[Editor’s Note: Many law libraries have internship or fellowship programs similar to that described in the article below. If you’d like to publicize your program, consider sending me an article for the next newsletter, at leah.sandwell-weiss@law.arizona.edu.]
The Ruth Lilly Law Library of the Indiana University School of Law-Indianapolis has an internship program that helps shepherd library students into the library profession either through earning credit hours (up to 6 credit hours) or through opportunity and income. Judith Ford Anspach, Professor of Law and Library Director has provided internship opportunities to students enrolled in Indiana University’s School of Library and Information of Science. It’s her willingness to help student interns which makes the internship program at the Ruth Lilly Law Library such an important part of her vision of the future of the law library profession.
Over the past year, several outstanding library students have gone through Judith’s mentoring program. Below is a summary of the stories of five interns, the kinds of projects they were involved with, and the skills they acquired. Among the five, two had JD’s, but three did not. Only one intern had previous library experience. Three interns worked primarily in public services, and two worked primarily in technical services. Outlined below are their compelling stories.
Donna Bowman
Donna Bowman began working at the Ruth Lilly Law Library in a rather roundabout way. She interviewed Judith Anspach because of her interest in law libraries. During her meeting, Judith discovered that Donna had her law degree and was working towards her MLS, but was not working for the law library. She offered Donna a job. Donna soon began filling in at the circulation desk and the reference desk. After a little while, Donna mentioned to Judith that if she ever wanted help with grading or creating class materials, she would love the experience. Soon under Judith’s careful supervision, Donna began working on revising some class materials for her Legal Research for LLM Egypt course, and now she is helping to create materials for her Advanced Legal Research class.
Undoubtedly, Donna’s experiences helped her during her job search. Many of the law schools Donna had interviewed with were very impressed to learn that she had so much teaching and classroom experience. In her new position, Donna knows that her experiences at the IU Ruth Lilly Law Library will help immensely. The experience that Judith and many of the librarians had shared with her has given Donna a better understanding of the profession and of just how complicated it really is to prepare to teach a legal research class.
Sabrina Kramer
Sabrina Kramer, a paralegal studies major in college, recently graduated with her MLS from Indiana University. Her dream is to work in a law library, ultimately as a technical services supervisor. While interning at the Ruth Lilly Law Library, Sabrina’s main focus was in cataloging materials. Sabrina completed the cataloging of a collection of microfiche, various United Nations monographs, and two sets of electronic resources in HeinOnline. Of the latter, approximately 20 percent of the records that Sabrina created were original records. The internship at Ruth Lilly Law Library gave Sabrina extensive hands-on, practical experience. Through Catalog Librarian Chris Long’s guidance, Sabrina learned when it was appropriate to change information in an OCLC record, when information should not be changed, and when additional information should be included. Sabrina also learned that assigning subject headings can be very challenging, and sometimes frustrating, it is a very important facet of the job.
Sabrina was fortunate to be able to have the time to sit down and create what she thought was the best record she could produce. Not every cataloger has that luxury. She also worked on a couple of reference requests and observed the circulation staff. Sabrina sat with everyone in technical services, and she has a good general idea of what everyone does and how they do it. This was a valuable part of the internship because Sabrina learned how it all fits together. Every job at the library is important and is valued.
Emily Woolard
Emily Woolard, an Indiana University-Bloomington law graduate, began working as a part-time circulation assistant at the Ruth Lilly Law Library as an MLS student at Indiana. As a circulation assistant, Emily gained valuable experience about law libraries and the workings of libraries in general. At the circulation desk, Emily provided assistance to library users with check-outs, directional questions, and inquiries about library services such as photocopying and interlibrary loan. Emily also worked on processing interlibrary loans using the ILLiad system and holds using the Sirsi system. In addition, Emily often shelved library materials and assisted with a shelf-reading project. After her summer internship at a local law firm, Emily was asked to work as a part-time reference assistant in addition to her circulation duties.
Under the supervision of the library faculty, Emily often assisted with the creation and editing, as well as a little grading, of student legal research assignments. Emily also assisted with some in-depth faculty research requests and finding articles and books on various topics. Finally, she worked on a couple of larger projects involving comparisons of the library’s print journal holdings with their electronic holdings in HeinOnline and Westlaw.
Peter Terew
A chemistry major in college, Peter Terew, another 2008 - 2009 intern, is working on his MLS. Peter was initially drawn to librarianship through the aspects of scholarly communication as it relates to the advancement of scientific research in the academic setting. Peter wishes to explore issues related to institutional repositories, thesauri construction, and database construction. He plans in the future to gain experience both as a reference librarian and also as a cataloger in either a public or academic setting.
Peter plans on furthering his education in a field yet to be determined. At the Ruth Lilly Law Library, Peter participated in a project aimed at reclaiming shelf space in the library, which included withdrawing, shifting, and reorganizing the books in the library. In addition, he also worked as a part-time circulation clerk. His duties associated with this position included assisting patrons with reserve items, the layout of the library, and checking out books.
Abigail Appleton
Working as a student aide/intern at the Ruth Lilly Law Library was Abigail Appleton’s first experience working in a library. Abigail’s main task was the final step in getting books shelf-ready, i.e., making and placing the call number stickers on the spine. Abigail had quite a few side projects that she had worked on when there were no call number stickers to make. These included the monthly database updates, updating and converting the alphabetical organization of United Nations materials to Library of Congress organization, checking the authority files in the IU catalog, and other database cleanup chores.
These tasks gave her an understanding of Sirsi Work Flows and OCLC that she would not have otherwise gotten in library science courses. Her projects as student aide have helped Abigail to reinforce and retain many of the things she learned in her cataloging class. While she put in more hours working in technical services, Abigail also worked circulation during some evening and weekend hours at the Law Library. She appreciated the experience and the people skills that she gained through her hours at the circulation desk.
Beginning June 7, Abigail will be attending classes at the American University in Cairo learning Arabic and pursuing a Middle East Studies Masters. Through the connection between Cairo University and Alexandria University and the Indiana University School of Law-Indianapolis, Judith Anspach was very helpful in connecting Abigail to people she knows in Cairo. Judith has also helped Abigail by passing her résumé on to some of her contacts in Egypt, where Abigail may possibly be able to work or volunteer when she has breaks from school.