Senioritis
Posted April 4, 2019 by Megan Ondricek
If you haven’t been able to tell from some of my posts, I’ve been battling an extreme case of senioritis this semester. Now that the sun is out and the birds are singing it has become even harder for me to get down to work. I’m sitting outside right now watching my kids play and I just can’t think of anything more interesting to write about. You see, there’s a very small part of me that wants nothing more whatsoever to do with libraries, databases, websites, research, emails, and due dates from the moment I turn in my last assignment of the semester. This really is the final countdown for me, and I am so beyond excited to be almost DONE. Then there’s the question, that I’ve been getting a lot lately, of what I plan to do after I graduate. What I really want to say to people is: “Do I have to do anything after I graduate!? How about just enjoy my accomplishment and not having any more homework?” It’s fine, I know…
We’re In the Home Stretch!
Posted April 3, 2019 by Sarah Callanan
There are exactly five weeks left until the end of my class, and exactly four weeks left until my final group project is due. Not to mention all the other activities, readings, and lectures to be completed. We are in the home stretch! The final few weeks of a semester are always overwhelmingly stressful with assignments and projects, and I don’t know about you, but my school-work-life-sleep balance is very much out of whack right now. Last year around this time I posted some tips for dealing with stress, and I thought they might be useful to repost, so if you want to check them out, click here! My class this semester, LIS 451: Academic Libraries, is so fascinating, and has challenged me in so many different ways. Our semester-long group project (which is due in four weeks), really is a culmination of everything we have learned throughout this class. This project is Committee Group Project, where we all sign up for a committee, and each committee has a task, and we submit a written…
April Showers, Bring Last Half of Semester Jitters (and Good News!)
Posted April 2, 2019 by Maria Reilova
March was a complete blur for me. As cliche as it sounds, I can’t believe it’s already April! March was a crazy month since it started off with Spring Break and I had some major assignments due. To start off though just a quick, little humble brag about how I was able to go over to Scotland to visit a friend there for spring break in the beginning of March. It was an amazing trip full of hiking, pubs, and castles! Oh, and lots of Highland cows (photos for evidence because it’s too cute not to share), which are just as adorable in person! My brain always seems to get a little fried mid semester and being able to take a week to decompression is such a blessing as a student. Speaking of having your brain fried, this may not come as a shock to many, but grad school is hard, and in my personal opinion graduate level online courses are even harder. So coming back from break was a little rocky at first! Don’t…
Changing Direction
Posted April 1, 2019 by Amie Grosshans
Let’s take a trip down memory lane to when I was applying to college for the first time. I had several conversations with my dad that went like this: DAD: You should major in computer science! ME: Ugh, no! I’m artsy, not techy! My dad is a computer engineer (happily retired now, although still the go-to computer troubleshooter for everyone in our large extended family), and he wanted me to major in something useful that could get me a job after graduation. I, on the other hand, wanted to major in something that I enjoyed, like history and writing. I majored in art history and ended up working at an accounting firm, which was not what I was expecting, but I have no regrets. I’m bringing this up because I had a full-circle moment last week. I decided to switch out of the archives concentration and into a design your own concentration focusing on…drumroll please…computers. Specifically, my focus is going to be on digitalization, digital libraries, and programming. …
Mind Over Metadata
Posted March 28, 2019 by Megan Ondricek
Okay, okay I’ve been dying to use that phrase for a while, and now I finally have a blog post worthy of it! My metadata class has really been picking up speed and intensity. It seems like every week is a new standard to learn. So far we’ve done Dublin Core, XML (more of a markup language than a metadata standard), Cataloging Cultural Objects (CCO), Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS), and design-your-own metadata schema. And we’re just over halfway through the semester! I figured I would learn a lot about metadata in this class: what it is, what it does, how to use it, how to create it, etc. What I did not figure was how much coding and actual metadata creation we’d be doing. It’s a lot. Do not take this class if you do not enjoy coding! Fortunately, I do enjoy coding. It is something I never thought about before library school and now feel pretty comfortable with. For those of you who either want to do lots of coding or want to…
Stress
Posted March 26, 2019 by Amie Grosshans
Remember when I wrote about being a bit bored on spring break? I knew that would come back to haunt me. It’s been super busy lately and I could use some of that free time! It’s been crazy at work and the past few weeks have been exhausting. All I want to do when I get home is sit on my sofa and relax, and I can’t right now. But what I can do is be a little more flexible about my study schedule to make sure I don’t get too overwhelmed. Up to this point I’ve been getting most of my work done during the week. The main reason for this is because I hate procrastinating, but the other reason is because I need my down time. I can’t work for hours or days in a row with no break. I know some people can do this, but I am not one of them. I get too stressed out and my brain turns to mush. It’s really important for me to spend most of…
Book Talk Beats Bed
Posted March 25, 2019 by Katie Carlson
Sometimes, as a student with a mishmash of jobs and an objectively messed up sleep schedule, it can be hard to find the motivation to go to SLIS events, even if they are right up your alley! This Tuesday was one of those days where I just needed a nap. I was ready to trek to the bus, journey home, and wrap myself in covers. But, at the invitation of my friend Lee, I powered through and ended up at Professor Jeannette Bastian’s talk on her new book: Decolonizing the Caribbean Record: An Archives Reader. I’m so glad I went! In undergrad I took a slew of courses on colonization in Latin America and Caribbean women writers that changed my entire outlook on life. This event, put on by the Student Chapter of ALA International Relations Round Table (SCIRRT), brought me right back to those amazing classes! Professor Bastian’s background as the Territorial Librarian of the United States Virgin Islands from 1987 to 1998 means that not only is she an expert on the subject,…
Library Instruction: What I’ve Learned
Posted March 21, 2019 by Megan Ondricek
Last week I had my final “big” teaching day at the internship: a packed morning with three classes in a row. I’ve now taught the same lesson to eight unique sections belonging to four unique faculty members. While I in no way consider myself an expert, I do feel qualified at this point to talk about some of the big things I’ve learned through this experience. 1. It’s okay to be nervous. Experiencing nerves does not mean that you are doing something wrong or are not up to the task ahead. I’ve heard from several experienced instructors that they still routinely get nervous. For me, my nerves generally fade away once the class is underway and I get into the “flow” of the lesson, but they can still show up again at seemingly random moments. 2. Every class is different. Even though I had the same lesson material for eight classes, each one turned out a little different. I asked different questions, said different things, and spent more or less time on certain parts of…
It’s That Time Again!
Posted March 20, 2019 by Sarah Callanan
It’s the most wonderful time of the semester…registration! Not only is it registration time for Summer 2019, in just a few short weeks it will be Fall 2019 registration, so it’s time to think about that as well. Here’s my dilemma, and if you’ve read some of my past posts, you know a little bit about this. When I came to Simmons, I started in the Archives Management program, and I created my course planning roadmap under the impression that I was going to continue in Archives Management. I also decided to take my first class, LIS 407: Information Sources and Services online, whilst fully planning to take the majority of the rest of my classes on the ground in Boston. Then, I got a job not in Boston and realized that I may not actually want to continue on the archives track, so I’ve been taking classes one at a time online, hoping that there will be an in-person class that will mesh well with my work schedule and that I will figure out…
Group Project Musings
Posted March 19, 2019 by Amie Grosshans
There’s some weight off my shoulders this week because I finished my first group project. It wasn’t just my first group project at Simmons, it was my first graduate level group project ever! I was pretty nervous about it. Since I’m taking the class online, I had no idea how we’d choose partners or topics or how we’d actually work together. But everything went surprisingly smoothly. The project was for my tech class, and we had to create a tutorial on a new app or program. Choosing groups ended up being easy because we chose by topic and proceeded from there. I chose to work on the Raspberry Pi, which is an inexpensive little computer that you can use to learn coding and other programming skills (if you want to check it out, you can go to the website www.raspberrypi.org It is really fun!). Our first assignment as a group was to fill out a Team Contract. This was extremely helpful because it forced us to think about all the logistics of group work: how…