I am very excited to be interning at the W.K. Kellogg Health Sciences Library for the coming year. My interest in health information was what first drew me to the MLIS program at Dal. After following a winding road through higher education – first a BA in English, then an MA in History – I found myself working for a health promotion NGO in Nova Scotia. I came to realize that much of our work was similar to librarianship, especially the time spent helping people to locate health information (hello, reference!) and compiling databases of online resources to distribute (a.k.a. digital librarianship). I wanted to know how to do this work properly, so I applied to Dal’s School of Information Management.

The internship at Dal Libraries appealed to me because it provides valuable hands-on training. I wanted the opportunity to see how an academic library works in practice, rather than simply reading about it. So far, my experience has totally reframed what I thought I had learned in my MLIS courses. The internship also allows me to explore my interest in health education from a new angle. So far, much of the intern training has focused on helping health sciences students and faculty with their literature searching. It is very fulfilling to be doing a job that supports medical education and research – in addition to being fun!