Breaking up is just so hard to do
Posted June 24, 2014 by Maggie Davidov
The librarian’s best friend and arguably ongoing nemesis is the never-ending task of weeding. To remain on the cutting edge or at least to remain in the realm of the present with your collection it’s important to evaluate all of the resources on and off the shelves that the library provides. This means, that in any healthy library there should generally be a project going on that removes, or weeds, outdated items. I am fortunate to work in a very healthy academic library, your very own Beatley Library at Simmons, and I find myself these days withdrawing beautiful, yet ancient, reference books. Let’s face it, the future of reference does not lie in the obscure tomes published 50 years ago with the solid leather bindings. However, I stand there in the stacks with The Encyclopedia of Fairies in my hand and I’m sure it’s not my imagination that I hear a little cry from within as I place it on the withdrawal cart. These books know where they’re going. They know their fate. I assumed…
Summer Reading
Posted June 19, 2014 by Gemma Doyle
It’s June, which means Summer Reading time at public libraries across the country. Last summer I was temporarily working as a young adult librarian, juggling my first ever summer reading program, and I can tell you that Summer Reading is both the most exhausting and rewarding part of being a youth librarian. It is seriously two months of stress and terror (did I bring enough snacks for this program? Did I bring enough prizes? What about the kids who didn’t sign up but want to come anyway – did I bring extra supplies?) but it’s what the bulk of the programming budget is spent on, too, so it’s an interesting time with lots of fun things happening. As the YA librarian I had my hands full enough, so I didn’t help out much with the children’s Summer Reading program, which is about 300% busier. (If anyone is thinking about becoming a children’s librarian at a public library, I would advise them to spend a summer helping out with Summer Reading first, so they know what…
Serious Business
Posted June 17, 2014 by L. Kelly Fitzpatrick
Twenty-something and caught between earning that graduate degree and staying sharp in a competitive job market – I know the feeling. When navigating a sea of internships, interviews, and conferences while completing full or part time classes, that extra boost of professionalism and confidence can make a difference. While all of those qualifications featured on your well-rendered resumé speak for themselves, having a business card can help have your bases covered on the perilous and formidable frontier of professional networking. For a long time, the word business card alone evoked imagined landscapes of beepers and shoulder pads for as far as the eye could see. But sure enough, after seeing peers arrive to events with a business card in tow changed my ideas upon seeing their convenience and functionality in action. When you meet a someone that you’d like to collaborate with in a professional context, writing their number on a nearby receipt or popping them a friend request just won’t cut it – and that’s where business cards come in. Okay, we get the…
GSLIS Tech Lab. AKA GSLIS Awesomeness
Posted June 13, 2014 by Maggie Davidov
You may have glimpsed its capacious depths in a class evaluation. Or maybe you remember it vividly from orientation. Either way, hopefully your travels have taken you once or twice into the Tech Lab at Palace Road. Having been on the job as a Technology Reference Assistant for a few weeks now I feel bound to tell you that the Tech Lab is far more that a room filled with computers for class evaluations. It is staffed by some of the coolest, smartest and funniest people at GSLIS who work hard to make sure our students are informed about the latest trends in Technology. Guys, this is not a required class but it should be. Knowledge and hilarity oozes out of every crevice of these hard drives. Much of my time here is spent posting to the Tech Lab’s Tumblr or watching Lynda tutorials. Did you know that the Tech Lab actually has Google glasses? For serious, they have a LOT of stuff. If you don’t like intelligent, hilarious people then come for the amazing…
(Not) A Lazy Summer
Posted June 12, 2014 by Jill Silverberg
When I look out my window, I find it hard to believe that less than three months ago, there was still snow on the ground. Not only that, but it felt like the winter of 2013/2014 was never going to vacate the Boston area. And yet, here we are; the sun is out in full force and people are starting to gather in any air conditioned space that they can find. However, considering just how unbearably cold the first half of the year was, I won’t be complaining about the heat anytime soon. But if the city gets hit with another heat wave like it did last July, well, let’s just say that you will most likely be able to find me sitting at a table inside JP Licks. Speaking of summer, this one will be my first ever as a resident of Boston! But just like my last few summers back home in Long Island, I will be spending the bulk of this summer tucked away inside, either at work at the BPL or in…
Fenway Flag Ceremony
Posted June 5, 2014 by Gemma Doyle
I am not a sports person, as I’ve mentioned, but I always seem to become friendly with massive sports fans who try to cure my sports apathy with huge infusions of exciting sports… stuff. Well, exciting for them. Mostly incomprehensible to me. I spend a lot of time struggling to look like I care, if you know what I mean. One of my friends is a huge – and I mean huge – Red Sox fan. As a way to try to inspire a similar love for the team in my cold, dead heart, she invited me to go to Fenway to help with the giant flag that unfurls from the top of the Green Monster before the game. (Here’s an image of the flag (not from that day), for other non-Fenway go-ers. We’re the people who are actually behind it, who you can only see from the knees down.) Basically, we got to Fenway about two hours before the game started, before the gates were open to ticket holders, and got to walk around…
THATCamp New England and the Rise of Digital Humanities
Posted June 2, 2014 by L. Kelly Fitzpatrick
Coffee was stirred, bagels were nibbled, and discussion had begun filling the twittersphere. This past weekend I attended my first professional conference – THATCamp New England. Between May 30th and 31st, individuals gathered to the Boston College General Studies campus to talk about one thing: digital humanities. Digital humanities, otherwise known at DH, has been creeping across institutions and campuses in recent years and leaving untold innovations in it’s wake. While there is no single static definition of DH, it can can be described as the interdisciplinary meeting ground between technology and the humanities. Unlike other events on the conference circuit, THATCamp is structured around the idea of a “not-conference”. Traditionally, conferences often follow a strictly structured format. THATCamp has diverged on a few key elements to follow a different approach through fluidity, collaboration, and engagement. In all realness, I’ve never considered myself to be an at-the-last-minute kind of person. Especially one who would sit down and organize an informal panel with a recent graduate from my alma mater aiming to open dialogues about stimulating…
How to be a Public Library Director in 5 Very Packed Days
Posted May 30, 2014 by Emily Boyd
I got to spend last week talking about one of my favorite things, public libraries, with one of my favorite professors, Mary Wilkins Jordan. During my time at Simmons (so far) I’ve taken three intensive courses and I must say I love the format. While learning about the many aspects of library management (budgeting, outreach, programming, evaluation, collection development, and advocacy to name a few) in one week was a bit overwhelming at times, it’s also a great way to cover a lot of ground quickly and get to the heart of issues. Many people in graduate school, especially at GSLIS, are also working and do not always have a whole semester to devote to classes like LIS 450 Organization and Management of Public Libraries and the week-long intensive format is a great alternative. The class was structured in five jam-packed days over the course of one week and we covered a lot of ground in a very short time. This is a subject that I’m incredibly passionate about so it was wonderful to be…
It Isn’t Always Easy Being a Librarian
Posted May 28, 2014 by Jill Silverberg
The experience of throwing out books is perhaps the one part of being a librarian that I do not like. I’m not sure why, but I just find the notion of tossing books away to be kind of sad. Unfortunately for me, this past Friday at my new job working as a library assistant/intern at a law library, my co-workers and I had to toss out a good chunk of the library’s collection. Going into the day, I had come in prepared to do some moving, thinking that we were merely going to be moving boxes over to the library’s temporary location until the building was finished being renovated. What I did not know was that we would be throwing out books. However, since all these books were outdated and the library could not find any one who would be interested in purchasing them, there was only one solution left. The thing is, in the world of law libraries, things change frequently. Once something is outdated, even if it just under two years old, its most likely…
Visit a New Library
Posted May 26, 2014 by Maggie Davidov
I haven’t been on a real vacation in over a year, but two weeks ago I unplugged completely and made the drive to Portland, Maine. Portland was everything I wanted it to be and more. I think I really needed to sleep and not look at my email for a stretch. For anyone who hasn’t tried these highly attainable things…you really should. Sleep is luxuriously restorative. Also, I never fully appreciated how much time I spend on email until I turned off my phone and spent time in the moment in the glorious outdoors. One of my other big takeaways from my mini-break was library tourism. I had never really been aware of this as a conscious act on vacation, but I realize it should be planned into almost any vacation. Check out the local library. See what they do differently. Open your eyes to the way they lay out their space. It’s fun to walk into a library that’s new to you. You have to experience it from the patron perspective and you can…