Be sure to take advantage of the opportunities available to you as Penn Staff beyond your work in Holman! Below are helpful tips and information to help you get the most out of your internship here across the professional, academic, and personal spheres.
As an intern at Penn Libraries, you have the unique chance to get an inside view of how a major academic library operates, all while still a student. Be sure to take advantage of opportunities to observe and shadow the librarians you'll be working with!
Consultations and Instructional Sessions
Shadowing current librarians in their day-to-day work might be the greatest training afforded to you as an intern, especially as it pertains to navigating reference and instructional sessions. The Holman librarians do a lot of reference consultations, and they are more than happy to let you sit in. Pay attention to the different types of questions patrons bring into one-on-one sessions, and how different librarians navigate reference interviews. How they untangle what the patron is actually looking for? How do they go about conducting a search strategy? Everyone has a different process, so ask around to see who has upcoming consultations you can observe. Additionally, the librarians are sometimes asked to teach a one-shot instructional session to a larger group of people. In these cases, pay attention to how they adjust their approach for a larger audience. Towards the end of your internship, you may get the chance to apply what you've learned in shadowing and lead a consultation or instructional sessions yourself!
Workshops and Library Programing
Similarly, Penn Libraries offers a wide variety of workshops and library programing available to members of the Penn Community. Attend offerings that sound interesting to you, and use it as a chance to learn how to run an effective workshops and events. In workshops, analyze how it is structured; how the librarian presents the information, how they interact with participants, how they keep (or don't keep) the audience engaged, etc. Additionally, volunteer to help with a variety or programing to learn how to handle programing like tabling, scheduled events, drop-in programing, and more. In all cases, pay attention to what you think works and what doesn't.
Workshops and Events
You can also attend workshops and events just because they interest you! Regularly check up on the library workshops calendar and the Penn Today event page to stay abreast with the offerings. There's fun stuff happening all across the Penn Community, but some good places to start include the various lectures and events hosted at the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts and letterpress and bookmaking workshops hosted by the Common Press (including how to use an old-fashioned letterpress, as pictured below!)
Borrow Library Books
As staff, you get library borrowing privileges! If you find something that looks interesting while navigating the catalog, feel free to check it out or save it to your account's bookmarks for later. You can even have your checkouts delivered to Holman for easy pickup!
News Subscriptions
Similarly, as staff, you have access to digital editions of various magazines and newspapers, paywall-free, on and off campus! These include sites like the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Availability of these resources are subject to change due to licenses being negotiated with each publisher individually, so be sure to check the library's News Subscriptions page to see what is currently accessibly through Penn Libraries.
Study Here!
While the shift of many MILS programs to remote instruction allows us the flexibility to take on internships like this one, a major downside is losing access to a campus library study space (A very ironic issue for us library students!) While being online also means you can conduct your classwork anywhere with an internet connection, sometimes you just need a space that's quiet, distraction free, and open late to get work done.
As library staff, your PennCard grants you access to most of the library spaces across campus, and you can take advantage of that for your own studies. So long as the library is open to use by general PennCard holders, you can use it as a patron yourself! Just be sure to check the times each library space is open before heading out.
It can feel awfully meta to be doing your library school homework in a library space you have access to via your library internship, but if you live near-ish to campus, the ability to use the spaces can be incredibly convenient. In order to help keep the divide between "work" and "school" in your mind, try utilizing the non-Holman libraries like Van Pelt or Fisher Fine Arts (pictured above).
Study the Interview Process
At Penn Libraries and many other academic libraries, when a search committee has identified the top applicants for an open position, the candidates will be brought on campus for a full day of tours and interviews. Part of this process includes each interviewee giving a presentation and open Q+A session to current library staff, which you as an intern are free to attend. Upcoming interview presentations are typically announced on the library-all-staff email list.
As someone entering the profession, these presentations are incredibly valuable, allowing you to observe the hiring process from the perspecitive of the hiring institution. the chance to see what types of skills and thought processes you may be asked to demonstrate in future interviews. Pay attention to how the candidates interpret their prompts, navigate real-time questions, and present themselves, as well as how current staff react to their answers and presentations. Once the position is filled, compare how the hired candidate's performance in the presentation compared to the others interviewed, and consider what aspects may have pushed the winning candidate over the edge. This is a chance to see what types of skills and through processes you may be asked to demonstrate in future interviews, and you can apply what you think makes for a strong candidate in your own job hunt moving forward!
