has always been the student group I have been most interested in, and I am so excited to now be a part of their leadership team. Having a background in art…
(Graf)fiti Walk
Posted May 13, 2019 by Katie Carlson
Lucky readers, this week you get to hear about (and see) Panopticon’s Graffiti Walk with Ann Graf from two points of view because Maria and I both attended! When I saw the Graffitti Walk advertised in the weekly LISSA email update, I knew I had to make it a priority. I took LIS 415: Information Organization with Profesor Graf (along with Maria), and was fascinated when Ann told us about her thesis. Ann’s research looks at controlled vocabularies (retrieved from the Getty Research Institute’s Art and Architecture Thesaurus) and the description of art (especially graffiti and street art), so she was the ideal person to lead this walk! Everyone met at Brookline Booksmith (except for me, due to a late start), and meandered down Harvard Ave in search of anything tagged with spray paint. When I eventually met up with the group, we wandered down side alleys and behind businesses in search of street art treasure! I’m surprised (but grateful) that no crotchety manager or chef came out to interrogate us! There were plenty of…
End of Semester Reflections
Posted May 6, 2019 by Amie Grosshans
I can’t believe my first semester is over! It sounds cliché but I really did learn a lot. When I first read my course syllabi, I was very intimidated by everything we were going to cover. I had no idea what most of the topics even were, so it’s really gratifying to be able to identify and understand them now. While I might not have mastery over all the concepts, I do feel like I have a strong foundation for my remaining classes. Even better, my brain has started to think like a librarian! I’ve been paying a lot more attention to how the library catalog is set up, examining the call numbers, and thinking about descriptions and relationships between authors and their works. There is a whole complex structure of organization and classification that I never paid attention to before. It’s exciting to be able to “read” and understand some of that code. And speaking of coding, I can’t believe I not only survived but thrived in my tech course. I would not have…
One Week Left!
Posted May 4, 2019 by Sarah Callanan
My final group project for LIS 451: Academic Libraries is done! Completed! Turned in! As I’ve mentioned in a few previous posts, the final project for LIS 451 is a Committee Group Project which you work on with a group throughout the semester. The final product was a written report as well as a recorded presentation. As this is an online class, my group collaborated via Google Docs and presented our project using Voicethread. I was on the Space Planning Committee, where our charge was to assess the current use of first floor space in a library and make specific recommendations for improvement. One of our group members is actually a library director at an academic library (she is a Ph.D. candidate) so we chose to use the library she works at as our model. This project was really interesting and useful as this task is something that a Space Planning Committee could have actually been given in an academic library. Additionally, this project was great in another way that I didn’t think of until…
Wrapping Up Two and a Half Years
Posted May 2, 2019 by Megan Ondricek
Now it really is my last week of class and internship. I’ve watched my long list of school things to do slowly dwindle down to the final item: a paper for metadata due on Monday. Once that is turned in, I’ll be finished. No more homework, no more classes, no more trips to Massachusetts. It has been an action-packed semester that has ended with a bang: last week’s tote bag ceremony at which I was honored as the recipient of the Terry Plum Leadership award, our conference presentation at CLA on Monday, and a part-time job offer at Fairfield University! I find myself in the bewildering position of having achieved everything I set out to do (and more) and feeling a tad overwhelmed and not sure what to do next. My time at Simmons has wrapped up in a manner far more exceptional than I imagined and I feel breathless – as if looking around and thinking, “did I really just do that?” To be honest I also feel like I want to crawl into…