Name: Alissa Kossar
Pronouns: She/Her
Hometown: Bethany, CT, USA
What is your favorite summer activity? Or your favourite Halifax activity?
My favorite summer activity is usually hiking! I love the woods and dense trees. In Halifax, my favorite summer activity is walking through the parks, Public Garden, and waterfront. I also love practicing yoga at some of the local studios.
What internship are you affiliated with?
I am affiliated with the multidisciplinary internship, working at the Killam, Sexton, and MacRae Libraries.
What brought you to the MI program at Dal?
While working in Early Childhood Education, I realized the path for me was something a bit different than that. I love the process of learning and teaching and was looking for something adjacent that still allowed me to serve my community in that capacity while allowing for more growth and development in that life-long relationship with learning. That path took me to librarianship, where I would be immersed in the world of learning and sharing knowledge in a supportive environment. Dalhousie offered opportunities to learn about different kinds of librarianship through several different lenses, while still focusing on the communities libraries serve, and seemed like an excellent fit for what I was looking for and hoping to be a part of.
What drew you to the internship opportunity at the Dal Libraries?
While learning about Librarianship in my program, academic librarianship seemed more and more interesting and in line with my professional goals and values the more I learned about it. I was excited about the opportunity to work in an academic library that I frequent as a student and be involved in a multi-faceted internship program with several Dalhousie Libraries and a variety of library topics to immerse myself in academic librarianship, apply my skills, and learn from the experts about this field. This internship at Dal fit those goals, and has lived up to my expectations greatly!
What’s your educational background?
My educational background is primarily in early childhood education. I got my undergraduate degree in Early Childhood Education, with minors in English, Wildlife Conservation, and Animal Sciences. As part of that education, I completed internships and practicums at wildlife sanctuaries, and in a second-grade classroom in a public school.
What projects have you worked on so far during your internship?
I’ve gotten to work on a lot of interesting projects so far in my internship! These projects include course assessments, updating and creating library tutorial videos, reviewing and updating Brightspace courses, reviewing and updating several LibGuides, selecting books for the Blind Date with a Book event and writing fun profiles for them, creating blog posts and other marketing material for the promotion of new collections, and monitoring and responding to reference emails.
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