I Wish the Weather Would Make Up Its Mind
Posted April 8, 2016 by Katie Caskey
If you live anywhere in the Boston area, your Facebook feed has undoubtedly been filled with posts about the snow this last week. Either you are an incredulous new-comer to the unpredictability of New England springs or you are a hardened Bostonian, saddened by the reality of snow in April. But now, as I look outside, it’s pouring down rain. The snow is mostly melted, and I am seeing flowers and buds again. Later this week it’s supposed to be sunny and almost 60 degrees…before next weekend’s potential for snow again. However you feel about the weather, I think we can all agree that Boston needs to get it together and make up its mind! I could even get behind snow if I knew it was going to be around for a set amount of time and then be done! I just don’t like all this switching…it’s messing up my outfit planning, my reading selections, even my Panera ordering. After all, who wants to eat a salad when it’s 20 degrees outside? So, to help…
Homework Craze(d)
Posted April 7, 2016 by Tara Pealer
There’s been a little radio silence from me in the past few weeks, but it wasn’t intentional. It’s just that the semester decided to get ridiculously busy. In the past two weeks, I’ve learned javascript over the phone, shown my friends how to write javascript for an assignment, written 12 double spaced pages and four single spaced pages, taken a quiz, and all around tried to keep ahead on my homework. It’s been a very busy few weeks. However, Friday I was able to start to get ahead on my homework, which was a blessing and a half. April, for whatever reason, seems to be a little less crazy, though there’s still a lot to do. For 403, besides the third assignment and the final 25 page paper, I signed up as part of an extra credit Usability team. For 453, I finished my tweets and usage statistics assignment early but still have the final policy to write and put together. 488 still has a paper, the final webpage, some graphics work and a relational database assignment to get started on. Oh, and Camp NaNoWriMo…
Beating The Bug
Posted April 2, 2016 by Amy Wilson
Most of my week was unfortunately consumed by a stomach bug, and I didn’t make it back to work until Thursday morning. Is there anything more frustrating than wasting PTO to be sick? I spent many hours on the couch and felt so miserable that I couldn’t even get ahead on homework. Instead, I watched/dozed through a lot of Jane Austen movies, including Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Becoming Jane, and Mansfield Park. I also got really sick of toast and applesauce. By Wednesday, when I still wasn’t well again, I was starting to freak out because I had presentations in both my classes this week; Wednesday was my individual presentation on a legal research database, and Thursday was a group presentation on reference in special libraries. Luckily I’m not a procrastinator so all my research/design was done, but I knew that there was no way I could make it to campus on Wednesday night.Google to the Rescue: Channeling my inner Rob, I started searching for technological solutions. I quickly found a Chrome plugin called Snagit that would…
Playing the Waiting Game
Posted April 1, 2016 by Katie Caskey
I have good news and bad news. The (very very) good news is that I am graduating in less than 7 weeks! Done! Finished with school! And while I have absolutely loved my time at Simmons, and in academia in general, I am very ready to begin the next (paper- and homework-free) season of life…which brings me to the bad news. As I am learning, this next season may be aptly titled “The Waiting Game.” I’ve been applying to internships and job positions since late January, and so far, no nibbles. The hardest part is that with the company I’m applying to, I can track my application progress on their website. So while I can see that my application is being considered, I have no way of knowing how long that might last or how serious that consideration is. So, I’m having to re-learn the art of patience that was drilled into me by my kindergarten teacher. This is enough to drive a planner like me crazy, by the way. So I’ve decided that I’m…
Food Advertisements
Posted March 28, 2016 by Jill Silverberg
When you are writing a thesis about food, it is almost inevitable that you are going to encounter some pretty interesting examples of food culture. Thus far in my study of American food culture from the 1950s to the early 1990s, I’ve encountered fan letters to Irma Rombauer and Marion Rombauer-Becker the mother-daughter duo behind the Joy of Cooking. Their cookbooks promote a vast array of recipes that utilize ingredients that range from diced vegetables to box Jell-o mixed. By far my favorite thing that I’ve had to analyze in the name of academia is food advertisements from magazines such as Good Housekeeping, Family Circle, and Better Homes & Gardens from the 1950s. These advertisements, which are very much products of their time, offer insight into consumer and food trends from the decade. For my paper, I am analyzing these advertisements as a means of understanding how the food and consumer industry promoted the gendering of the kitchen and the position of the home cook. The following advertisements were found within magazines that are a part of Johnson and Wales Culinary…
Very Special Libraries
Posted March 19, 2016 by Amy Wilson
Last week, while most of Simmons was on spring break, I was on campus every day from 9am until about 3pm. I took the week off of work in order to complete a 5-day, 3-credit course with SLIS legend, Jim Matarazzo. Jim has worked in corporate libraries for decades, and he is the original social networker. I’m pretty sure you could ask about any major company and he will tell you the history of their corporate library and name two contacts there. This class was heavily career focused, extremely practical… and wicked fun! Our assignments for the week included two papers and two (group) presentations. We looked at a set of corporate libraries that had closed and another set that were “successful,” then evaluated how corporate libraries can survive and thrive. We also each summarized a chapter from the textbook (which Jim co-authored). My favorite day of the week was Tuesday, when we did our site visits. We started at the New England School of Law, whose library has an impressive reference staff and a very cozy study space….
SLIS West Career Night at Hampshire College
Posted March 18, 2016 by Katie Olivo
There will be a panel of librarians who are Hampshire alums who will come back to campus and speak about their career trajectories. The event is on Thursday, March 31 at 5 pm in ASH auditorium on the Hampshire College campus, and it is free and open to the community. Come hear about diverse paths and where these librarians landed and the sort of work that they do! Check out the link below for more information: http://sites.hampshire.edu/theharold/2016/03/16/down-the-rabbit-hole-hampshire-graduates-as-librarians/
Voting in the (ALA) Presidential Election
Posted March 18, 2016 by Tara Pealer
I’m not saying that I don’t care about the current Nation Presidential Elections. However, I’m an independent registered in Connecticut, which means I don’t get a vote until November 2017. There is one election I can vote in, and it’s the ALA elections, and I recommend that every ALA member (even students!) vote. If voter turnout is low, the elections can get really tight. The ALA website has a lot of great links and information, and I recommend doing your background research on the candidates. Their biographies and positions are all stated clearly on the website, and the three presidential candidates each have websites for people to view. There are three positions to vote for in this election cycle: President, Treasurer, and Councilor-at-Large. You can even do all of your reading when you’re voting on the website. There’s even a few Simmons Alumni running to fill some of the 34 vacant Councilor-at-Large positions! I worked at the Jim Neal table for ALA Midwinter, but I got to learn about and interact with plenty of the…
Celebrating St. Patty’s Day!
Posted March 18, 2016 by Katie Caskey
I am a sucker for any holiday that gives me an excuse to dress up! Halloween, Valentine’s Day, Fourth of July…all good outfit inspirations. And this week we have another! St. Patty’s Day is the perfect excuse to break out that green t-shirt or scarf, or you could go bold and try mixing some hues for a head-to-toe, Kermit the Frog-inspired look. But you don’t have to limit the green takeover to your own clothing. Our apartment will certainly be decked out in some four-leaf clovers, courtesy of my roommate’s kindergarten-teacher mom. And I plan on doing all my writing with a green pen that day as well. Moving beyond my own little world, I started thinking about how everyone else might be choosing to celebrate the beloved Irish saint this week. Thanks to the wealth of information that is Google, I was able to find some rather unique ways people out there are celebrating St. Patrick. Perhaps the most popular tradition originated in Chicago, where they die the river green every year for the…
MBTA Commuter Rail Survival Guide
Posted March 13, 2016 by Jill Silverberg
As a former New Yorker, I am not unfamiliar with taking rail transport to get to the places that I need to go. With my Archives capstone internship in Providence, I’ve become quite familiar with the MBTA Commuter Rail. Would I say that it’s the best rail transport that I’ve ever taken? No. That title will always be reserved for my beloved Long Island Rail Road (LIRR). I have too many fond childhood memories of the lights flickering off and on while traveling under tunnels to ever consider awarding another train system the top honors. Yet the MBTA Commuter Rail does a perfectly fine job at doing the whole train thing. Most of the time. Listen, no train is perfect; all commuters can hope for is that their train arrives and departs on time. Yet sometimes, things happen, as they tend ton do. Thus far this semester, I have been stuck on a train for almost three and half hour due to Amtrak complications as well as stuck on a train traveling at reduced speeds,…