Take Me Out to the Ball Game
Posted May 2, 2015 by Samantha Quiñon
Even though I’ve been living in Boston for almost a year now, I have yet experience and do many things that are quintessentially “Boston”, which is to say touristy in the best possible way. So I have made a list of things that I want to do this summer, including walking the Freedom Trail, taking a Duck Tour, walking around the Public Garden, and going to the North End for Italian food. On Wednesday, I had the opportunity to start crossing off things on my list early by going to a Red Sox game. I went with my boyfriend and his friends to a night game at Fenway Park where we drank and ate overpriced park food and beverages, sang along to “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”, watched a proposal on the JumboTron, bopped around in our seats to cheesy walk-up songs, and saw the Green Monster/Monstah (the legendary left field wall) in person. Attending classes at the main campus means that I’m constantly in the heart of the Fenway, just blocks from the stadium. While I’m often…
Link Roundup
Posted May 1, 2015 by Alison Mitchell
Here’s a wrap-up of library- and book-related links people have sent me recently. As I’ve said before, no one ever did this when I practiced law or worked in state government… TIME’s 100 Best Children’s Books. I like all kinds of “best” lists, mostly because it’s fun to see what other people think is “best” and how that relates to my personal idea of “best.” This list is pretty comprehensive, but I don’t love the format (you have to click for each book, the Time banner obscures the top of each title, and every few books you’re stopped for an ad — what’s up with that, Time?). Top Ten Most Challenged Books in 2014. You’ve probably seen this list, originally from the ALA’s most recent State of America’s Libraries report. The ones I haven’t read are definitely going on my summer reading list. Boo, censorship! Library Partnership. A friend teaches an online course for high school history teachers that focuses on using primary sources in the classroom. One of her students is involved in this…
The task of getting…
Posted April 26, 2015 by Jill Silverberg
Getting into a library I mean. Normally this isn’t something that most people would assume would be a difficult task, and yet, depending on where you go, it can be a herculean effort. A few years back my uncle and I decided to spend a day in New York City. Since I had just recently decided that I wanted to pursue a M.S. degree in LIS, my uncle wanted to celebrate by showing me the library of his former grad school, Columbia University. As a then student worker in my undergraduate’s school library, I was accustomed to the idea of non-students visiting a school’s library. Sometimes it’s tourists, other times researchers. In the case of where I worked, it didn’t matter who you were; the library was part of the local community. Considering this, you can imagine my surprise when we arrived at Columbia’s library and were stopped at the door. “Sorry, only students and members of the faculty can enter,” said the guard. “Well,” my uncle replied back, “I am an alumni of the…
LibraryThing, My New Love
Posted April 24, 2015 by Alison Mitchell
There’s a lot to love about libraries, and there is definitely a lot to love about LibraryThing. Maybe some people knew about this fabulous program before SLIS, but I didn’t. When Candy Schwartz assigned a small LibraryThing project in 415 my first semester, my mind was basically blown. Oh, the possibilities! This semester, I used an assignment in 488 to do what I really wanted with LibraryThing, creating a website that weaves book recommendations through my personal and professional background. As part of the project, I cataloged over 400 children’s, adult fiction and nonfiction books with basic tags that I plan to refine over time. I’m only inputting books that I’d actually recommend to someone else — believe me, there were many that didn’t make the cut. I went through our library history, my old journals, all our bookshelves, fifteen years of my book club booklists, and my older daughter’s near-encyclopedic knowledge of everything she’s ever read. What a trip down memory lane. Even better than the fun of cataloging the books is the fact…
Semester is Almost Over
Posted April 23, 2015 by Hayley Botnen
As I’ve mentioned before, April is a crazy month for me. What I forgot about was the fact that registration and the end of the semester were also both approaching. Registration always brings challenges and stress along with it. This semester, I completely forgot my registration time. Twelve hours later, I remembered in a panic and hustled to our registration site. I managed to get into two classes easily, but one already had a waiting list of 8 people! I try to remind myself not to stress. I try to tell myself that even if I can’t get into the class (which I think I will because the school tries to work with people) that it’s alright. I can extend school by a semester and my life will still be alright. But I still spend a lot of time freaking out. I also have like 8 projects due in the next week and a half which I keep trying to prioritize in order of due date, but it’s stressful. I’m excited for summer and the…
Website Launch and Other Odds and Ends
Posted April 18, 2015 by Samantha Quiñon
Last week at my cataloging internship at the American Archive for Public Broadcasting (AAPB) at WGBH Boston, our website launched and went live. This has been a long time coming and many, many people worked very hard to make this happen, so I wanted to take a minute and share it with you. Understandably, we had a party at lunch. I basically only ate cake and powered through the afternoon on a sugar high from the excellent buttercream frosting. Here’s a link to the AAPB, so you can see the results and learn more about the project I’m working on: http://americanarchive.org/. This week was busy, but I managed to break my routine a few times. First on Tuesday, I went to happy hour at a near by bar called the Squealing Pig. The event was sponsored by the SLIS Student Chapter of the Society of American Archivists (SCoSSA), and there was all sorts of good food and good company. It was a nice mid-week break. Later in the week, I had an interview for an…
Library as Remembrance
Posted April 16, 2015 by Hayley Botnen
Yom HaShoah or Holocaust Remembrance Day began Wednesday night and goes through tonight. I was struck by the timing of one of my class assignments, and it made me consider the many ways in which libraries are the place for cultural heritage and remembrance. For one of my classes, I am required to design a text set around Lois Lowry’s Newbery award winning novel, Number the Stars. The novel follows a young girl and her Jewish friend at the beginning of the Holocaust. I focused on the ideas of risking one’s life to save another person’s and the many ways in which people act courageous. I found a wonderful amount of books, but at my library, they were tucked back in the stacks. There were a small amount pulled in the teen section, but the children books were focused on spring titles. I wonder if children librarians felt that the subject matter was too dark or depressing for young kids. As someone who wants to work with kids and teens, I was surprised by this…
LIS Career Fair
Posted April 15, 2015 by Jill Silverberg
Yesterday afternoon, a project I started about four months ago came to an end. Since January, I have been working closely with the Career Education Center and the School of Library and Information Science to put together a career fair for the SLIS student population. While the process was long and certainly not without its surprise twists, overall, I am very grateful that I was tasked with being this year’s LIS Career Fair Coordinator. For those of you who didn’t get a chance to read an article published at the end of March where I answered questions about the career fair and the preparation process, I won’t bore you with the details. You can find the link to the article here. I will say that one of the most important parts of being the LIS Career Fair Coordinator was ensuring that I had invited exhibitors that represented the various fields within the world of Library and Information Science. Fortunately for Simmons, Boston and the greater Boston area is rife with all sorts of information institutions. Once…
Girls Wanna be with the Girls
Posted April 12, 2015 by Samantha Quiñon
We have two weeks left in the spring semester. Two weeks! But is that going to keep my friends and me from going out when we have course work and final projects looming over us? Absolutely not! I’ll keep this brief, because now that I’ve spent all of today procrastinating my work, I should probably start doing it. (Well, I probably should have started doing it at the beginning of the term, as recommended, but it’s too late now.) Here was our day in pictures: Brunch at Scollay Square. Evidence of cocktails omitted. Me and fellow SLIS student Amanda Baker, Massachusetts State House in the background. Photo courtesy of Samantha Quiñon, all rights reserved, 2015. SLIS student Christina Benedictus “shooting the duck” on Boston Common. Photo courtesy of Meaghan Kinton, all rights reserved, 2015#shoottheduckrevolution And then we went to the movies and saw The Longest Ride, but really we just went to look at Scott Eastwood. He’s a good actor, okay? Meme by Sara Davis.
My Vote is Split
Posted April 10, 2015 by Alison Mitchell
I am a student at SLIS. I have two young children. They take a lot of time and attention. I am their primary caregiver. My first two semesters at SLIS, I intentionally scheduled classes and schoolwork in such a way that it barely impacted my kids. Everything was done while they were at (their) school. Even my library shifts are primarily during their school hours, and a grandparent typically picks them up when I work later. Things are much easier for me when the girls’ schedule isn’t disrupted. Not so much from now on. I’m pretty much done with required courses, which are offered at a variety of days and times each semester. From now on, I’ll be taking classes that are only offered once a semester, or even once every other semester (or even once every two years, but I don’t even want to think about that). This means that I have very little choice as to when I go to school, and my kids’ schedule will now depend on my schedule, instead of…