Journal Entry #1

My internship at the Guggenheim Museum does not begin until June 2^nd so at this point, I am still preparing for my trip. My flight to New York City is May 31^st and it is coming up very quickly. I have secured housing in Manhattan in the New York University dorms. Most of the time, I will not be at the actual Guggenheim Museum as the library is housed in an office building downtown. This is actually quite convenient for me as it is only about a mile from my dorm. The dorm is pretty ideal except for the fact that it has no air conditioning which, though I am prepared for the intense heat and humidity of summer (being from Florida), no a/c will be challenging as there is a/c everywhere in Florida. 

I have already befriended a few of my fellow Guggenheim interns. One girl is staying in the same dorm as me which is neat. Also, there is another girl who is coming from Gainesville, like me. I have also been in contact with the internship coordinator for the Guggenheim as well as my site supervisor about various details. The internship coordinator has emailed us about a couple of outside events that we might like to attend. One of these was a collaborative exhibition called stillspotting nyc and the other was a free program and reception for summer interns at the Sotheby's Institute of Art. 

Up until this point, I have been nothing but excited for my trip but I am beginning to get nervous. I am from Gainesville, Florida which is a relatively small city, especially compared to Manhattan. I am very glad that I participated in the study abroad program in London last summer as I feel more comfortable about going to New York City after having lived in another big city, even if for only three weeks. I also intend to blog about my experience this summer like I did for my London study abroad trip. 

As far as what I will actually be doing in my internship, I am not sure. In my phone interview, my supervisor mentioned a backlog of items that needed to be cataloged. One thing I am sure of is the museum culture seminars held on Fridays for the Guggenheim interns. These seminars will take us on field trips to art galleries and other cultural centers in New York City where we will learn about the various career opportunities in museums. No matter what I will be doing, I will be completing my MLIS in New York City, interning at the Guggeneheim - it is practically impossible to be anything less than an amazingly valuable and exciting experience.

Learning Objectives

In order to receive credit for my internship, I have a few assignments that I must complete that I intend to post here as I complete them.  The first of these was to create learning objectives for my internship experience.  This is what I came up with:

1. The Guggenheim Museum sets this learning objective for its Intern Program: “To provide practical hands-on museum training for students and professionals pursuing museum careers by immersing interns in the daily operations of the museum.” Having never worked in a museum or a museum library before, I believe this will be a valuable experience for me. While I could certainly take museum studies classes to learn about work in that field, immersion in the actual work is the best way to really learn about the museum world. In particular, working in a library that specializes in art, particularly art in relation to the Guggenheim Museum itself, will be an experience tailored to my interests and career goals.

2. The second goal set forth by the Guggenheim Intern Program is “To facilitate educational dialogue and exposure to the arts and cultural sector in New York through weekly Museum Culture Seminars, comprising of site visits, lectures, seminars and field trips.” While not necessarily hands-on experience, this portion of the internship will be an informative way to learn about various career opportunities in museums as well as current projects in the cultural sector. This will also widen the focus of my internship by offering the opportunity to learn about all aspects of museum work in addition to that of the library’s place with respect to the Guggenheim. In addition, the Museum Culture Seminars will be an chance for me to network with both fellow interns and professionals in the field.

3. Specifically related to the library, this internship will help me to understand the information needs of museum professionals and art scholars. The Guggenheim Library primarily serves the staff of the museum so this will be the main focus of information services. However, the library does allow qualified scholars to use their resources by appointment; the potential to aid in research in the field of museums and art history is certainly a highlighted opportunity for this internship. Furthermore, hands-on experience with the information services provided to this community will be enlightening and will help to expand my understanding of information services overall.

4. The Guggenheim Library uses Koha as its integrated library system (ILS). This is an open source ILS and, as was suggested in my phone interview, this has its benefits and its challenges. In addition to gaining experience in another ILS (I have previously worked with SirsiDynix’s Unicorn and Symphony as well as Aleph from Ex Libris), being exposed to an open source ILS will be educational. Learning more about open source software in general as well as its application to the library will be beneficial. Also, I look forward to better understanding the pros and cons of using an open source ILS (as an information professional) as well as the choice to use such and ILS in a library in general.

My last semester

Yesterday, I applied for graduation at the end of the summer.  Today I sent in what could possibly be my last tuition check ever.  I am about to embark on my last semester of school.  And this won't just be any last semester.  It's a summer-internship-at-the-Guggenheim last semester.  I'm going out with a bang I suppose.  And then having a quarter-life crisis.

Book Rainbow 2.0

Introducing book rainbow 2.0!  As you can see, we improved our design by allowing for the natural progression of the rainbow from red on the left-hand side to our small collection of purple spines on the right.  This is no doubt more appealing that the previous vertical, disjointed continuum that we created.

We are taking suggestions for a design for the next batch of withdraws!

Rainbow of withdraws

In order to make our days a little more interesting, my coworker Meaghan and I decided to being tossing our withdraw copies of books up on the shelves by color, thus creating a book rainbow.  These are the books that, about once a week or so, get boxed up and sent to Internet Archive as they have been withdrawn from UF's collection.  We put the books up on these shelves one by one, or only a handful or so at a time, so it really doesn't take any more time than just putting them up in the order than we get them (thus, it is not impeding our duplicate processing efficiency).  And because they are withdrawn and will eventually end up in boxes to be shipped away, they need not be in any particular order.  So, without further ado, behold the awesomeness:

The funky border is from the stitching program I used to make a panorama because I had to take this picture through the shelving opposite our book rainbow and was unable to capture all of the amazing in just one shot.  These books have since been sent away, but we are in the process of creating a new and improved rainbow, this time moving left to right across the shelving for a continuum of color.

Longest title I've ever seen

I pulled this book today.  The whole title is The college of life; or, Practical self-educator, a manual of self-improvement for the colored race, forming an educational emancipator and a guide to success, giving examples and achievements of successful men and women of the race as an incentive and inspiration to the rising generation, including Afro-American progress illustrated, the whole embracing, business, social, domestic, historical, and religious education.  Pretty crazy, huh?

But the part I like best is the publisher.  This book was published by Mnemosyne Publishers Inc.  In case you are a little rusty on your Greek mythology, Mnemosyne is the goddess of memory and the origin of the word mnemonic.  Funny, because you would indeed need a mnemonic if you ever wanted to remember the title of this book in its entirety.

I have a new job!

Today I started my new job at the University of Florida's Auxiliary Library Facility.  I have my own desk!  So exciting!  So at my new job, I will be helping with the de-duplication project in preparation for the building of a high-density facility addition to the current Auxiliary Library Facility.  All of the eleven of the state universities of Florida will contribute books to the new facility and in order to make the most of the space, it is ideal to only have one copy of each title in the facility.  Thus, my coworker and I were hired to to pull multiple copies of a single title, determine the copyright status and condition of the item, choose which copy to keep, and make the corresponding changes to the catalog (ALEPH).  If an item is out of copyright, we also check to see if it has already been digitized by either Internet Archive or Hathi Trust.  If it has not been digitized by either, we also choose a copy to be scanned (assuming there are at least two copies: one to keep and one to scan).  The majority of the items in the Auxiliary Library Facility are Dewey Decimal Classification and my boss started me off in the 300s.  I just missed the 200s (religion)!  Probably for the best.  I am looking forward to the marriage and sexuality sections of the 300s and the fairy tales in the 390s.