All posts tagged with internship

BHL is excited to welcome Carolina Murcia, our new Product Development and Marketing Intern! Over her eight-month internship through the Smithsonian Libraries in Washington, D.C., Carolina will conduct market research and create products and marketing materials for the BHL CafePress store.

“Every one knows what a bird is,” asserts an early 20th century book that I found while browsing the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL). As I’ve learned during my Professional Development Internship with Jacqueline Chapman at Smithsonian Libraries this summer, it’s not always that simple. Taxonomy is ever-changing, especially at the granular level needed by subject specialists around the world who use BHL to conduct research on organisms ranging from mosses to turtles to fungi. BHL is a consortial digital library whose member libraries digitize works in natural history and botany based on both user requests and subject librarians’ selections.

As the daughter of a children’s librarian and library branch manager, I grew up in public libraries and have become passionate about the important role a library plays within a community. This has led me down the path of becoming a librarian myself. Originally from California, I’m now living on the east coast and attending graduate school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill pursuing my passion for this institution. This coming year is my last year of school for a dual Master degree program in Library Science and Public Administration.

Ever since eighth grade, I’ve known that I wanted to be a librarian. Originally my dilemma was choosing between being a teacher or a librarian, but as my understanding of the profession has grown and evolved, I’ve realized that I didn’t have to choose!

My earliest memory of the Natural History Museum is climbing the steps to see the “stuffed animal zoo.” It was a very rainy day and our plans of visiting the National Zoo were put on hold. However, my mom had an idea so that I- only about four or five at the time- could still see animals. I had no idea at the time what exactly she meant by “stuffed animal,” but I had a blast and returned frequently during our yearly trips up from Florida. The stairs seemed so much taller back then. Now they’re just a quick jaunt up to something much more than a place to escape the rain. As the years and visits went by, I found that I did not get bored by the many visits.