Student Snippets A Window Into The Daily Life & Thoughts of SLIS Students

conferences

Conferences: NEA Spring 2024 Meeting

One of the best (and sometimes, the most intimidating!) parts of grad school is the opportunity to attend and present your work at conferences, held by the numerous academic/professional organizations that support our disciplines. Conferences give you the opportunity to hear about and learn from what academic research and on-the-job procedures and issues are being discussed, debated, reassessed, and worked on in your field, as well as grow your professional network by connecting with information professionals from many different corners of librarianship. I recently got to present at the New England Archivists’ Spring 2024 meeting in Providence, Rhode Island, and it was both an incredible learning experience and a great first step into this part of our field. The New England Archivists (NEA) are a organization representing the New England region’s archival community, and their 2024 Spring meeting brought together archivists, students in LIS programs, other informational professionals, and people focusing on other disciplines who work in archives or do related community programming to talk about their work. (Regional LIS organizations are a great way…


Conferences

In the journey from academia to professionalism, library conferences can be an excellent tool for networking, updates about the industry, and job searching. Simmons holds memberships with many prestigious organizations such as the American Library Association, Massachusetts Library Association, and International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions.  A comprehensive list of these organizations can be found here. A great in to these places and the greater community of librarians nationwide and worldwide is by attending yearly conferences. Ask your professors or advisors about the conferences they attend! Ask other SLIS students! Here are some of the advertised conferences for this year! Many organizations are still updating and listing their dates so check in frequently for more information. 


Virtual Conferences

In my last post of the spring semester, I mentioned how due to COVID-19 many conferences are now going virtual.  I have never been able to attend an in-person conference before because of my school and work schedule, as well as financial reasons, but virtual conferences are significantly cheaper (or free in some cases!), and you can attend from the comfort of your own home.  I still hope to go to a real-life conference before I graduate (assuming the pandemic and vaccines and everything works out), but for now, I’m taking advantage of virtual opportunities.  The ALA Annual 2020 Conference was initially supposed to be held in Chicago this year; however, it was moved online and transformed into ALA Virtual: Community Through Connection.  It was held from June 24-26 online.  Admittedly, I know it’s not the same experience—I’m sitting in my room, alone, with my laptop and my headphones on instead of being around tons of people after all!  If you compare this to Katie’s experience at ALA Annual last year, and at ALA Midwinter…


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