Classes
Pushing Through Spring Semester
Posted April 3, 2024 by Isabella Rodrigues
If you’re like me then you might already be hoping for summer to start. The weather, seemingly, is getting warmer. People are getting antsy in class and in the streets. In a few weeks, the swan boats will be on the pond, crowds of baseball fans will overrun Fenway, and tourists will swarm the city. Whether you stay in Boston over summer break or go elsewhere, we all still have the same hurdle to jump. Ending the semester. We are about a month out from the end of the semester so everyone is cracking down or about to crack down on finals. Here are some helpful tips on staying focused while also keeping yourself healthy.
Archival Fieldwork for LIS 438
Posted March 22, 2024 by Clarabel Smith
For many Simmons MLIS students, LIS 438: Introduction to Archival Theory & Practice is a natural next step forward after completing their core classes, especially if they’re thinking of going into the Archives concentration. As someone who is currently in the Design Your Own concentration, I wanted to take LIS 438 to see whether the Archives track is for me, and in any case was interested in how archival practices compared to library and special collections. I was somewhat apprehensive of the field experience component of the class, even though I had been enjoying the concepts we’d been studying so far and I like to apply my learning in a hands-on way. I was worried that it would be more time than I was able to commit outside of class, and that I would be out of my depth in an environment where I didn’t know the people or the institution. However, halfway through the semester, field experience is my favorite part of my week. Field experience host sites are assigned with the help of…
Eight Classes Down, Four to Go!
Posted August 14, 2020 by Sarah Callanan
We are done with the summer term everyone! I finished LIS 475 right at the beginning of August, so I’ve had a little bit of time without having to worry about schoolwork, and I don’t start my next class until the beginning of September. Eight classes down, four to go! I can’t believe that I am two-thirds of the way done with my time at SLIS! The fall semester is right around the corner, and because SLIS announced that classes are going to be online for the fall because of COVID-19, it opened up so many options in terms of classes. In “normal times” I have to consider a lot of factors when I register, and it usually results in me taking online classes. I’ve always wanted to take some of the classes that are only taught on campus but the timing and circumstances haven’t been right. For fall, having everything shift online has opened a lot of doors for me. I’m currently registered for LIS 454: Digital Information Services and Providers. I’m really excited…
Final Summer Thoughts
Posted August 13, 2020 by Amie Grosshans
I finished all my work for Collections Management last week. I can’t believe the summer semester is over already. It went by so fast. I loved this class and would recommend it to all SLIS students, especially those who like hands on activities. It was a great introduction to book repair and definitely made me curious to learn more. It will be very nice to have a few weeks off, but I’m looking forward to my classes in the fall. Since SLIS announced that all of its classes for the fall would be online, all the in-person classes that I normally would not have been able to take were suddenly available to me. I had to rethink my classes a bit, and I ended up signing up for a new class, LIS 532R, Reader’s Advisory. I wanted to take this class as soon as I saw it in the course descriptions, but I wasn’t able to because it was at the Mount Holyoke campus. But now I get to take it, and I am excited. …
Book Repairs!
Posted July 7, 2020 by Amie Grosshans
I’ve had a busy and fun two weeks of book repairs. My tasks included rebacking (replacing the spine of a book) and recasing (re-attaching the text block to the book cover). Both of these repairs were invasive and required cutting into the book. That definitely scared me at first. Taking a knife to a book seemed like sacrilege. I had to remind myself that cutting into the book would not harm it—in fact, it would save the book. And it did! The end result of my repairs was book that was fully functional again, and ready to get back into circulation. I can see how knowing how to do these minor repairs would be beneficial for librarians, because they could fix a lot of book problems without having to spend money buying a new book. What amazes me is how much book repair is about precision. It takes a lot of practice to make straight, even cuts, align pages, and trim accurately. But once you know how to do this, you can make repairs that…
Adventures in Ethics
Posted June 25, 2020 by Sarah Callanan
We’ve completed the first week of the of the Summer 2020 term everyone! As you know, classes at SLIS are online for this term due to the pandemic. I’m not going to lie; I came very close to forgetting it was the first week of classes last week. If I hadn’t received an email from my professor announcing it was the first day of class last Monday, I would have completely forgotten. I’m taking LIS 475: Organizational and Information Ethics this summer, and as is usual for Simmons summer classes, it is only seven weeks long, but is the same amount of work as a normal semester-long course. This means we cover two weeks-worth of material a week. If you’ve read my past posts about summer classes, you know my feelings about this. Summer classes have a lot of content in a very short amount of time. I’m not wild about the rushed feeling, but this summer, like last summer, there is no “locked” content, so I can see everything ahead of time. In summer…
Seven Classes Down, Five to Go!
Posted May 8, 2020 by Sarah Callanan
We are DONE with the Spring 2020 semester everyone! Seven classes down, five to go! This summer I’m taking LIS 475: Organizational Ethics. I was originally going to take a different class, but due to the unpredictability associated to COVID-19, I switched classes. This class looks very interesting—based on the description, I think it’s going to be more of a theory-based class and we’ll be covering a lot of interesting topics. However, the class doesn’t start until June 15, so I have a bit of a break before school starts again. Usually, when the semester is over and we come up on a break, I’m thrilled. However, this time it is different because there is a pandemic happening. This now means that there is a gaping hole in my everyday routine. The stay-at-home advisory has been extended until May 18, and my sense of time and structure during the pandemic has pretty much come from two things, school and work, and now one of them is gone until mid-June. On one hand, it’s nice not…