Menu

The LibVine

What's going on at Dalhousie Libraries

Archives for intern

Intern profile: Courtney Vienneau

Courtney VienneauWhat brought you to the MLIS program at Dal?
I fell in love with the idea of becoming a librarian after working as a C@P (Community Access Program) intern at a public library. I spent the summer teaching adults and seniors new technology skills, as well as working circulation and participating in events for the summer reading program. Upon graduating from my undergrad, I began working at the same public library and it was during this time that I seriously began to think about taking my MLIS.

Originally from Cape Breton, attending Dalhousie meant that I could live close to my friends and family back home; I attended Saint Mary’s University in Halifax and loved living in the city. Dalhousie’s MLIS program offered opportunities that interested me such as internships, mentorship program, and research opportunities. 

What drew you to the internship at the Dal Libraries?
I have a background working in public libraries and I wanted a different experience during my time at Dalhousie. In the future, I hope to work at an academic library in a research or teaching capacity, therefore getting academic library experience was important to me.

I was drawn to the Sexton Library internship because of the smaller size of the library and their focus on engineering and architecture. With my arts background, I worried about working at a library that focuses on disciplines I know little about, but have found it challenging and rewarding to interact with students from different backgrounds. 

Your educational background
I have a Bachelor of Arts with a major in English and a minor in Classics from Saint Mary’s University. During my undergraduate, I participated in the International Chinese Studies Program at Beijing Normal University Zhuhai in Zhuhai, China. 

What have you been doing during your internship?
During the school year, I assisted with the on-going serials project. We moved serials, listed record information in a spreadsheet, updated record holdings, and weeded serials we were not keeping. This project has been ongoing and will continue into the summer as we work on the basement serials. 

So far this summer, I have worked updating LibGuides to the new format, created informative displays, continued to conduct reference interviews, assisted staff, worked the circulation desk, created training materials, cleaned damaged materials, and organized holdings. 

Fun and interesting facts about you:
My roommate and I are working on a children’s book about my two cats, Charles and Frankie. Emily, a NSCAD student, will illustrate and I will write the story.

Both of my parents are avid readers and supporters of our local library. I owe my love of books and the library to them. 

I am Co-Chair of SIMSA for 2018-2019, an executive member of SIMConnect, and look forward to getting more involved during my second year. 

 

Intern Profile: Christine Cousins

Christine Cousins2

What brought you to the MLIS program at Dal?

I decided on the MLIS degree rather suddenly in the fall of the last year of my undergraduate degree. It was one of those things where I suddenly went from having no awareness of the program to hearing about it from several very different sources. I had always loved the part of my English degree that had me learning from different genres, times, and locations, and the MLIS degree seemed like the perfect way to carry forward that large area of interest.

As for Dalhousie in particular, the ocean was a major draw. I’d always wanted to come out east, so, when I decided on the MLIS degree and realized that Dalhousie had an excellent program, it seemed like the natural fit. The practicum and small class sizes were additional aspects of Dalhousie’s program that I loved, since I felt that they would be crucial to me getting the most possible out of the program.

What drew you to the internship at the Dal Libraries?

I had no previous work experience at libraries, so I really wanted to get the chance to work in an actual library setting. I was able to do my practicum through Halifax Public Libraries, and thought that an internship at an academic library would allow me to experience multiple types of librarianship and the benefits and challenges that accompany them. From what the second year students had been saying I knew that the internships at Dalhousie were wonderful experiences, and, in particular, the many different faculties that Killam serves really appealed to me. I love that I get to work with such varieties of information and people.

What’s your educational background?

I completed my Bachelor of Art in Honours English at the University of Guelph, Ontario.

What have you been doing during your internship?

Reference work for students, faculty, and community members is the constant task of my internship. The rest of the time I’m involved in an ever-changing docket of projects. Currently, I’m involved in the reference room refresh, which involves weeding reference material, while also working with the other Killam intern, Lindsay Warner, to help with the assessment of the Wallace McCain Learning Commons. I’ve also been responsible for creating a presentation explaining the details about how to use the new Dataverse platform for storing and managing research data.

Fun and interesting facts about you:

Sharpies number among my favourite things, as do turtles. This may have resulted in a series of comics and children’s stories where a grumpy turtle does things like battling deadlines, playing cards with snowmen, and befriending dragons. The first thing I did during my interview for this position was greet the interviewers. The second thing was break my chair. None of my friends or family were surprised by this turn of events.

 

 

Intern Season: Summer Shine Series

On August 16, the Dalhousie Libraries interns took part in a presentation opportunity that we dubbed the Summer Shine Series.

The series, a new initiative, was designed to give the interns an opportunity to present projects they have been working on during their summer internship. The faculty from the School of Information Management and all of the faculty and staff from the Dalhousie Libraries were invited to attend.

The interns’ presentations were varied and fascinating. It gave everyone present an idea of just how much they contribute to the Dal Libraries while they are here. It was a great way to end a fantastic intern season. Thank you to all of the interns for your excellent work this summer.

The list of presenters and their topics.

Intern Season: Maxime Lapierre

Max completed a summer internship with the Geographical Information Sciences Centre (GIS), located on the second floor of the Killam Library. This year marks his second summer full-time with the GIS Centre in addition to working part-time at the Centre during the fall and winter terms.

He is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Community Design with a focus on Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and environmental planning. The internship with the Killam provided Max the opportunity to pursue the following projects:

•   Scanning a series of aerial photographs of the Halifax peninsula, Bedford and Sackville taken in 1969. The series includes over 700 high-resolution black and white photographs that now can be used in a GIS digital environment.

•   Digitizing and geo-referencing commonly used historic maps of Halifax and city maps from the 1915 Atlas of Canada.

•   Creating a GIS dataset for Dalhousie University and the surrounding area. This project will enhance existing data, including building footprints, a road layer, and green spaces.  Over 1,500 buildings have been digitally rendered, including all Dalhousie-owned buildings and many surrounding residential and commercial buildings.

•    Working with Dalhousie School of Planning’s Dr. Patricia Manuel and Prof. John Zuck on a GIS-based project for the Williams Lake Conservation Company focused on a potential residential development in the Williams Lake/Purcell’s Cove Wildlands area.

•    Developing a process for preparing GIS data for 3D printing using the new three dimensional printer located in the Killam Library.

Having lived and travelled throughout North and South America before coming to Dal, Max says this about his recent experience as a Killam Library intern: “It has inspired a fascination with GIS that would have otherwise have not been possible. Now, I want to investigate how GIS can be used for further real-world applications—for things like disaster management and emergency preparedness models.”

Max has been a teaching assistant in several geography and GIS courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Additionally, he will tutor GIS for the School of Planning in the upcoming year. He is the recipient of the prestigious ESRI Canada GIS scholarship.

 

Intern Season: Laura Thorne

Laura is doing her summer internship at the Killam Library. She’s involved in a number of projects this summer, including working on integrating the website of the Nova Scotia Agricultural College’s MacRae Library Website into the Dalhousie Libraries website in preparation for the merger of Dalhousie University with the NSAC. She’s also been working on updating the Subject Guides, updating links and adding new resources.

Laura can also be found working on the Information Desk. “I answer questions about anything from ‘Where do I find this book?’ to ‘What’s a good restaurant?’ to ‘How do you say thank you in Russian?’” she says.

Laura’s professional background is in academic and special libraries. While she obtained her undergraduate degree at the University of Guelph (with a double major in anthropology and history), she worked in the circulation department. She’s also worked in a medical library at the Child and Parent Resource Institute (CPRI) in London, Ontario. In April, she completed her practicum at the library of the Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women.

In the fall, Laura will be going into her second year of Dal’s MLIS program. She will continue to work on the Information Desk at the Killam. She will also be doing research focused on Dalhousie Libraries’ social media and web 2.0 usage.

 

Intern Season: Leah Rae

Leah Rae is doing her summer internship in Archives and Special Collections (located in the Killam Library). Her main focus is working on the Shipping Collection, an extensive collection of thousands of documents detailing around 2,000 ships from the 1800s-1970s.

“I am learning a lot about ships that I didn’t know before. I can now identify the differences between a cruiser, a destroyer, a junk and a barque,” says Leah.

Leah is originally from Vancouver. She holds a degree in creative writing from the University of British Columbia. She is also a poet and runs a magazine called Poetry is Dead with her friend, Daniel Zomparelli. She first came to Nova Scotia to visit her best friend, who was living in Hubbards. “I fell in love with the Maritimes at that point, and when I decided to do my MLIS, I was thrilled at the opportunity to go to Dal,” says Leah.

Leah has been interested in archives for a long time, and visited the Library and Archives of Canada on a school trip to Ottawa last winter. “I was lucky enough to be able to complete my practicum with Wendy Robicheau at the archives at Acadia University this spring, and am delighted to be able to spend the summer working here at the archives,” says Leah.

 

Intern Season: Melissa Rothfus

Melissa is doing her summer internship at the Kellogg Library. She is working on a variety of projects, including:

• Updating faculty biographies for collections purposes

• Updating various LibGuides

• Guiding patrons through resources available at the Kellogg

• Staffing the single point of service counter

• Working one-on-one with Kellogg patrons to develop search strategies for their research projects

Melissa is currently working on a thesis related to public health. “I come to the Kellogg with a long-standing interest in public health issues—I published on a public health topic in the most recent issue of the Dalhousie Journal of Interdisciplinary Management,” she says.

 

Melissa has a Bachelor of Arts from Macalester College in Saint Paul Minnesota and a Master’s and a PhD from the University at Buffalo, of the State University of New York. She has taught at the University of Nevada in Reno and in Halifax at Mount St. Vincent and Dalhousie.

“I enjoy teaching and take particular pleasure in the opportunity to help patrons learn about our resources and how to use them. I also have broad interests and enjoy learning many new things with each new research topic I encounter and each search I perform,” says Melissa. Her first library experience was in the Classics Department Library at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. She is entering into her second year of Dal’s MLIS program this fall.

 

Intern Season: Nancy McPhee

Nancy McPhee is spending her summer internship at the Killam Library. Her main projects include:

 

  • Working on the Information Desk to learn more about reference services
  • Contributing to website assessment research and procedures
  • Developing an interdepartmental project involving non-textual research

“This year the three interns at the Killam chose to work together on a majority of projects, rather than solely independent projects. This arrangement allows us to learn from each other’s strengths and to creatively address our tasks,” explains Nancy.

 

Nancy at the Killam's Information Desk.

Nancy is entering her second year of Dal’s MLIS program. She holds Bachelor of Fine Art in Visual Arts from the University of Victoria and a Master in Fine Arts in Studio Arts from Concordia University. Her background is in photography, theatre, and textile arts. Professionally, she has worked as a university instructor, a woodshop technician, an aide for university students with learning disabilities, and a government researcher.

“The most enjoyable aspect of this internship is working with students. This is also a wonderful opportunity to participate in different aspects of librarianship. We as the interns gain experience and come to understand which aspect of the field is most intriguing to us, and this will be invaluable knowledge when we graduate and continue our professional careers,” says Nancy.

In the fall she will work part-time at the Killam, teach in the Extended Studies program at NSCAD, and will travel to exhibit her artwork.

 

Intern Season: Ruth Collings

Ruth is doing her summer internship at the Sexton Design & Technology Library. She is spending her time working on a number of projects, including:

• Reorganizing the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) journals

• Shifting the serials collection on the second floor to make for more student study space

• Redesigning the database guides, how-to guides and citation style guides

• Answering questions from students at the reference desk

• Helping to purchase new material

Ruth at the Sexton Library.

Ruth has strong connections to Dal, her mother Brenda (née Lanigan) graduated with an MBA from Dalhousie and taught accounting at TUNS, while her father James Collings graduated with a PhD in biochemistry and an MD in family medicine. He currently teaches at the Dalhousie Medical Education Program in New Brunswick.

Ruth has an undergraduate degree in the combined honours Arts & Science Program at McMaster University, an interdisciplinary-focused degree that allows for concurrent completion of an honours in psychology degree with a focus on cognition and abnormal psychology. She was the founding co-chair of finance for the first student-run undergraduate conference on interdisciplinary education in Canada, Combining Two Cultures.

Ruth came back to Halifax to complete her MLIS degree. She is interested in client-oriented library practices, digital archiving, social media use, community engagement and reference services. “After graduation, I’m hoping to get a job relating to technology use in the library and evidence-gathering for library decision-making,” says Ruth.

In October 2011 she was hired as a reference intern at the Sexton Design & Technology Library and is currently working full-time at the Sexton. She will return to the MLIS program in the fall.

 

Intern Season: Catherine McGoveran

Catherine is spending her summer at the Killam Library, where she has daily information desk shifts. She is working on a number of ongoing projects this summer, including:

o Working with Open Journal Systems to make available archive volumes of The Dalhousie Review

o Researching information visualization and graphics to feed into a planning document for the library’s instructional program

o Updating LibGuides

o Digitizing the Proceedings of the Nova Scotian Institute of Science and uploading them into the institutional repository

o Contributing to the development of Dalhousie’s institutional repository, DalSpace, with a focus on creating a faculty research directory

Catherine in the stacks at the Killam.

Catherine will be entering her second year of Dalhousie’s MLIS program in the fall. She has a degree from Carleton University, with a major in political science and a minor in French. Between graduating from Carleton and starting graduate school at Dal, Catherine worked for a year at the Library of Parliament, supporting the research and information needs of parliamentarians and parliamentary committees. Her other library experience includes having worked in technical services at Carleton and in circulation at Dal. She will continue to work at the Killam part-time during the school year.

“Having the opportunity to collaborate with many different library employees and to work on a variety of projects, ranging from the very technical to more research-based, has made the internship a very rewarding experience. The Information Desk has also been a highlight – you learn something new every day with the diversity in information and research requests. I really enjoy working with patrons, whether it’s giving an introduction to the library’s website, helping them gather potential resources for a paper, or teaching them how to locate a book in the stacks,” says Catherine.

She is also a member of the Dalhousie Journal of Interdisciplinary Management (DJIM) executive. The DJIM is a student-led initiative aimed at publishing Dalhousie graduate student work of the highest quality and significance in all areas of management.