A Year as the Lane Library Intern

This past academic year, I have had the pleasure of working with the Lane librarians as their intern under the Bernice Wells Carlson Award. This position was started and named after a previous librarian and is awarded to individuals interested in pursuing a career in library science and learning more about the behind-the-scenes operations of academic libraries. Libraries have always held a special interest in my personal life and community involvement, and I have been considering going into library science since high school. Receiving the BWC internship was a wonderful opportunity, where I worked 8 hours a week shadowing the three librarians on staff, working on special projects and learning about the library.

During the first quarter of my position, I worked in the cataloging department with the technical services specialist—and Star Wars guru—Carl Ziebell. There, I was able to see some of the technical processes that go into making the catalog a useful searching system. After that, I worked with Andrew Prellwitz, the user services librarian, archivist, and fountain of historical knowledge about Ripon. Maintaining the college museum is part of Andrew’s position as the archivist and I learned about the archival research that goes into making displays. As the chair of the library, Andrew is an exceedingly busy librarian and I feel honored that he would still spend as much time working with me as he did. In the spring semester, Kate Moody, the access services librarian and friendliness specialist, has been my library mentor. In working with Kate I have learned about library programs and advertising, library statistics, interlibrary loan, the behind-the-scenes of processing items for reserve,some of the planning that goes into instruction at the library, and we are currently talking about information literacy and intellectual freedom. However, one of the most valuable experiences from this internship has been the theory and process behind library operations. Something I soon learned from Kate is that as a librarian, the research itself is less important than the process behind it. Instead of just learning how to do something, the librarians also taught me why. Working in the library has given me a solid understanding of what the library offers, but working as the intern has challenged me to think about the process behind the library.

After an academic year of daily advising, perspective, and instruction on library knowledge, I am honored to have had this experience. The librarians of Lane Library fit the “friendly, helpful, and available” library stereotype and it has been a true pleasure to be able to work with them four days a week. As a graduating senior, I will miss the familiar and friendly faces of the library staff.

After finishing my degree at Ripon College I plan to attend a library science masters program in the fall. The librarians have not only taught me technical skills and functions of the library, but have also provided continued advice and accounts of their own firsthand experience of library school. Some day I hope to work in an academic library, as a research assistant, with young adult literature, or in a special library and look forward to assisting in the research process. With a whole new area of class work to choose from, I look forward to taking courses in digital literacy, database design, and information organization.  I have come to the conclusion that the resources of libraries are impressively extensive on multiple occasions and my time at Lane has only furthered that perspective.