This summer marks the second year of the Library’s High School Internship program, wherein students from central Virginia join the Library for short-term paid internships in the Library. Students from all backgrounds and of all abilities are encouraged to apply.

What follows is one of a series of daily blog posts that interns compose during their time at the Library. Are you a student (or parent) and want to know more about summer Library internships? Ask your guidance counselor or contact Phylissa Mitchell at lm6g@virginia.edu.

Thursday June 14

What is the most interesting job you have undertaken and/or skill you have gained while interning at the library so far?

So far, the most interesting job I have undertaken has been going over the call numbers. I say this has been the most interesting experience because the books that were reviewed were considered to be “rare books”. This collection of books came from a man named Julian Bond, who was a professor at UVA and played an active role in the Civil Rights movement. It wasn’t just doing the job, but it was also what I learned as a result of it. I was able to gain a better understanding of how rare books are deemed rare.

Kalani

The most interesting task i have undertaken has been digitizing books into the online library. There are many objectives in this process, such as: capturing images of the pages, cropping the pages, naming the data, and uploading it all to the website. It didn’t take me long to get used to the routine. It all soon became muscle memory after day 2 with my interest in the technology itself. I’d be very happy to continue this process even after today; even though it was my last in that section of the building.

Q.T.

The most interesting job I have done so far during this internship is the brief introduction that I have gotten regarding computer coding on a particular website. I, personally, have not done too much with this particular job, but I will practice a bit tomorrow. This is cool because I am not techy at all so it is new to me. I also will get to see how real life annotations and analysis of a particular subject that has been handwriting correlate or is transformed into computer codes. I am practicing plenty of skills I already have and deepening the intensity of any one of those particular skills, but one that stands out is the ability to compare my own interpretations and opinions to that of an author and draw conclusions between different works based upon this. I am interested in politics so the ability to understand and relate someone else’s opinion to mine in an effective or collaborative way will become very useful in the future.

Khalia

The most interesting job that I have been given is looking over the late ’90s and early 2000s thesis and dissertation. I get to look over them and read them. I look for the links and make sure that the links work. Since it’s been like 15 years since they were made and websites disappear or change over the years. That’s why we need to archive them. The most interesting skill I have learned so far is learning to archive websites, so that in later years we can see them as they were intended to be seen and/or read. It’s the most interesting skill because I didn’t know that you could archive things on the internet.

Minuette

The most interesting thing that I’ve learned so far is how easily the library faculty has control over all its computers. This means that no matter how far a mac of a windows computer is from UVA the faculty and staff that preside over that department have the ability to shut down or reinstall deleted programs on said computers. This is really interesting because its means libraries are more than the sum of their parts. As i’ve said before people who work in libraries are amazing they Phds in all different areas but work at a library and that just makes all the different stuff they do interesting.

Grant