The Balancing Act Begins!
Posted September 14, 2014 by Alison Mitchell
Well, my first full week of school is over, and my two biggest accomplishments were getting a student discount (10% at Tags!) and making my kids do my homework. Kidding. Kind of. Going back to school at age 41, with a husband and kids and part-time work, is, in some ways, just like going to school at any age. I puzzle over how long it will take me to get to school from our home in Somerville (almost an hour!), where to get my ID (the campus card office), what kind of notebooks to use, whether I needed a snack during a 3-hour class (yes!). There are some major differences, too. Before I leave for class, I make lunches for my kids and get them ready for school. I check my phone during breaks to make sure the school hasn’t called. I drag myself to book club one night, and we talk about our parents’ health problems (probably not what my 20-something classmates are discussing over dinner). I balance my freelance work and shifts at…
Dissecting Computers
Posted September 13, 2014 by Samantha Quiñon
I blog and I’m in library school, so sometimes people think I know a lot about computers. While I can understand why they would make this assumption, to be perfectly honest, technology really intimidates me. This goes back to a when I was in the second grade and my family got a new peripheral device and remote control for our cable television. There were so many colorful buttons! I started pushing away at them, trying to find the guide channel. As result, the TV froze and would not turn back on. It took two days to get someone from the cable company to reset everything, and by the time it was all over, I had a fear of touching expensive machines and always tried to get other people to handle technology for me. My first personal computer? My boyfriend set it up. My first iPod? My brother put all of my music on it and on every iPod I’ve owned since. When I moved away from home for the first time? My boyfriend at the…
Grad School Year Two: Bring it On!
Posted September 12, 2014 by Jill Silverberg
I’d like to start this blog post by first welcoming back my fellow returning grad students and by welcoming those starting their first year in SLIS! I have a good feeling that this semester is going to be a good one, and I wish the same to all of you. Since the last time I posted something here, I’ve made the move from Brighton to Roxbury Crossing. Not only am I now living with other students from SLIS and the Children’s Literature program, but I am also within fifteen minutes from school. Essentially, I will be at Simmons a lot this year, either at the library, at the Student Services Center desk, or in the tech lab. I even purchased an awesome blanket from the Simmons Bookstore to keep me warm while inside the Palace Road Building. Still deciding if bringing a blanket to class would be a bit too much. What do you think? Beyond the above, I’m sort of ashamed to admit this but, the reality that my second year of grad had…
Dressing for the Interview: Feel Unstoppable, Be Unstoppable
Posted September 11, 2014 by L. Kelly Fitzpatrick
You got the interview – high fives all around. Applying and interviewing for jobs is without doubt a big part eventually becoming the unstoppable librarian, archivist, or information scientist you have set your sights on. After scheduling an interview, you’re prepared, you’re qualified, but there’s another secret level to securing that job that can produce undue stress and unease the day of – what to wear. It’s a couple hours until your interview and you’re amid a hellscape of button down shirts and khakis trying to piece together a puzzle which will somehow reveal the perfect interview outfit. The interview that might get you the job. You’re interviewing for a job that you see as an important step on your path to becoming an unstoppable librarian, archivist, or information scientist, right? If you want to be unstoppable, feel unstoppable. Sitting down with your interviewer, it’s easy to become unsure of yourself, and wearing something which will make you feel more confident during the process can make a huge difference. Equip the threads which will remind…
Ahts Festival
Posted September 9, 2014 by Gemma Doyle
One thing I love about Boston is the amazing diversity and frequency of the festivals and events that happen in the city throughout the year. This is especially good if you’re new to town and aren’t quite sure what to do with yourself – I know I spent my first fall here learning the city by going to harvest festivals in neighborhoods all over the place, and it’s how I learned the T/commuter rail routes. Fall may be the best time, the quintessential New England time, really, but summer is a busy time for festivals, too, and it’s hard to go more than a few blocks in the city without stumbling on tents and music and food trucks. This happened to me Labor Day weekend, when I went into Boston mostly to visit the Institute of Contemporary Art but also just to poke around Haymarket and enjoy my last free weekend before classes started. The Ahts Festival is proof that no matter what anyone tells you about not being able to hear the accent you’ve…
From the Harrowing Heights of Pizzacliffe: Naming Your Living Space
Posted September 3, 2014 by L. Kelly Fitzpatrick
Something that we’ve learned from literary classics is that all great living spaces hold even greater names. Moving onto a graduate program, there is no doubt that you’ll be spending a fair deal of time in your new living space between completing all those assignments, scheduling classes, and entertaining the occasional guest. When moving into a new city and onto a new campus, going the extra mile to make that dorm feel closer to home and exude you-ness can make all the difference. One thing is clear – your dorm needs a name. But what goes into a dorm name? Well, that depends on what flavor you anticipate your dorm having as you move through SLIS. Depending upon your anticipated trajectory, your dorm name could follow any of the following examples, such as: Pizzacliffe Citationview Napcrest Endnotewalk Moving into a new dorm or apartment with the start of a new semester, it’s likely that you already have a lot of thinking and preparation to take care of. But with a brand-new living space you’ve purposefully…
Five Inspirational Librarians from Film and TV
Posted August 25, 2014 by Jill Silverberg
Since the unfortunate passing of Robin Williams, I’ve come to realize how many of his films in the 1990s defined my childhood. Films like Aladdin, Ms. Doubtfire, Jumanji, Ferngully, Hook, and countless others have and will always hold a special place in my heart. However, in my efforts to both remember Robin Williams for the comedic genius that he was as well as to take a trip down nostalgia way, I got lost somewhere along the way, and what started as a Robin Williams movie marathon turned into an all out nostalgia binge. I’m not exactly sure when I came up with this week’s blog post (the last one of the summer if you can believe it?) but its timing could not be any better. What started off as a quest to remember my first real comedic role model slowly morphed into a re-discovery of other characters that inspired me while growing up. And since I’m currently enrolled in a graduate program for library and information science, I thought it would be cool to compile…
Literary Librarians
Posted August 19, 2014 by Gemma Doyle
It’s August and summer classes have finally ended, which means I have another two weeks of relative freedom before fall classes start in September. I’ve been spending a lot of time catching up on television (I know people told me Orphan Black was good, but it is so good, you guys) and the lengthy list of books I’ve wanted to read. People who choose to study the library sciences do tend to be big readers, and the size of my To Read pile definitely means I’m no exception. Because I’m graduating in less than six months (!!!), most of my focus is on job hunting and my future career, and I’ve been spending my time reading about fictional librarians and their work for inspiration. The problem with fictional librarians is that a lot of the time they seem to be the stereotypical shhhing librarians who hate fun – even the librarian action figure has sensible shoes and “amazing shushing action.” Luckily, there are a load of awesome literary librarians to help balance the picture of…
New Adventures
Posted August 14, 2014 by Maggie Davidov
This is my last post for GSLIS as I’m graduating in December. I’ve enjoyed every minute writing for this blog and wish everyone well as they move on to new adventures. As for my journey I will begin this fall as the upper school librarian at Dana Hall school in Wellesley. To read more about my fun escapades check out my blog! I’m on a school library exchange at the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls. Things are amazing here. Librarians are the luckiest people on the planet. Fact.
August Exploration
Posted August 11, 2014 by L. Kelly Fitzpatrick
In the areas surrounding Simmons’ Boston campus, there are countless neighborhoods to be explored. This past weekend, I took a step toward better exploring my own neighborhood of Somerville at the Somerville Flea. Every Sunday, vendors and visitors gather near Davis Square to engage in an exchange of goods from vintage scarves to bunches of carrots, peaches, and plums. Awash with Etsy-worthy ephemera, a stack of enormous volumes stopped me in my tracks. Unbeknownst to me, they weren’t books. They were boxes. And not the kind that butcher books to make them either – stunning reproductions of War and Peace, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, and other titles. Set on them lining my bookshelves within the hour, I made away with the two enormous false volumes clutched haphazardly in my arms. Arriving home, I soon placed my own copy of Tolstoy’s War and Peace into the box boasting the same title in box format; the daunting pagination of the wartime epic finally matched by a cover of suitable size. Tucked away on my bookshelves, the remainder…