On Catching Up, Belonging, and Library Stats
Posted June 29, 2017 by Megan Ondricek
As I wrote my last post it seemed as if summer was just beginning, and now I am watching the longest day of the year fade away over the endless, undulating lines of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I am in Virginia right now, and I can’t get over how awesome it is that I can be on vacation in the middle of my summer class at Simmons. I love this blended format. The days are sliding by just as summer days should, and I find my time agreeably divided between homework, leisure reading, and hiking. I’ve made several visits to my old library, the one I’m using for my assignments, and it has been so fun to chat with the librarians again now that I’m in library school. Suddenly I find myself interested in and caring about topics that had never crossed my mind back when I was the library assistant: things such as acquisition policies, weeding strategy, and the future of information literacy education at the university. The director and I had a…
Hellooo Summer!!
Posted June 7, 2017 by Megan Ondricek
June – the first real month of summer – has arrived and my summer class at SLIS West is almost two weeks underway. In the time since I last wrote, I have enjoyed about a month of no classes, took a family vacation to my beautiful hometown in southwestern Virginia, celebrated my 29th birthday, hosted my parents and little brother for Memorial Day weekend, and read two books in rapid succession (should’ve read more). It was a pretty glorious break. Just look at this picture I snapped from the Blue Ridge Parkway overlook down into my valley: Getting out of Connecticut every so often is good for my soul. I like a lot of things about where I live, but I’m a small-town, mountain-loving girl at heart, and Fairfield County, CT is just a little too urban, a little too crowded, and a little too rushed for my tastes. But I love the opportunities I have here, especially the opportunity to attend Simmons! Let me tell you about my summer class, LIS 453 Collection Development….
One Rather Late Semester Wrap-up
Posted May 5, 2017 by Megan Ondricek
So… it’s been a few weeks. My first semester of grad school ended five days ago and since then I’ve been processing, and recovering, and “making it up” to my family. Those last two weeks of class were kind of a whirlwind. And even though I had jotted down ample notes for a blog post, I just couldn’t take the time to sit down and type one out. I poured all the time I could into my final projects and trimmed everything “non-essential,” or at least able to be put off for two weeks. I scrambled around doing the bare minimum to take care of the kids and the house and let me tell you: bare minimum is not pretty. The kids (aged 4 and 2) were super great considering my parenting could be described as something resembling benign neglect. Or in other words, “Have some goldfish for dinner and watch all the TV you want and sleep in your clothes tonight.” I still shudder now to think of it and it was all I…
My last blog post: Thoughts on education
Posted April 24, 2017 by Amanda Pizzollo
This one’s going to be a bit weird, but you know, so am I. So it’s fitting. There’s some mixed info out there, but most agree that the word education comes from the Latin words educare, meaning to bring up and educere, meaning to bring forth. Others say that that Latin educare means to bring out, lead forth. So I think it’s safe to say that education, etymologically, is about expansion and growth. Not the colonial concept of expansion and exploration- that of imposing your culture on others, but the expansion of our minds and therefore our very selves, whatever makes us a self. I was at Amherst Explorations, an event that celebrates Amherst College student successes of the academic year, when one bright student presenter brought up this etymology and the idea of education as bringing out, leading forth; that concept of shifting & expanding the self. I call him bright not only for the obvious usual meaning adjectively: that he is quite smart; but for another reasons as well. The Amherst College motto is Terras Irradient, “let them enlighten the lands,” and…
Dig Libs & Graduates
Posted April 18, 2017 by Amanda Pizzollo
My graduation is approaching and all you devotees to my snippets on this blog (hi Mom!), know that senioritis is really setting in for me. Actually, it has been there all semester pretty much, which is a little crazy since my graduate school experience has only consisted of 5 semesters, counting the summer when I took classes. So 1/5 of my time in grad school has been under the haze of senioritis. Aren’t humans funny little things when it comes to anticipation? Anywho, I thought in this blog post I would use that senioritis focus and combine it with something I love to do- scour digital libraries for interesting ephemara, artificats, letters, pics, etc. So here you are blog followers and compatriots! The wonderful world of graduates as seen through collections in digital libraries around the states. (note: I excluded videos & sounds in collections, but that’s also a fun ride if you enthusiasts want to go exploring. Many of the sites cited below also have such materials available on the interwebs). …
Whole-self Librarianship
Posted April 13, 2017 by Megan Ondricek
I learned passion and enthusiasm from my dad. My dad is a college English professor and his passions include subjects such as Victorian literature, poetry, Shakespeare, and John Milton. He has other passions as well that he indulges outside of the classroom, like birdwatching and playing the guitar. Both his professional and personal interests make up who he is and tend not to honor the distinction between “professional” and “personal.” His academic interests follow him home from the office, work their way into casual conversation, and inform his worldview. Likewise, his personal interests flavor his teaching style and influence the way in which he relates to students and colleagues. I have observed my dad in his various capacities and positions within the home, at the workplace and in our church and I can tell you he is the same man all across the board. I was reminded of the importance of passion at SLIS West on Saturday. First, there was the lunchtime panel on interview skills with Tom Raffensperger, the Dean of Academic Information Services…
10 things I didn’t expect to learn by becoming a librarian (but I did)
Posted April 11, 2017 by Amanda Pizzollo
1. How to make memes and animated gifs There’s lots of easy ways to make them. My favorite is using Photoshop. DPLA has a list of resources on how to here https://dp.la/info/get-involved/workshops/#gifs and they run a boss contest every year with some great results like this one: (https://dp.la/info/gif-it-up/) 2. How to make book earrings http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Book-Earrings Library fashion is the best fashion, y’all. It’s so much fun, and it’s not all book related. (Though there is a lot of that). 3. What the semantic web is I don’t know that I’d even heard that term before, and in general, I didn’t really get how much of librarianship is about technology and playing well together in the sandbox with every other information provider in the “digital age.” I’m not gonna explain the semantic web here, but it and RDF and linked data and all the good stuff that comes with are super interesting and worth finding out more about if you don’t know about them yet. Oh, on this note, I don’t think I expected to…
Do You Have Time?
Posted April 6, 2017 by Megan Ondricek
Last week, I began a study in the name of science (and academic success)! You see, while counseling with my advisor recently, I was given this handy little factoid that you should expect to spend 10 hours on your coursework for each class, per week (in addition to class time). I had never heard this before! In the following weeks I began to wonder how many hours I was actually spending on my homework. So I decided to pay more attention to my time usage and record hours spent on schoolwork. These are the questions I hoped to answer: How much time do I spend on schoolwork in a week outside of class? How difficult is it to achieve the optimal 20 hours? Are those 20 hours sufficient for completing my assignments? How is my workflow? How efficiently do I work? For the purposes of this study, I have not included activities such as reading/responding to school-related email or writing blog posts as part of “homework time.” This study is in its early stages and…
It’s the Final Countdown
Posted April 3, 2017 by Amanda Pizzollo
* 26 days until I finish at SLIS West (our campus has to end a bit earlier than Boston because we use the Mount Holyoke Campus classrooms) * 26 days until my digital libraries class presents at our graduation party, till I celebrate with SLIS West students and alums for our end of the year celebration, and till I get my special SLIS West tote bag signifying I am an alumna 🙂 * 29 days until I finish my SLIS Boston class * 46 days until I walk at commencement in Boston * 44 days until I figure out what to put on the top of my hat for said commencement (ideas welcome) * an unknown number of days until it really feels like spring * 1, 418 days (if I’m calculated correctly) until Amherst College celebrates it’s bicentennial (I’m the Bicentennial Project Metadata Librarian, so this is an important countdown for me) * and, well, I think this should end here- I’m getting a little nervous counting down the days of my life. My…
Less is more: Small scale librarianship
Posted March 30, 2017 by Megan Ondricek
One of the great things that I love about attending SLIS West is the lunchtime events. Many of my blog posts will probably contain thoughts and reflections from the latest SLIS West speaker or presentation, especially since I plan to attend ALL OF THEM. Part of my motivation for this is the free lunch provided. Listen: I think I’ve had to bring my own lunch only twice this entire semester. This is a great, great thing. The food that they get for these events is excellent. Also, I am like an eager little sponge that just wants to soak up all the library stuff, and this is an easy and convenient way to do it! So, last Saturday we heard from Andrea Bernard, Library Director at the Tyler Memorial Library in Charlemont, MA and one of 10 I Love My Librarian Award winners in 2016. I just have to quote this section from the story about Andrea’s award: “Andrea Bernard will go out of her way to serve her library patrons. Just ask Stephen Ferguson,…