Explaining Archives to the Layperson
Posted January 9, 2018 by Megan Ondricek
I’ve recently returned to Connecticut from a wonderful Christmas vacation with my family in southwestern Virginia. We were there for about two and a half weeks and I was able to meet up with a lot of old friends and family connections. With this came the opportunity to explain what archives is to people outside of the library community. Most importantly, I wanted people to understand why I find archives so fascinating, and why I consider it such a relevant and necessary profession in our modern age. As you can imagine, this can be challenging. Archives isn’t the only profession that is largely misunderstood and difficult to explain to outsiders. Even my husband has a hard time explaining to people exactly what it is he does at his job. During my vacation, I feel like I came up with a strategy that was fairly successful. It would have been easy enough to just give the usual spiel about documenting society, preserving history, connecting people with information, etc. and move on. But I wanted to engage…
Winter Break
Posted December 30, 2017 by Josie Snow
A few weeks ago, before winter break began, I received an e-mail that filled me with trepidation. Enclosed with the message from the professor for my Realism class in the spring was a booklist. The professor suggested that students make sure they are familiar with the twenty books on the list, as they are touchstone books for the subject. Out of the twenty, I have only read three. I had thought I was pretty widely read, but this list revealed just how much I have neglected the realism genre, and made it clear that I had some catching up to do. As a result, I spent my break trying to make sure that I was able to discuss at least some of the books. I was surprised to find the books very engaging and compelling, and as I read them, I was relieved to find that I had read similar things, so I hadn’t completely neglected the genre, I just missed some of the historically significant texts. To my surprise, I was truly enjoying myself….
Finishing My First Semester
Posted December 19, 2017 by Josie Snow
Whew! I made it through my first semester of grad school! Let me tell you, grad school is HARD. I know, I know; grad school is supposed to be hard, but I’m not just talking about academics–which I was prepared for. Grad school is hard in a good way, it’s hard because I have been asked to examine all the things I thought I knew, and verify whether I can still find them true. It’s hard because I am learning new things every step of the way, even when I am not in school, and sometimes it feels like my brain can’t keep up. It’s hard because I’m surrounded by incredible people who have achieved great things and I look up to all of them, but fear I will never be in their league. So yes, grad school is hard; and there are times when I wonder if it was worth it to come, but most days it is hard in a way that also makes me glad I took the chance.
Libraries Are Awesome!
Posted December 7, 2017 by Megan Ondricek
We had quite the festive end to the semester last Saturday with fresh bagels and muffins in the classroom and SNOW!! I realize this is New England where snow is more a matter of course and a mundane winter inconvenience, but I am from Virginia and still firmly in the “snow is awesome” camp. It started around 11 am in South Hadley and I left immediately after class to start my two-hour drive back to CT, where it had started around 8 am. Golly it was a beautiful (albeit messy and slow) drive! I listened to Christmas music and thought about the holidays and relished in my new freedom from homework. This was one long semester, but thankfully the end was much easier than the beginning. With the biggest assignments out of the way I’ve had some time to reflect on what I’ve learned from both my classes. It may not surprise you to hear that in library school you will learn a lot about why libraries are so awesome. I am definitely coming away…
Scholarship Appreciation Time
Posted November 28, 2017 by Giuliana Gilbert-Igelsrud
I’m extremely thankful to have a merit scholarship from SLIS. Every semester (when I take at least 9 units) I receive $6,000 from Simmons; that’s $24,000 over four semesters, which is nothing to scoff at. As a scholarship recipient, I have been tasked to write a short thank you letter; I thought I might post it here. The cost of higher education has absolutely skyrocketed in recent years, and the only reason I have been able to afford Simmons (and with relatively low financial stress) is the SLIS Merit Scholarship. Simmons was one of two schools I applied to that offered me any financial aid, and by the time I received my acceptance letter, had become my top choice. I was thrilled to see that my academic efforts had paid off, literally! I cannot overstate how much I value the unique experience I’m having at Simmons. I’m from California, and I went to UC Berkeley for my Bachelor’s degree, so you can imagine how different it has been living here and attending Simmons. I never…
Ethics in the Library and the Archives
Posted November 20, 2017 by Megan Ondricek
I’ve been enjoying some very engaging readings and discussion in both of my classes the past few weeks, as our units on ethics happened to coincide. According to my professors, the ethics lesson is always everyone’s favorite, and I soon found out why. Believe it or not, the archives and library professions are veritable minefields of fascinating ethical quandaries! As we discussed these topics in class on Saturday, I realized that library ethics are essentially about protecting and enabling people’s right and freedom of choice. We believe that everyone has the right to choose what to read, what to think, what to do, and what to say. We might not agree with their choice, and other people in the library or the community might not agree with their choice, but it is not our place to restrict or pass judgement on that choice. It is important to remember that we cannot know what use a patron intends for a particular book, or what reaction they may have to any given piece of information. Of course,…
A Language of BEEPS
Posted November 17, 2017 by Josie Snow
One of the biggest things I have had to adjust to is the traffic, and the noise that comes with it, especially the horns honking. Each day as I walk to school there are horns blaring, tooting, and bleeping… at first it was all terribly overwhelming, I could not identify any real purpose to it, after all, what difference does it make if you make a lot of noise while you are stuck in traffic? You will still be stuck even if you honk your horn…but slowly I have begun to distinguish between the sounds, and I have noticed that there are patterns to how people honk their horns, and you can sometimes tell what they are trying to say by the noise their car makes: The long drawn out HO-O-O-O-O-O-NK= frustration, usually in the term of “SOMEBODY MOVE!!!! Or “HEY I’M DRIVING HERE!!!” or “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” An abrupt double HO-ONK-HO-ONK= ” STOP THAT (you idiot)” But a quick double-tap Beep-beep= “Hey there” when you see someone you know walking beside the road,…
Don’t Let School Get in the Way of Your Education
Posted November 14, 2017 by Giuliana Gilbert-Igelsrud
One of the greatest benefits of library graduate school that nobody tells you about is the breadth of experiences people come from. Some students are straight out of college, others have been working as librarians for years, and many (like me) are in between. I highly recommend just chatting with the people around you; it can sometimes be more useful than readings and prescribed discussion. Just from chatting with classmates, I’ve learned about the many, many different ways to set up children’s storytime, the radically different administrative structures of rural and big city libraries, the pushback against “controversial” projects from supervisors and the public, and much, much more. I often wish there was a space designated specifically for swapping stories, tips, and resources with classmates and colleagues. We grow so much more as a profession when we share information (I mean, that is kind of our whole deal, right?). Give feedback to your professors related to this. In my experience, they will usually respond graciously. If you find certain assignments unhelpful, tell them. If you have a…
Autumnal Thoughts
Posted November 9, 2017 by Josie Snow
Fall here is very different than fall at home. At home, fall is like a candle, once the leaves start turning, they all turn, and suddenly everything looks gold. Then within a few weeks, most of the leaves are gone and you can feel winter creeping in. Here, the fall smolders like an ember–individual trees/patches change to red or gold, and then lose their leaves. The color spreads slowly, and it is possible to have trees with no leaves next to trees that are still green. In addition, the winter seems to slowly move in as temperatures dip a few degrees each week. It seems more appropriate to call this time Autumn; it really is a season here, not just a single month. So much so that I have begun to separate my clothes into fall-worthy and winter-worthy, which I never had to do at home. I am enjoying this change of pace, there really is something cozy about all the Autumn tones people wear, the scarves, and the light coats, the apples and the…
Connection
Posted November 7, 2017 by Giuliana Gilbert-Igelsrud
At a small college, opportunity for connection is everywhere. Currently, there are under 1,000 students in the Simmons SLIS program, and only about 600 on-campus students in Boston. A small department means more interpersonal connection per capita; now that I’ve finished the core courses, I see the same folks over and over again during the week. When you’re so immersed in a space with the same handful of people, and those people have the same interests that you do, and those people are kind and interesting and great, you can have discussions you may not be able to have elsewhere. Where else would those around me take interest in linguistic gatekeepers, adultism, architectural design, and bias in higher education? I’m grateful to be able to have these discussions every day with people who are passionate, opinionated, and kind. Here’s the secret truth about librarianship: nobody is here for the money, glamor, and prestige, because there is none to be had. My friends in law school and medical school frequently run into folks they don’t care…