“I realized I wanted to be a librarian when I finished my English degree,” says Nicole Bloudoff, one of the three Master of Library and Information Studies (MLIS) students doing her internship at the Killam Library this summer. “I spent a lot of time in the library during my undergrad, and I loved the atmosphere,” she adds.

Nicole is from 100 Mile House, B.C. When she was looking into MLIS degree programs, she decided that she wanted to add a cross-Canada adventure to her education. “I wanted to explore the east coast, and Halifax is a nice, small city. I also knew that Dal’s MLIS program has a great reputation,” she says.

This summer, Nicole’s been analyzing data from this past winter’s LibQUAL+ survey, working on the faculty profiles, uploading the Proceedings of the Nova Scotian Institute of Science to DalSpace (older issues) and to Open Journal Systems (newer issues), and making a tutorial video about how to register a DalCard as a library card.

“There’s such a variety of interesting projects to work on this summer. I was drawn to the internship at the Killam because it’s such a busy library and I knew it would offer a rich experience,” says Nicole. “One of my favourite things about working with the public here is teaching them how to use the online resources we have.”

Nicole is still exploring her options when it comes to where she’d like to work after graduation, but she’s most interested in public and academic libraries. “I’m learning a lot this summer about the issues faced by libraries. Resources, such as journal subscriptions, are so costly, it’s made me realize how important it is to know your resources and to have libraries providing access to these resources for faculty members and students,” says Nicole.