Hailing from Eagle River, Alaska, Valerie Collins is the intern who has probably travelled the farthest to get to Dalhousie this year. Before coming to Dal, Valerie did a Bachelor of Arts, with a double major in English and German, at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

“I was one of those kids who grew up saying, ‘I want to be a librarian,’” said Valerie. But she wasn’t serious about it until she researched LIS programs in the last year of her undergraduate studies, and discovered how broad and innovative the field could be. “The program wasn’t offered in Alaska, so I decided that if I was going to leave then I should go far, and that’s part of what brought me to Halifax,” she said.

In addition to working on DalSpace, Dalhousie’s institutional repository, Valerie is spending her summer working on tutorial videos for the library, and providing reference assistance at the Killam Library Service Point.

Eventually, she plans to return to Alaska, but she hopes to stay in Canada for a while.

Valerie was also the recipient of the 2014 Stephanie Downs Memorial Award. Congratulations, Valerie!