More Staff News: Interns

January 2008—This semester Marquette has received its first intern placement under a $1 million grant funded by the Librarians for the 21st Century program of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to recruit and educate students of diverse backgrounds as information professionals.  Diversity in the Organization of Information and its Technology (DOIT) provides generous student support for an ALA-accredited Master of Library & Information Science (MLIS) education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM).  The DOIT Project is led by UW-UWM's School of Information Studies (SOIS) in cooperation with UWM's Golda Meir Library, Marquette University Libraries, and Milwaukee Public Library.  Each of the 20 participating students, specializing in the organization of information, will be matched with a faculty mentor at SOIS and a professional mentor from one of the partner libraries or another local library.  Jean Zanoni, associate dean of libraries, who assisted with the grant proposal and is on the steering committee that designed the collaborative program, is mentoring Marquette’s first placement, Jeff Beder, in the Bibliographic Control department.  The grant pays for Beder’s internship for up to two semesters and also allowed him to travel to Washington, D.C. for the American Library Association conference in 2007.  Beder says, "The DOIT program has given me the opportunity to finish my MLIS."  When he graduates this May, he hopes to work in an academic library, designing an online instruction program.

Marquette established its own internship program ten years ago, providing professional work experience and mentoring for UW-Milwaukee students in the graduate School of Information Studies.  2007-08 interns are: Rebecca Buchmann, whose internship in Bibliographic Control will include authority control and database clean-up; Diane Claeys will intern in Serials, adjusting records when serials subscriptions switch from print to electronic format; Nora Craven’s internship in Research & Outreach Services will emphasize working at the Information Desk, conducting training sessions for students, and creating a resource guide for understanding American diversity; Brook Engebretson will intern in Special Collections, processing a new collection and cataloging digital images in the “Women in Blue & Gold” digital collection; Elizabeth Horn’s internship with the Outreach Librarian will entail writing and research projects, as well as assisting with English literature collection development.

Volunteer Erin Passehl generously donates her time to the Department of Special Collections and Archives.  Passehl earned her Master’s of Science in Information from the University of Michigan in April 2007 and currently works full time as a cataloging and metadata librarian at Cardinal Stritch University in Milwaukee.  She volunteers at Marquette four hours a week and is currently developing a processing plan for unprocessed library accessions.  The document she is creating provides recommendations for appraisal and processing and notes where the new accessions overlap with processed records already in our holdings.  Last summer Passehl digitized photographs for the “Women in Blue & Gold” digital collection.  With a passion for history and archives, she hopes to become an archivist later in her career.  Archivist Michelle Sweetster says, "It has been a blessing to have a professionally-trained archivist as a volunteer."  Thank you, Erin.