Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Internship: Week 1

Monday I started my internship at Rogers Science and Engineering Library. It looks like it's going to be a great opportunity for me to learn a ton about life as an academic librarian. My internship host is fabulous and I know she is going to be an incredible mentor. This week was rather calm since it was my first week, but there are few things I wanted to share.

First, the most exciting thing for me is that I get my own office! I know that seems silly and immature, but I've never had a job that requires me to have an office and I never (in my wildest dreams) imagined that the staff at Rogers would be so incredible as to give me my own office. I've brought in a few things to make it homey and I feel so much more professional! I don't really feel like a student sitting in there, but a librarian with lots of important work to do. :)

Second, Rogers offers a digital tour via a Sony Walkman. The tour can also be accessed online here if you are curious about where I work. I took the tour on Monday and learned a lot about the library, but what it really made me do was think. Mostly about how I wished the main library on campus had something like this and that students would take advantage of it. Look for a feature blog post on my ideas about tours, both digital and in-person.

Third, I spent some quality time learning the various databases used by science, engineering, nursing, and math students. I knew very little about them, so I made myself a cheat sheet so I can quickly learn how to access and search them when I'm sitting on the reference desk. I explored the databases through the subject guides available near the reference desk. I've seen subject guides around libraries before, but never used them. I found it to be extremely helpful, and started thinking about makings some for the reading room and the communication databases/books/websites.

Fourth, today I went to a meeting about the new collection development software UA Libraries is using. Blackwell is the company and Collection Manager is the software; they have been using the system for a while, but it has been recently upgraded and someone was there to explain how to use the new features. It was amazing to get to sit in on something like this, and I'm really looking forward to being able to do it again. I learned a lot of collection development in a class I took and it was interesting to see how it gets applied outside the classroom.

So far, I'm enjoying my internship, and I'm looking forward to participating in some projects and learning more about what goes on in a branch library.

No comments:

Post a Comment