[LIBRARYDIR] RE: wondering about interns and/or grad assistants

[Winters, Sharon]

Hi, Chris:
The UW libraries play a valuable role in offering opportunities for i-School students to develop
the kinds of instructional, assessment, and reference skills included in Hawaii's internship program.  We've hired
a number of great tenure-track and adjunct librarians who held grad asst. positions at UW libraries.
Here at TCC, we've intentionally used grad students in our College Archive - partly because our archivist is PT and
we're still in start-up mode; we employed a history PhD student to design an
oral history program, and have used several MLIS students to work on specific archive projects (sometimes as a formal
internship, sometimes as a volunteer).  Though we did not set out to hire grad students, we've employed one MLIS
student as a library reference specialist (see attached job posting) while another of our ref specialists will head off
to the i-School this fall, while retaining his position.  The PT ref specialist position, while paraprofessional, provides great
work experience.
It seems that internships are best-suited for specific projects with fairly short timelines for completion - that works
for the Archive, not so much the Library... library projects typically need to be institutionalized at some point and FT faculty
librarians are in the best position to do that.  That's our experience, at least.  In WA, it is likely that faculty unions would
push back if interns were used to do work typically performed by faculty (e.g. reference, instruction).

Sharon Winters
Library Director
Building 7, Library<http://www.tacomacc.edu/library>, Tacoma Community College
6501 S. 19th Street, Tacoma, WA  98466
253.566.5091   swinters at tacomacc.edu

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From: librarydir-bounces at lists.ctc.edu [mailto:librarydir-bounces at lists.ctc.edu] On Behalf Of Matz, Chris
Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2014 11:23 AM
To: librarydir at lists.ctc.edu
Subject: [LIBRARYDIR] wondering about interns and/or grad assistants

Good morning, everyone.  Please throw the new fella a bone and share with me your experiences soliciting and then using graduate students as either interns or full-blown assistants in your respective libraries.  This is a model we used to some effect in my previous job:
http://www.hawaii.edu/lis/courses/internships/leeward-community-college/
http://www.hawaii.edu/lis/courses/internships/leeward-community-college-halau-ike-o-puuloa/
I'm curious about if or how Washington rolls on this, of course.


Thanks very much for your consideration -

Chris

************************
Chris Matz
Director, Ray W Howard Library
Shoreline Community College
206.546.4558
cmatz at shoreline.edu<mailto:cmatz at shoreline.edu>

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