Internship

I just started an internship at Southwestern College in Chula Vista. I am supposed to write a log about my experience there for my 294 class on the D2L site, but I think it will be good to write about it here first. Not only to keep it in fresh in my mind, but to help me get used to making regular posts.

Yesterday was mostly just an introduction and orientation of the Library and the Campus. I did get to look through the Booklist catalog to select books for purchase. The hard part is that there were not a lot of academic books listed (it is mostly filled with fiction), then there is looking to see if the books listed match what is needed for the school. I was then able to sit in on a class orientation for researching information on war. It started off as a presentation on just controversial issues and was changed to war just before the orientation started. There were several other "on-the-fly" changes that had to be made during the orientation that served as a great example of how a librarian has to be able to handle these orientations.

Today was mostly spent learning how to operate the online reference service (QuestionPoint) that the library uses. It was mostly straight forward, but there were a few things that could have caused problems without any instructions. I also sat in on a Webinar hosted by the ALA to help libraries understand 10 rules for Web design. Namely, to keep things simple, how to get feed back, and how little things can make a big difference. It was nice to see that the Designing class (251) taught almost everything that was covered in the Webinar. The only thing not covered was the creation of multiple personas for the librarian to use to test out a design. That one made little sense to me.