The End is Near

It's now finals week, which means my internship has come to an end. The past couple weeks have been busy with the Thanksgiving holiday and the end of semester madness. I did manage to finish my projects for the internship, however. I selected some videos to purchase for Diana's departments. Diana will send the list off to be reviewed, so we will see if many of them get approved for purchase. Diana and I also finished touching on some of my remaining learning outcomes. We spent some time discussing basic cataloging concepts as they apply to King Library. We discussed the importance of professional development and publishing. To tie into the topic of publishing, Diana sent me a draft of a manuscript she is working on. I read through it and provided her with some feedback on the content.

Before I knew it, my last day had arrived. As I have mentioned previously, I am extremely grateful for this opportunity, as I have learned so much. I am positive the experience I gained during this internship will benefit me throughout my career.

Wrapping Things Up!

Things are moving right along at the MLK Library. Here's what I was up to in November:

Nov 1-Nov.5:

I continued filling in for my supervisor during her scheduled virtual reference hour. I received a couple of questions this week, but nothing that required the use of the library’s resources, however. For example, one person wanted to know how to read Ebooks on his iPad. This kind of question required some good old-fashioned Googling. I spent the rest of my time at my internship finishing up the Company Information Subject Guide project I had been working on. (To see an example of a Subject Guide my supervisor, Diana Wu, created, see this link: http://libguides.sjsu.edu/business .) At this point, I had already updated most of the information and links from the Company Information Tutorial, so I began transferring this information into the Subject Guide website and organizing it. I also added some pictures to liven up the appearance. In the original tutorial there was a quiz at the end. I wanted to recreate this feature in the Subject Guide, but I had a difficult time finding a quiz builder that provided free services. I finally settled on creating a quiz using Survey Gizmo. The only downfall is that users cannot see the correct answers after they answer each question. I hope to get feedback from other librarians about this.

Nov. 8-Nov. 12:

Since I wrapped things up with the Subject Guide, I began working on the other project my supervisor left for me to work on during her vacation. Since we discussed collection development before she left, she thought it would be good practice for me to work on selecting titles to purchase for the departments she is responsible for. Her departments include Accounting and Finance, Management and Information Systems, and Marketing and Decision Sciences.

Before I began the project, I read the budget policies for each department and familiarized myself with the classes available for these departments. Once I had a good idea of important concepts, I browsed the CSU union catalog for new and popular titles relating to each department. I took into consideration how relevant each book was, how many other universities owned a copy, and if the copies owned were checked out or not. I recorded this information in a document to share with Diana upon her return.

Nov. 15- Nov. 19:

This week my supervisor returned from her time off. I was excited to catch up with her and discuss what I worked on while she was away. I was relieved when she approved of many of the books I selected for her departments. I added these titles to our Gobi account. This makes it easier for Diana to send the titles to acquisitions, where the books will be ordered by other staff members. I also helped select some videos afterwards since each department was granted money for videos (though I’m told the budget is much lower than in previous years).

There are only a few more days left in the internship. I'll check back in soon.