Learning opportunities happen every day. Some of them we choose whereas others happen without our realizing it, and still others are thrust upon us by program requirements. My internship at Assumption College in the Emmauel d’Alzon Library was meant to fulfill a three credit program requirement to teach and reinforce the GSLIS Educational Outcomes but I got more than three graduate school credits out of it. Most importantly, I found confidence in my knowledge, talents, and abilities.

            While most of my work at the d’Alzon library as an intern was for the Reference Department, I also did a few projects with Technical Services and Systems. My career goal is to be an Instruction librarian but I think it is very important to have a well-rounded understanding of all the library departments, even the ones I am less interested in. I hope this will make me a stronger job applicant for positions outside of Reference and a better candidate for Reference positions. Having a working knowledge of areas outside of a specific position can be an enormous benefit because it makes it possible to work with other departments smoothly and almost seamlessly. Additional backgrounds, skill sets, and understandings can also enhance the work of one department. A Reference librarian who understands the invisible cataloguing work might be able to find materials more efficiently because he/she knows how records in the system are set up. The various projects I worked on while interning at Assumption supported the Educational Outcomes of the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Rhode Island. Seven of the eight educational outcomes were met to some degree, some more strongly than others. All of the work I performed supported the first outcome: Foundations of the Profession but department specific projects drew from multiple outcomes and their performance criteria. I will go into more detail on the Artifacts page.

            Since I also work at the d’Alzon Library as the weekend supervisor for Access Services and work as a library assistant at Becker College, I came into this internship experience resentfully. How much more professional field experience is required of me beyond two jobs? My strength nearly failed me at the thought of how busy my weeks would be with two other classes in addition to the PFE hours and the work hours. As it turns out, I was in for a pleasant surprise once my internship began. The resentment soon faded and was replaced with nothing more than a desire to get as much hands-on experience as possible in as many areas as I could manage. Projects morphed and extended to include informal research of website usability and user experience to help improve the new library website and the chance to attend a workshop to learn about a new LMS: WorldShare Management Services by OCLC. While my projects changed to not include much work with the Systems department on WMS, I would not trade the learning experience for anything else.