All posts tagged with intern

As a new Master of Library and Information Studies graduate, I was looking for opportunities to gain more library experience, especially with regard to cataloguing and metadata. An internet search led me to the many intern opportunities available at Smithsonian Libraries. The Digital Content Intern position at the Biodiversity Heritage Library was a perfect fit for me. It was a virtual position, allowing me the flexibility to stay in Toronto, Canada and maintain a full-time job at a hospital. I completed my entire master’s through an online program from a Canadian university while living in Melbourne, Australia, so I was familiar working at a distance, independently, and using digital mediums to learn and connect with others.

I am a designer. I am an artist. I am an illustrator. I am an amateur photographer, a daughter, a traveler, an adventurist, a niece, a walker, a cyclist, a friend, an intern, a professional, a foreigner, a Latina, a Colombian, a woman, a strong woman, a bilingual. I am a person that has grow and re-recognized myself since I started my journey with the Biodiversity Heritage Library. I know the value of real things and how lucky I am for the people and opportunities that life has placed my way. Over the past eight months, I served as the BHL Product Development and Marketing Intern for BHL at the Smithsonian Libraries, designing products for the BHL Store and creating promotional graphics for those products.

When I learned of the amazing opportunity to intern at the Smithsonian Libraries, I instantly knew I wanted to be a part of it. I was lucky enough to be chosen to be the Biodiversity Heritage Library In-Copyright Collection Management Intern. I knew the BHL was a digital library but, having no previous experience with a purely digital collection, I couldn’t begin to start making a guess. What I ended up doing was so much cooler than anything I could have anticipated. I got to spend the whole week pushing my attention to detail and love of consistency to the limits. Now that may sound boring to some but this is the kind of thing I do at home for fun.

A blinking cursor on a blank screen. 137 million objects, 8.2 million digitized items, illustrations and photographs, artifacts and first editions, spanning 19 institutions, 9 research centers, and hundreds of years. Where to begin? It didn’t begin earlier this summer when I started working as the marketing intern at the BHL, and it didn’t begin earlier this year when I originally applied for the position. It probably didn’t even begin when I enrolled in the University of Washington’s master of library and information science iSchool. For the sake of argument, I’d say the beginning for me was when I was 6 years old and took my first trip to Washington, D.C.