March Madness
Posted March 21, 2014 by Emily Boyd
Clever title, right? It’s fitting because of everything going on right now, I cannot believe March is almost over already! This semester ends in just about a month and I’ll have finished 10 of 12 classes to graduate. In fact, just this week GSLIS made an exciting announcement, August grads (like me) will be able to walk at the May graduation ceremony. Although it will feel weird to receive a (fake) diploma for a degree I haven’t technically earned yet, I’m so excited to participate in the graduation ceremony! The one downside of finishing in the summer was that I thought I wouldn’t get to walk at graduation, so props to Simmons for changing their policy. It wouldn’t feel real to me if I didn’t participate in a graduation ceremony to make it official. March madness doesn’t just refer to school and my basketball bracket, last week I accepted a full-time job starting in June! I’ll be working for a tech startup company called Green Mountain Digital working on an amazing (and free!) app called…
Gateway to Reading
Posted March 20, 2014 by Alec Chunn
Welcome back! Here’s hoping your vacations were as pleasant as mine. I was able to return to the Pacific Northwest, and I spent some time in a museum in Oregon that a friend of mine works at. It was interesting to see the ways that libraries and museums differ. I wanted to ask the librarian about her collection, but it was her birthday and she was out. I did get to see the way certain artifacts are stored though! What I really want to talk about happened before my vacation. Just before I left, I had the opportunity to see Marc Brown, creator of the beloved Arthur television series, at the Boston Public Library. The talk he gave was part of BPL’s Lowell Lecture Series. Luckily for me and other kid lit types, this year’s theme happens to be “Gateway to Reading.” Marc Brown is only the second of many more lectures–many of which you might want to check out. (I’d extend my commercial beyond this, but I think you can decide for yourself what…
Going Home and Coming Back
Posted March 17, 2014 by Jill Silverberg
In the weeks preceding spring break this year, I’ll admit, I was starting to get a bit stir crazy. You see, for the last four years, I had the luxury of being able to journey off my undergraduate campus for weekend hikes all around Massachusetts. These weekend adventures not only provided me with a break from my academic responsibilities, but also helped fend off any possibility of developing recklessness. As an individual who can’t ever seem to stay in one place for too long, you can imagine how much I miss these weekend outings. While I absolutely love living in Boston, sometimes, a person just needs a change every now and then and I hit that wall about a month a half ago. Of course, without access to a car or enough free time to venture off on the commuter rail, I’ve found myself essentially stuck within the confines of the city. Now don’t get me wrong, one can never go wrong with a bit of urban exploring, but sometimes, a person just needs to get out. And so, I decided to do just that and last Wednesday, I said…
Alternative Spring Break
Posted March 16, 2014 by Gemma Doyle
This week I took advantage of one of the many opportunities that are offered during spring break to try something new and spent an afternoon volunteering at the school library of the Boston Teachers Union School. I’ve spent a lot of time working with teens and adults in public libraries, but have not really spent a substantial amount of time in the children’s rooms. I’ve also never worked in or even volunteered in a school library before, so I thought it would be a really interesting and fun experience -and that I was pretty much guaranteed to learn something. Given my lack of experience, it was a good thing that our day consisted of labelling, barcoding and shelf reading; anything more advanced probably would have been a little nerve-wracking because I would have been too worried about screwing up something completely new to me. Boston Teachers Union School is K-8, so we got to see kids of every age throughout the afternoon, and process materials for every age as well. We also got to see…
Being a Librarian 20 years ago… today
Posted March 15, 2014 by Maggie Davidov
Today I worked in a library system 20 years ago. Ok, that’s a lie. I don’t wake up every day, hop in my time machine and travel back to the simpler age of the card catalog. Though, if I did have a time machine I would choose a much simpler time with cooler clothes and become friends with Billy Shagspar (see Bill Bryson’s biography of a certain Elizabethan playwright). No, today my colleagues and I were mostly immobilized by the World Wide Web (the birthday present it re-gifted to us). Our circulation program, Millennium, just decided not to work. We began running around like chickens with our heads cut off for a good fifteen minutes, calling every supervisor under the sun to no avail. What could be done? Without computers how do we run the library? Technology is not the maker and breaker of libraries these days, although it seems like it. If it were the only thing holding a library together then there would be very little point to getting an MLS degree. The…
180 Degree Perception Change
Posted March 10, 2014 by Emily Boyd
In the fall of 2011, when I first started telling friends and family I was planning to pursue a masters degree in library and information science, the response across the board was something to the effect of “you need a masters degree to be a librarian?” I would reply by saying things along the lines of “well libraries are about a lot more than books” and “technology is so key now, I’ve got a lot to learn.” This all sounds well and good, but at the time I think I was more or less parroting back what I’d read and heard from those already in the field. I knew this was all true, but in the back of my mind a little voice kept asking “is it really about more than books?”. This self doubt was justified, especially given that the public image of a librarian is a matronly woman surrounded by books making shushing noises. That said, it didn’t take me long at Simmons to realize that, yes, it’s about a whole lot more…
Little Libraries
Posted March 9, 2014 by Gemma Doyle
One of the first things I learned from working in public and special libraries was that even though they all provided more or less the same services to the community they served, there were countless differences in how they functioned and what people even meant when they said “library.” The wonderful thing about libraries is that they don’t have to exist in a certain way. They can be the giant buildings with borrowing cards and policies, but they can also just be a small shelf of books that people are invited to take and replace as they will, all for free. Little Free Libraries are a network of tiny libraries set up on street corners and curated by anyone who wants to put in the work, who have free books that anyone can come along and take, and leave their own books in. There are 10,000 – 12,000 Little Free Libraries set up around the world, including seven in the Metro Boston area, mostly in Cambridge and Somerville. They each have their own eclectic selection of…
Librarian for a Day (Or Two)
Posted March 8, 2014 by Alec Chunn
I may have mentioned before that I volunteer at the Public Library of Brookline on Thursdays. A few weeks ago, I helped a record number of patrons: six. While this probably seems inconsequential to most people, this number is a breakthrough. This means six people thought I might help them; six people thought I looked like a librarian (whatever that means); and six people thought I was qualified. The usual number is zero, sometimes one or two. And, most of the time, I just get asked where the bathroom is. Fact: I am the Teen Room monitor. This means I basically just sit in the room and make sure nothing too disastrous happens. But, since the kids aren’t particularly rowdy on most days, I basically hold an after school study session. And the vast majority of the time, I’m doing my homework along with them. Or writing these blogs. I think perhaps that I sometimes look like I’m terribly busy. But, really, I love being interrupted. Having never worked in a library setting before, this…
What Happens When I Fly Away?
Posted March 5, 2014 by Maggie Davidov
Is anybody else amazed at how fast this year is flying by? Yes, spring break is upon us and we are all grateful, but speaking as someone who will be graduating in December (heaven help us if I don’t) I feel these days slipping away faster than usual. I’m losing track of time. Every email whizzes past my inbox and I begin to crave and fear the future. What happens after graduate school? I imagine big paychecks, tomes that in no way resemble textbooks, and oodles of time to sit down in a garden somewhere. These are the lies that we tell ourselves. Life will be easier after graduate school. Will it though? Will you receive updates about the latest technologies enhancing our profession? Will you have the opportunity to network on a weekly basis with super smart people? This is all food for thought for you, but mostly for me. I’m aching to leave and begin my life as a fully-fledged librarian. I want my wings soooo badly! I think the question I continue…
Baking a little bit of springtime
Posted March 4, 2014 by Jill Silverberg
Normally, I am a very big fan of winter. Snow, ice, the cold; I love it all. Or I used to. Although I am no stranger to New England winters, this year, the winter seems longer, colder, and snowier than ever before. And normally, I wouldn’t be complaining. However, it seems my love for winter has waned over the course of these past few months. I guess the same would happen to anyone after experiencing temperatures in the single digits for almost two straight weeks and a seemingly never-ending bombardment of snow storms. Indeed, I am so done with winter that I am actually keeping track of how many more days are left until spring (fifteen days to go!). Although it seems like it is forever and half away, soon (hopefully) all the snow will be gone, the flowers will bloom, and most importantly, it will be WARM. And to help get myself amped up for the upcoming warm weather, I decided to bake a springtime dessert this past weekend, just a little something to…