The Particularities of Writing for People
Posted April 9, 2015 by Hayley Botnen
As I mentioned last week, April seems to be the month of literally everything being due. My biggest struggle–like every semester–is trying to learn to write for particular professors. I have my own writing style. I use it when I blog. I use it when I do my NaNoWriMo months. I use it in emails and Facebooks posts. I write the same way pretty much everywhere. But when I have to write for class, I try to spruce it up. Most people realize that you speak in different “registers” depending on who you’re speaking with: friends, family, professors, clergy, strangers. This also tends to happen with writing. When I write for school, I try to focus on certain facets of writing which I pretty much ignore otherwise. These facets are generally concepts I’ve been taught in school: don’t use “I” in academic papers, don’t end sentences with prepositions, make sure you have a thesis, avoid passive voice, and other “standard English” rules. However, one thing I always seem to forget is the subjectiveness of writing…
At the Dance Archives
Posted April 4, 2015 by Samantha Quiñon
For a few hours every Thursday I have started to go to the archives of Jose Mateo Ballet Theatre (JMBT), which has its facilities in the Old Cambridge Baptist Church, a beautiful field stone building in the American Gothic Revival style just off of Harvard Square. There, two other SLIS students and I are taking an inventory before processing the collections, as part of a grant-funded project to process the archives of many of Cambridge’s dance companies. Two weeks ago, my first time seeing the JMBT archives, I knew our goal was ambitious. The collections comprise everything from institutional records, to costumes and props, to old promotional material and performance recordings. They are crammed into four large rooms in different parts of the church, much like I imagine industrial-sized, hastily packed storage lockers to be (if such things exist). Battling through the dust and teetering piles of boxes, we have to move records around Tetris style to wind our way from item to item before noting it in our spreadsheet. Admittedly, this style of inventory…
Books: 2015, 1st Quarter
Posted April 3, 2015 by Alison Mitchell
As I’ve written before, I keep a log of all the books I read. I don’t really do anything with the list, though. Occasionally I’ll have trouble remembering an author or title and it comes in handy, but it’s more just something I do for no particular reason. At the beginning of this year, I read Jessamyn West’s blog post about the way she tracks her reading, and decided to give it a try. A cursory look back at 2014 made me think that my reading was pretty evenly distributed between male/female authors, fiction/nonfiction, and authors of color (the categories she tracks). So, for the first three months of 2015, I tracked all that information, sure I would come out with a diverse, inclusive list. I was kind of wrong, and kind of surprised about that. Here’s what I read in January, February and March 2015: Me Before You by Jojo Moyes Kinda Like Brothers by Coe Booth I am Malala by Malala Yousafzai The Art of Stillness by Pico Iyer Not That Kind of…
The Insanity of April
Posted April 2, 2015 by Hayley Botnen
As always, the final full month of a semester is filled with the insanity of every class wanting to fit in the rest of the assignments before class is officially over. I have papers upon papers (seriously, I have 24 papers due in one class this month–short papers, but still 24 of them) and a few rogue assignments as well as discussion board posts. So what do I decide to do? Camp NaNoWriMo. Camp is the equivalent of regular National Novel Writing Month, however, it occurs twice (April and July), and people are free to set their own word count goal. Writers can also work on a variety of works, a novel isn’t the only option. I’ve also been enjoying the presence of two friends who have moved in with me. Hence, my life has become unexpectedly busy. I’ve been enjoying walking with the warm weather. I also started listening to podcasts! I had downloaded several podcasts to listen to during the 43 hour drive from Montana, but I didn’t end up listening to very…
Awful Library Books at the BPL
Posted April 1, 2015 by Alexandra Bernson
Rogue librarianship. That’s what I discovered this past week and it was glorious. I recently had the good fortune to meet a librarian who is subject to scandal in the funniest way possible. While I won’t share the librarian’s name or identity, I did gain permission to tell you all about my new acquaintance’s mischievous antics. Some of you might be familiar with the blog “Awful Library Books.” In case you aren’t, the blog showcases found library materials that are out-of-date, offensive, or just plain weird, making it a great site for a daily giggle. Some recent featured titles include “The Breakthrough Fish Taxidermy Manual” and the curious “The Hospital Doctors, Nurses, and Mystery Workers.” The situation that I share with you began as preparation for this site: as a frequent submitter, the rogue used the Boston Public Library’s tagging feature available in their catalog to keep track of strange titles worthy of future “Awful Library Books.” Anonymously, the librarian added the tag “awful library book” to items that they wanted to scan and submit…
Innovation and Collaboration at Simmons’s Graduate Alumnae/Professional Day
Posted March 30, 2015 by Jill Silverberg
On Saturday, March 21st, I had the pleasure of attending this year’s Graduate Alumnae/Professional Day. The event, a collaborative effort between Simmons School of Social Work, School of Management, and School of Library and Information Science, featured workshops and and award ceremonies hosted by each school’s alumni association. Additionally, the event kicked off that morning with Bill Walczak, president of the Lewis Family Foundation and the Grad Circle Foundation, as the keynote speaker. Bill was one of a handful of founding members of an initiative that helped re-develop the Codman Square area of Boston beginning in the late 1970s. Through the efforts of Walczak and the other members of this initiative, they opened the Codman Square Health Center, a multi-service center which addressed health and other needs of the community. Since it has opened its doors, the health center has become a major factor in the regeneration of the community. During his speech, Walczak discussed the symptoms of poverty and how his work and the work of others since the 1970s have all been directed…
Graduate Student Symposium
Posted March 29, 2015 by Alison Mitchell
My takeaway from the 2015 Simmons College Graduate Student Symposium: I should go to more events on campus. Logistically, it’s easiest for me to come to campus only when I have class, so that’s pretty much what I do. Earlier this winter I submitted a paper to the Graduate Student Symposium, and was happy to be selected, even though I knew it would require a little schedule juggling on my part. So, this past Friday (not usually a school day for me!), I arranged for my kids to go home from school with friends (thank you, Alenka and Caroline!) and made my way over to Simmons for the afternoon, hoping that the logistical challenge would be worth it. It was so completely worth it. So. Completely. Worth. It. The symposium was well organized and the presentations were professional, interesting and relevant. I ran into several classmates I haven’t seen this semester due to opposite course schedules (hello, Celeste, Gretyl and Jahan!) and met SLIS students with whom I’ve never crossed paths. I was impressed with…
Online Classes and Group Projects
Posted March 28, 2015 by Samantha Quiñon
Many bloggers on this site, myself included, have written about how group projects and teamwork are the bedrock of many SLIS courses. But what if you are taking a class online? Does that change? Not at all. Online students do just as much group work as face-to-face students, except sometimes they have to get more creative to accomplish their goals and finish projects. This semester I am taking Metadata (LIS-445OL) online. A good friend of mine took it in person with the same professor in the fall. After the class got started, I showed him the syllabus and asked if he saw any major differences between the work for the face-to-face class and the work for the online one. He said the professor used different examples for some exercises, but that all the assignments and modules were the same, and I was happy to hear this. At the beginning of the semester, I worked with my group to compare our individual work against each other’s. This ensured we were all taking away the same lessons…
It’s official! I work in a library!
Posted March 23, 2015 by Alexandra Bernson
Okay, well, I’m technically a library clerk, and a part-time one at that. But still, it’s a start! I started my first shift at the Boston Architectural College tonight and I am extremely excited to sit in their high stools behind the reference desk and do a whole lot of homework on the catalog computers! To be serious though, this is my first real job in a library since I was a shelver during my freshman year in undergrad. Throughout the night, everything felt so familiar and yet so incredibly different. For example, I worked at the humanities library at my college, which was absolutely massive and contained the bulk of their print resources. Here, most of the stacks start with NA, and the periodicals seemingly take up half of the library’s collection. But even with the limited amount of call number prefixes, there is so much to explore. We have closed stacks and reserve titles that hold so much promise. During my break I scanned the closed stacks and saw titles on theatre architecture,…
The Myth of Spring Break
Posted March 21, 2015 by Samantha Quiñon
Only after experiencing this week, the first week back at SLIS after Spring Break, can I now fully express why Spring Break is a myth. As an adult in graduate school, I was not expecting beaches and cocktails with umbrellas in them, but I was looking forward to some sort of respite. Here’s why that didn’t happen: Boston broke the record for most snow in a winter that week. And then the weather was great long enough for me to wear non-construction worker boots for all of a day for the first time in months before I had to ditch the cute shoes. All of my friends were either out of town or took a five-day short course on corporate library management, so I couldn’t really socialize with anyone. I still had to go to work and my internship. I had a paper due over the break for one class and another group assignment due two days after. Everyone acted like I should have been very rested and refreshed this week, when the only difference…