This Fall, I had the pleasure of doing an invaluable internship at a medical library--the Health Sciences Library of the John A. Burns School of Medicine--as part of a course credit (LIS 690) for school. This gave me experience in both an academic and special library. I have to thank Library Director Kris Anderson for taking me on, as well as Melissa Kahili-Heede for providing such excellent guidance through the majority of the internship. My classmate, Dee, also interned here, and I was really happy to have her at the same site. Dee and I received additional guidance from Luree and Carrie Ann when it came to Technical Services work; Leah was an all-around resource for any questions that arose and also was amazing at coming up with ideas for outreach and engagement, and Hilda (who Kris says runs the place) taught me as much as she could about circulation (and more).
The staff make a really great team, and I felt like they were excellent role models. Some projects accomplished involved the digitization of the Hawaii Medical Journal (1990-2005) which was uploaded into eVols. Dee and I both had a part in the process of scanning, OCR'ing, and creating metadata for issues loaded into eVols. Another accomplishment was selecting the best crowdfunding site for Kris' IAMSLIC project. Today, Kris took the staff out to lunch at Little Sheep. It was their holiday party and my very first hot pot (and Mongolian hot pot at that!) My last day will be on Friday (12/16). I've thoroughly enjoyed my time and the experiences I was able to have here. I'll miss working there 12 hours a week, and seeing the awesome staff, and really cool projects. JABSOM itself has its own vibe, and I really liked the students. Mahalo to Kris, Melissa, Leah, Luree, Carrie Ann, Hilda and Dee!
0 Comments
I said I'd tell you what I did this summer at Smithsonian Libraries, and here it is in the blog post they asked me to write for them. :)I finally learned how it feels to be "on cloud 9" when I got the notification from the Smithsonian Institution (SI) that I'd been appointed to an internship with Smithsonian Libraries this summer; and would be working under the direction of their head of Web Services, Joel Richard. Through the SI Minority Awards Program (MAP), I was awarded a paid, 10-week internship this summer. While the application process did not allow me to choose my project I felt the project I was given fit my background given my previous career working in IT.
The project I'm assigned to is: "Applying Standardized Identifiers to Library Data" which is much of what I've been doing on a couple of my projects. I'm currently serving-out the last 4 weeks of my time here and it's definitely been an amazing experience. I've worked on 3 different projects so far, and will write more about them in a separate post. My 4th, and final project hasn't started yet. In my last weeks here I'll be required to give a presentation to both Smithsonian Libraries and the SI OFI along with the other 13 MAP recipients. I'll also be doing some blog posts for Unbound--the Library's blog--and writing an essay for the OFI's MAP. Time has been flying by and I'm bittersweet about leaving here. I'm going to miss the lifestyle and all the attractions DC holds with its museums, monuments, architecture, and events. I've been grateful for the wonderful staff members, special tours and activities, and the entire experience of living in a place very different from home. Currently, I reside in Silver Spring, MD, and commute on the WMATA Metro, (taking over an hour each way). I actually enjoy riding the metro and the large amounts of walking I'm doing up here (where I hit about 200K steps in a week). I've discovered I truly am comfortable with myself and enjoy doing things alone as much as I do when in good company. I've had fun with Travis, who moved up here a year ago, and try to hang out on Fridays for pau hana with Keala--my classmate who also got a MAP internship and is up here working with Freer | Sackler. My office is located in the National Museum of Natural History. It's pretty wild! One of the inspirations for enrolling in library school came about in the summer of 2014 when I realized how much I wanted to somehow work in a place like the Smithsonian. A very awesome friend recommended library science to me and I seriously started to consider it. Then, I had a chance encounter I with the screenwriter who co-wrote "Life" and "Intolerable Cruelty." He was super cool and told me about his archivist friend who had an MLIS degree and was the archivist for the Baseball Hall of Fame. I came back to Hawaii and immediately applied to the LIS program at UH. It was my dream then to intern with the Smithsonian before graduating, and this summer my dream came true. It's certainly been a life-changing experience and I'm so happy and thankful for this amazing opportunity! |
Dropping Mad Library Science!Here is where I write about everything library and archives related going on. Categories
All
Archives
September 2020
|