 All right. Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Burns, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is a commission's weekly online event. We're a webinar or a webcast. We're an online show. Call us what you want. We are here every Wednesday morning live at 10 a.m. Central Time. But we do record our shows every week, so if you're unable to join us on Wednesday mornings, that's fine. You can always go to our website that I'll show you at the end of our session today. And view all our recordings in our archives. Our live show and our recordings are all free and open to anyone to watch. So please do share with your colleagues, friends, anyone you think might be interested in anything that we're doing here. We do a mixture of things on the show, book reviews, mini-training sessions, interviews, just plain old presentations. Really our only criteria is that it's library related, and we'll put it on that show. We have Nebraska Library Commission staff that do presentations for us sometimes, and sometimes we bring in guest speakers from outside the commission. And today we have, as we do very often, a mixture of that. Sitting with me here is Joanne McManus, who is our grant program manager, has done a lot of grants things for us. Right now we've got, as you can see, an internship grant going on that she's going to be talking about. And Mary Jo Ryan, our communications coordinator here at the Library Commission, also working on that. And on the line with us we have, I don't know if you guys want to wait as you're going through. You can introduce who's on the line or do you want to speak to. What are you going to talk about? Okay. Introduce the four speakers. Okay. We're going to have four guest speakers that are on the line with us today. Let's see. I've got Laura Yocum, who is at Wilson Public Library in Cozad. Rose Barkal is at Levista Public Library. And Laura Alt from Shelby Community Library. And lastly, not least, Amy Wenzel, who's from Omaha Public, but she was formally doing grant work involved in the internship at St. Memorial. Right. She's an intern. One of our interns. Yeah. She's from there. Throughout, we're going to chat with them as things go on. But I think I'll just hand over to you guys to take it away and start talking to us about the new internship we've got coming. Great. Thank you very much, Christa. We will be talking about the 2016 Nebraska Library Internship Grant Program, which is sponsored by the Nebraska Library Commission. And we have our Nebraska Regional Library Systems as partners with us this time. And it's funded through the Library Services and Technology Act from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. So we want to give a shout out to them. We've done internship grants before. However, last... Several years. Several years, except last year we actually didn't do one. So the last time we had interns out there was in 2014, but we're looking forward to have interns in 2016 and funding those for public libraries across the state. I wanted to go over the goals and outcomes of the internship grant because obviously there's a reason for our madness. We want to make sure that students get involved in real library work. And hopefully they'll be introduced to a lot of varied and exciting work. And even though they might be just working on one or two items for a library, depending on what their skill set is, you know, obviously we're hoping that the library is going to share a lot of good information about the broad work that libraries do. It's going to hopefully also serve as a recruitment tool, helping students to view library work as a viable career opportunity. Because obviously we would like more students going into library schools, getting their certificates and degrees, and working in libraries. Absolutely. I always say it's nice to see some young people and new people getting involved in libraries. Another goal is to provide a view of the library's role, understanding library operations and look at the role of technology in libraries. So even if they're not working in all aspects, we obviously want our libraries to share that with them. And of course it provides the libraries with the money to pay those students. And of course if we can give a student $1,000 to come and work for a library, they're obviously going to be more excited about actually doing that. And of course they bring in a lot of fresh ideas. And a lot of times they actually expand a program or complete a project the library was not able to do because either they were shorthanded or maybe they didn't have staff that had those particular skill sets. We've definitely found that in the previous years, haven't we? Right. So on our website are all the basics, but obviously for this particular presentation we want to touch on the main ones. The award amount for these grants are anywhere between $500 and $1,000. This is per public library or branch. So for those libraries that have multiple branches, they can apply for up to $1,000 per branch. There's absolutely no matching funds required. So it really is $1,000 that you can work with. And it doesn't have to affect your budget. The eligibility is limited to accredited public libraries. However, we do like to see when those public libraries that apply might have a partnership with a school library or an academic library or even another public library or a special library. That really makes a much stronger application. Right. And actually it's really good for the student to be exposed. And so sometimes even a day trip where you go visit another library is interesting as well. So whatever you can do with other libraries is also good. The funding, the $1,000, is to go directly to the student either in a stipend or wages. And so it can only be spent on stipends or wages or for the taxes. If you actually employ them, then obviously there might be some withholding taxes. And it's okay for some of that money to go there as well. We also define what an eligible intern is. It does have to be a high school or college student. And as far as a college student, it can be an undergrad or they can be a grad student as well. The stipulations are that they can't have ever been employed by a library nor have interned at a library previously. There's absolutely no restrictions on whether they served as volunteers. So if you want to pull from your volunteers, that's fine. And sometimes they can be some of the best interns because they kind of know a little bit about the library and want to learn more. And of course, it is too bad when a student has worked for a library and you can't employ them through this. However, the idea is to get more students exposed to libraries. So it gives you a chance to tell somebody else about what you do and show them. Okay, we've got some dates and deadlines to go over. The deadline for your application is December 17th at 5 o'clock p.m. So you can apply anytime now through then. If you send in an application and then decide, oh, maybe I should really have that intern do something else. So I wanted to re-describe it. As long as you come back in before December 17th, you can send in an amended application. So that is not a problem at all. And then in January, we'll be reviewing those applications and we plan to do an award announcement on February 8th. So that should give you plenty of time to, if you get a grant to recruit your students, do your interviews and get someone that can help you out sometime in 2006. 16, excuse me. And then of course, if you do apply for an application, definitely put February 17th on your calendar because we'll want all of our successful applicants to join us on that webinar to listen about tips and tricks on how to advertise for interns and train them and all kinds of things that are just more meaningful when you're ready to go and hire that intern. And then of course, your internship window when you can actually be spending that $1,000 on your intern as long as any time after March 15th, because by time then we'll be ready to roll and as long as you're wrapped up by November 30th. We do see a lot of the libraries in the past that have done over the summer and that's certainly a good time to have an intern. But if you wanted to have an intern early spring or in the fall, that's not a problem at all. And it kind of does just depend, doesn't it, on what the intern's going to be doing. If they're going to be doing classes for adults, it might not be as good to do it in the summer or maybe the summer is the right time. It just depends on your community. So we want this to be flexible and work for you. And the body for summer reading is always good. That's what a lot of the students do is they help summer reading and some of them do quite a lot of planning and activities. But on the other hand, if you want them to organize something or start something new, maybe having them come in when it's not as busy might be very... Good. Definitely. It all depends on what kind of work you're going to have them do. Definitely. Okay. And I wanted to go over the expectations that we have of the library. The library staff themselves will recruit and select their interns. We might have some feedback from people who want to be interns or feedback even from the colleges of who might be good interns. So certainly, if you need help recruiting, we might be able to suggest a student or two. The library staff, we do want them to provide an orientation to library work over the course of the internship. It doesn't all have to be on the first week. It can be a little here and a little there. But the orientation should include broad overview and the work beyond the work duties assigned. So even though you might only be assigning your student in these three areas, we want you to share with them other work of the library. The intern supervisor will assign and oversee the tasks and duties of the intern and track the student's hours and activities and complete assessments and report in a timely manner. We do want the supervisor to do a survey on both how the intern did and what they thought of the intern project itself. Both the reaction to the intern and the reaction to the experience. Right. And then at the end, the library director will need to submit a form of testing to how the grant funds were expended. So you really don't need to share cancel checks and things like that, but just sign a form that, yes, we did spend that money to pay the intern or for withholding the tax. So that'll be quick and easy, right, Joanne? Quick and easy. Something in the file that the auditor said, yeah, we checked that they spent it right. And I just want to also go over some things that our past interns have actually worked on. And as you can see on the top, I have created, conducted, assisted design managed because even though, for instance, a lot of interns have worked on book sales or crafts and brochures, I mean, it varied depending on whether they were just proofing it to writing it to doing the whole thing. And so all of these could be any levels of assisting to actually did the whole project. A huge range. Right. And so you can see up there, they helped with book sales. They've done boats and boards, worked at the Cirque desk. They did story hour. There's just so many things. And we have another page of this as technology. But just kind of keep your mind open to what they could do. And it might be something that you're always very busy with and need extra hands on. But maybe it should be something that you don't have or don't offer. So bringing in that extra pair of hands could be to develop something new or to work on something that you wanted to work on. I like that in this next slide, don't you, Joanne? Right. A lot of these students did things that the library staff just never quite got around to. Like the video tour, the library, and some of those things. Right. You might not have time to get around to it. Or maybe your particular skill set doesn't involve some of these things. And don't be worried that your intern might not have done all of this, even if you want them to work on it. Because I've seen that obviously young students have a lot of good background in technology. And even though they may never have set up an Instagram account, doesn't mean that they can't research that and be very good at doing that. Absolutely. And you can see computer classes, classes on tablets, instruction videos, layout and design, all kinds of technology. I want to go over the application. And the application is online, so you can see that and read those questions. But this kind of summarizes what we ask on that application. We ask for your reason of participation and the underlying need and opportunity. We ask for the anticipated benefits to the student library community. We ask for schedule activities, what types of projects and activities the intern will be involved in and what exactly is the student's role. So, for instance, the intern might be involved in doing something on the website, but what is their role? Is it kind of a primary role or are they working with someone else? Describe your preliminary orientation plan. How are you going to, what are you going to be telling the student as far as the different facets of your library? And provide a tentative timeline when you think you'll be doing recruitment, making an offer, and other key milestones. So, do you think you'll get an intern May 1st or are you going to wait until September? Now, again, this says just tentative timeline. So, even though you think you're going to get that intern over the summer, and then all of a sudden you decide, no, I'm going to wait until September. That's fine. That application was what you were thinking at the time and we know that things change. Particularly with this kind of thing. All right, Joanne, what are we going to think about when we decide who gets these grants? Well, obviously it's a competitive process. We might have more applications come in that we have money to go around. So, we will be looking at each application and evaluating them on several criteria, obviously, mainly from those questions that they've answered on the application, the needs of the library, the described schedule activities, what are you having those interns do, the proposed orientation, the anticipated benefits and outcomes, the partnerships or activities with other libraries, and your commitment to meeting grant expectations. And as we said before, we do encourage partnerships with other libraries. And we're hoping to see some first-time applicants or some applicants that have applied before and weren't funded. We'd like to see that as well. And we'll probably be looking a little geographical, too, and see if we have some open holes in our state. We always like to provide funding in a geographically well-distributed way, if possible. So, look at what you can find online. Everything we've talked about. Before I go to the website, I think I will ask if anyone has any questions for Joanne, please just type that in your comment box. Does it say comments or just say questions? In the questions box. And go ahead and do that. And Crystal will be watching. So, even though I'm talking, we'll still get your question. Yeah, absolutely. Let me just quickly show you the website and as you all know, this is our website, Nebraska Library Commission, nlc.nebraska.gov. If you go down this bar in the left-hand side, you're going to go to Jobs Careers Now Hiring. And you can see a flyout page pops up and you can see over here, Internships is right there. So, we are now in the Internships section of the job, the now hiring at your library, part of our website. And you can see there's an overview of the grant. You've got contact information for Joanne if you have questions. Much of what she already went over, such as the goals and the deadlines. There's a couple of things I wanted to call out here. If you're wondering if your library is accredited, you can click here and find out, because you do have to be accredited to get the funding. And that's good for those new directors out there that just might not enough. Yeah, they might not have filled in on that when you started. And then again, this details on the grant amounts and the eligible interns, a little bit of information about recruitment, some more information that's more general, and then the process. There's a couple of things here I wanted to be sure and point out. This is the grant application form. It's offered in a Microsoft Word document. And if you click on that, you get this little screen that says open with Microsoft Word and you can open up the document. And you can download it, you can save it, you can send it to us. And if you have any trouble opening that, just let us know because we're not going to let that stop you. We want to make sure. And again, this is another spot at which you could find that downloadable fillable form. Then also, isn't there a section? What am I looking for? Keep going. Yeah, lower down. We do have some, after the expectations, we do have some document that might help you get some ideas for what your orientation was like. Here we go. Additional helpful information. And so there's a little bit of... That's the old webinar. We'll be replacing that now that we'll have a new webinar. And then the proposed timeline. Here's a sample public library orientation plan and a guidebook to developing a successful internship program. Let me just click on this sample orientation plan. Again, because it's a sample, it includes a lot of things that you could do to orient a student. And of course, the more comprehensive, the better. But if something just doesn't fit, for example, if there's really no way to... Well, you can at least tell them about the budgeting. But some of these things you're probably going to place more time and emphasis on than others. And so just tell us what you plan to do to give them an orientation to overall library service and specifically your library. And this should help. And then, again, this is just some information about the partners. Oh, questions. Okay, back to this. If you have any questions, Joanne can help. And if you have any problems with the Microsoft Word application form, Holly on our staff can help. And then way down at the bottom is a list of past grant recipients. Very good. If you wanted to know whether your library had a past grant, whether it was back in 2008 when we started or since then, you can see that. Yeah. Are there any questions about the website or any of the things that Joanne talked about? No, nothing has come in yet. Okay. And we can take questions at the end as well. Yes, that's right. We can take questions all the way through. And also, I'm sure our other presenters will be more than happy to take questions as well. Wilson Public Library was one of our participating libraries in 2014. And Lori is online to tell us a little bit about their internship. Well, good morning, ladies. I'm hoping you can hear me. Yeah, we can hear you. Emily, yeah, thanks. Emily joined us as our summer intern. Like you said, summer of 2014, she ended up working eight weeks for us at 20 hours a week. And we were lucky enough to be able to compensate her with $1,000. And her scope of work, she helped us at outreach events in the community as far as summer reading went. And she obviously helped us with summer reading. Her big contribution was using different technology in the library. At that point, we had a website that I was paying a tech person in Lexington, which is 15 miles away to make changes, who had just, when they designed the website, had just trained me briefly on making small changes. Emily was familiar with the program, so she was able to make changes and update our website at no cost to us. And furthermore, was able to train other staff on how to do that, which really lightened my load as director. Because the school was familiar with iPads, they had a one-on-one initiative for all the kids. Emily was able to come in. We had purchased an iPad for training. And really, that's about all we had used it for. And Emily was able to document summer reading, use Facebook, help people with overdrive questions, tweet different things that were going on in the library. She wasn't familiar with Instagram, but she was able to do some research and started a library Instagram site and posted things to that regularly. So we felt, at the end of it, her internship, like we had a real good footing, especially with the teens at the high school, knowing what things were going on at the library. Fortunately for us, well, I should say, unfortunately, one of our staff members in July decided that she was going to retire. But fortunately for us, Emily was right there. We had already trained her. She knew how to work with the patrons. She knew how to process books. She knew how to check people in and out. Do all that primary library aid position stuff. And so we were able to offer her a part-time job throughout her senior year. And we were very excited about that. And she ended up just doing tremendous things for us while we hired her as an employee, one of which we'll be using next year too. But she created a Google Doc online that allowed us to do online registration for summer reading. Unmuted. And last year. So she kind of left the legacy as far as interns into employees, which we're very proud of. Wow. We didn't get to... We didn't coerce her into going into library science after she graduated. She was pretty set on going into the veterinary field. But the children's director and I feel very good because when she started with us the summer of 14, her goals were to go to Curtis, which is where she is now, and be a vet tech. Period. And we're talking a 4.0 student at the high school who had multiple scholarship offers to different schools. And she wanted to be a vet tech, period. And throughout the internship, we really talked about goals and pushing yourself for more. And then as she worked with us that next year, we really talked to her about, you know, a vet tech is a great thing. And that's a great first step. But where do you see yourself in five years? Do you see yourself maybe going on to professional school and becoming a full-time veterinarian? And actually now that is what her goal is. So we feel very happy that while we didn't get her in the library science field, we were able to expand her goals, her thoughts of what she could accomplish. One thing I wanted to read to you, I kept her journals and her first week, this is what she wrote for what I have learned so far. She said, the biggest thing I have found out so far is a librarian does a lot more than I thought. I have learned how to check out books, DVDs and CDs. And I dread when a stack of CDs need to be checked in, cleaning each CD yuck. I already knew how to shelf books, although the children's books can throw me for a loop sometimes. I've also learned how to take a donated book, write what's needed on the title page, barcode it, and they do it. I can't even imagine what else I need to be taught or everything that I will know by the end of the summer. That was after her first week. At the end of our time, or very close to the end of the time, we took her to the Carney Public Library and to the UNK library. And I really say that's where the children's director and I started in on her as far as pursuing larger goals. And this is what she wrote at the end. It was a very informative tour. The Carney Public Library was amazing with all of their books in different sections for their different ages of patrons. I love that they had many different seating options available and that they had an area that had staff picks where they featured books that the staff liked. The newsletter was a big thing. It's out every quarter and it's very eye-appealing with the color squares and little words and it's broken down into categories and they can add a little brochure and it's wrapped up to add into the newsletter. The UNK library was also very cool. They are directed toward students and to help them with anything that they would need from using a computer to finding resources for a paper to reading books that are in their field like teaching majors. The writing area that they have created is awesome and it's great that they have tutors to help students with homework and to help them with their writing assignments. Something I realized today is much about the details of my college and what I will be taking there and what will be the result of my college experience. It's something I need to know more about. Another thing I realized is how much time and creativity it takes to get people into the library. I myself need to think more and get more creative to help bring people in just for the sake of enjoying being in the library not necessarily coming in reading books to get awards or prizes. I'm going to read that to you because I think it shows how much she grew just in two months time as far as realizing there's a lot more to the library and a lot more to other libraries than she had originally considered. Thank you. That was so good. What I liked about those thoughts about visiting those other libraries is that it is a good way to share with the students that every library is different. They have different looks and feels and offer different opportunities. It keeps them thinking that the library world is bigger than what one library can show you. I agree, Joanne. I also think, Lori, that you should not feel like there was any type of failure in her not pursuing a degree or a professional library profession. Not at all. We gave her what we wanted to give her and she grew immensely. Oh, yeah. That's what we took away from it. We ended up having her for another extra year, which was incredible. She ended up leaving us. She was supposed to be here through August of this year. I went to my office in April in tears because she had been offered a job for the summer at the vet clinic. That's what she wanted, but she didn't want to leave the library. She didn't want to let me down. I said I would never stand in the way of what she wanted to do and what have you given me in return? Oh my gosh, she gave us so much. For her to be able to be an ambassador for the library and to go out and tell people what an awesome place we are and you have no idea what the library does, I think that really was our huge benefit from Emily. That's a good point. That ambassador is just as important because they're going to be sharing getting other students interested in library science even if that's not the route that they went. I would say the president of your library board someday which comes back to be a vet in your community. That's true. That's one thing to note too is that you don't have to hire an intern that is telling you that they want to go into library science. It's fine that they have different aspirations and look for someone with the skills that will be beneficial to your library. Great Lori. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Anybody have any questions for Lori? Just go ahead and type them in there. Type in your questions section if you want to ask Lori to expound on anything she said. Do you want to click to the next screen? Oh, I'm sorry. There we go. Rose. I think we'll go move on to Rose at the La Vista Public Library. Rose, are you there? Thank you. Hi, as the director of the La Vista Public Library, I'm a member of the business advisory council for our areas project search group and they provide real life experience to help youth with significant disabilities make successful transitions from school into adult life. So our local project search works with the Pavilion La Vista school district to provide this program to its students so we got to partner with them. Part of the program is job shadowing and they have three different job rotations for their students where different skills are developed. So I attended my first meeting and the presenter mentioned having those jobs in which you can't keep anyone, those jobs where you're doing more training and more hiring than anything else because of turnover and I went back to our library and talked with staff because we have our processing position that that is a constant area where we're training people and I counted and then I had staff count with me in 13 years we've trained 17 people for that position so having an intern to hone those skills was very appealing. So in my third year on the council the library was able to have a student for job shadowing and after working with the school district personnel they assigned us a particular student who would fit the library so he was going to be here during his final job rotation so school personnel determined Jeremy would be the good fit for the library and so throughout this process the commission's intern grant provided a structured learning environment for Jeremy Honestly if I had been left to my own devices I wouldn't have covered as much information nor been as structured with Jeremy so the grant pushed me to provide a better experience for our intern so he learned about the library and the programming and the library board and the city council circulation reference and even summer reading which he noticed how very small children can be it's a different kind of education so working with an intern yes exactly so working with an intern is different than working with a volunteer who may or may not return an intern is a dedicated person working towards gaining knowledge about the library overall so a detailed schedule was created for Jeremy so different aspects of the library and the city could be covered and throughout the process like Joanne mentioned we adjusted that and changed that depending on their interest level they're able to intake all that information and we knew we had the right intern when I showed him one of my monthly reports that we created and just glancing at it he pointed out an inconsistency on the table so instant satisfaction yeah it's just having an intern not with the library background or as I mentioned who doesn't have library experiences they see things in a different light so and Jeremy was a great example to our current employees he was very enthusiastic so he was punctual and not only about arriving but also taking his breaks he went his allotted time and his attention to detail went beyond what was expected he would find inconsistencies in our catalog staff member was having trouble with a computer so he was in the same area and he's like I think I can help you with that so he helped staff with computer problems so it was a give and take relationship he actually had to call in sick and he was crushed because he felt he was he was letting us down much like Laurie's student they don't want to leave you in the lurch but again if you could bottle that enthusiasm that these interns show you we'd all be millionaires Jeremy was actually able to help improve the quality of the library's processing services having an intern made staff aware of the procedures and processes and made us explore new ways of functioning so the way we've always done it this way doesn't fly with someone who's new and doesn't know how we've always done it so it gave everybody a heightened sense of our organization and how we function so as a result the library was able to deliver a better product to the public because of our intern and our intern was bright and capable and he made the library in the city a better place and he started off with straightening shelves and managing our book sale and by straightening up the table and adding more materials and our library last year received over 13,000 items in donation so that's a job in and of itself so but he does like if we'll receive a donation he'll search our catalog to see if we have a copy if we have a copy what condition it is in do we need to swap it out and that's really labor intensive so him doing that freed up our staff to be able to do other things and then we trained him to do processing so now Jeremy does all the processing for all the materials so all of our books our CDs our CD books CDs and that fit in with his computers like I said just the his love of learning and his attention to detail was a great match so the commission's grant was a great gateway for our library to have an intern who's compensated that was a nice bonus for us to be able to say not only are you here and you're learning and we're learning but we can pay you so that was awesome that's great and the grant let us partner with our local schools who runs a project search program in our area and this is housed at our local business so that was kind of a huge encompassing group and it made our staff more aware of our processes and determine if there's a better easy way to do something and overall it gave our intern more confidence and a sense of satisfaction and worth it made his parents proud to have a current environment for his kid to be in and the grant actually gave us a gateway for us to hire Jeremy like Lori the situation just happened to come open where we were able not only to have him as an intern but when that ended then we were able to offer Jeremy a position at the library and he's still here today so that's great news and to I do want to mention that the commission staff did everything in their power to make this internship a success from the beginning of the grant process all the way through for the experience of the intern so thank you for all your support that you gave to me which gave me confidence that I could do this terrific great story thanks so much Rose thank you and if you have any questions for Rose just feel free to type them right into that question box on your lower right side of your screen and I'm keeping an eye on that sorry I guess I don't know what to do let me do that I can do that to help Laura is not here yet she's having some technical issues so I think we'll jump on to Amy okay and today we also have Amy Wenzel with us and she is now the youth services librarian at Miller Branch at Omaha Public Library but why we asked her to join us today is because she's actually one of our former interns that had an internship at St. Memorial Library in Bapillion so we thought Amy could share a little bit from the interns perspective Amy yeah hi everyone I think part of what I had to say I think is just really going to echo what these other ways before me mentioned but first I should probably tell you just a little bit about me and how I received the internship in that process so I was just finishing up my first semester in grad school for library science but I didn't have any prior library work experience my mom had run two elementary school libraries when I was younger and so I volunteered and helped her out with some things and I always been a really big library user I loved libraries but I really didn't know anything about the background of public libraries and how everything worked and so it was a really good learning experience for me I heard about the internship from one of my classes actually Robin Clark who was the director of St. Memorial Library at the time came to one of my classes and she mentioned the internship there so if you're looking for places to plug your internship and you are in the area I would definitely recommend going to some of those classes either undergrad or graduate so I filled out the application, I interviewed that was my first library interview experience which was also fantastic besides just work experience I feel like sometimes we gloss over how important interview experience can be and how much that kind of sets us up and helps us learn what to expect in the future so I started to learn types of questions asked at library interviews and then once I received the position one of the biggest benefits I found was that I was able to start to directly apply what I was learning in class and it really increased my understanding of everything that we were learning in class which was really nice so it was a really amazing opportunity just to get library work experience on my resume when you're starting out and you're in the beginning of your master's program but you don't have any work experience in that field that's pretty scary and then eventually led to my first official library job as a youth services assistant there so I was pretty lucky right when I was finishing up my internship some Memorial library had gotten the funding to add in another part time youth services assistant position so I interviewed for that again and got to slide right into that as my internship was ending so I feel like I've kind of had a few lucky breaks there that I've come after this internship one of the things that I really appreciated about my internship though was that I was given a chance to work in multiple departments and on multiple projects I know you ladies talked a little bit about that earlier and that being part of the grants that interns get an overview of the library and I really appreciated that as an intern you know that I wasn't just like shoved in a room and told the scam things or something you know even if you have one specific focus or a project that you know you want your intern to work on I definitely think spending at least a little time learning the workflow of the library how the different departments work together being able to spend a little bit of time with different employees in different departments it's really beneficial I worked the circulation desk I helped create signage for the children's department I created a shelving tutorial for new volunteers there was just a bunch of different projects that I worked on and then I was also given a little bit of time each week with staff from different departments to ask them about their jobs their role within the library and I think that just that experience gave me a much broader understanding of everything that does go into running a library and also an appreciation for those who really excel at jobs that I know I would be horrible at such as cataloging that is not a field in which I excel but now that I know everything that goes into it I can appreciate that work much more and I think that that experience and that knowledge definitely contributes to helping me be a better employee and someone who at least tries to think about how their actions can affect the organization as a whole not just how it affects them or their program or their department but how it can affect the entire library as far as other things that I really appreciated as an intern I feel like a lot of the best policies to follow with an intern are a lot of the same ones as with any new employee if you really want to get the most out of your intern have a plan and be really clear about your expectations so if you do have a project that you know you want them to work on as part of their time there having that timeline which I think they asked for in the grant anyway which is fantastic but having an approximate idea of how long a project may take so that the intern has a clear understanding of their timeline I feel like that always helps me be more efficient and more effective and so if you really want to get the most out of your intern that's something I would definitely suggest and also never assuming that they know something especially for those interns who are in the library science program it's really easy to assume that they or if they volunteered in the library before it's really easy to assume that well if they know that how we shell with last name and first name and understand the DOES muscle system then we'll know how to shell everything and no that's not necessarily true I don't think I've been to a single library where they didn't have some sort of collection or section of the library that maybe this part's only shelved by the first letter of the author's last name or has different rules or something so taking the time to really go over things always helps and there's also different procedures that are different in every library when searching for an intern I would definitely recommend searching for someone with a willingness to learn rather than experience with a specific task again I think I'm echoing what you ladies have mentioned earlier but even if you want someone who's tech savvy I've never worked with Instagram or something but they have those abilities and they show a willingness to learn I feel like that willingness to learn is so much more important than actually having the experience if you have that energy and that excitement it's going to come through and also if you if possible I know this is always hard depending on projects and timelines and everything but what I really appreciated was that there was a willingness to be a little bit flexible with my work hours when I was an intern oh that's a good point yeah that was huge I was working full time I was also going to grad school I had a very busy schedule so when I applied for my internship the only days that I had available were I think it was Tuesday and Wednesday during the week those were my two days off and so I worked at the library for I think about four hours on each of those days so I was working seven days a week for the entire summer which is always tough it was a long summer but just the fact that they were willing to work around that schedule with me was huge you know it meant that I couldn't help with there was like a big program on a Saturday for me to have been able to come in for but unfortunately my job at the time was very strict and I was not able to get time off for that and so having their understanding made me even more appreciative of the opportunity I'd been given and maybe want to prove myself that much more so you know they could have taken a look at my available hour limitations and just immediately turned away my application but they didn't and I think that an intern who is choosing to work 50 hours a week you know while going to school is most likely going to be really thankful for that opportunity and will be willing to work really hard for you well thank you thank you very much Amy that was sounds like you had a really good experience at St. Memorial Library and thank you for those great tips because obviously the libraries who apply for these grants are going to want to have some idea on what to look for an intern and of course go over that more at that webinar in February, February 17 about how to choose how to advertise and it's nice to get your perspective Amy we really appreciate that yeah this is an amazing opportunity for me I feel like it really you know started me on my path I was able to go right for my internship into that use services position then another part-time position opened up there so I was doing two part-time jobs actually working as a library aid and aid supervisor on the weekends and from there have just kind of continued to get increasing management responsibilities in my other library positions and so I kind of trace that back to my internship great great that's wonderful maybe before too long you'll be an intern supervisor maybe I was thinking about it maybe another branch will have to apply our fourth speaker Laura Olt from the Shelby community library I believe she's listening and but she's having difficulty connecting to visit so however I did want to mention a couple things that she had shared with me the Shelby community library is a very small library and they and they really did have they did have a website but their intern helped them get on Facebook and Twitter and did a YouTube video and so really brought them in the 21st century reporting to Laura and so it is really nice especially if you have maybe only one staff member and so you know you certainly need help in something that maybe you either haven't had time for or don't have the skills in and so I think that was really good at the Shelby community library and she had mentioned to me when we were chatting earlier this morning that they've had both college and high school students as interns and she said they're both just as good there wasn't really a big difference in knowledge they're both really techy people that got the technology really well they're very willing to work so if you were wondering about maybe a high school kid might not get it she had a great experience with either and she would go with either any age range for that she thought it's the person not the age that had good success with both and I do want to mention to those listening in certainly if you have any questions type those in but people that we heard from today have talked about a single interns we also have had libraries that had with their thousand dollars have split that among two interns and have had two interns obviously you have to look at whether how many hours you want any particular intern to work but you can do that if you want and we've also had in the past where someone has hired an intern and they either wasn't working out or they had something else that came up and so they needed to switch interns and that was not a problem as well obviously we're very flexible at the library commission to make sure that your experience works out so we will work with you if you decide to go in a different direction well again if you have any questions you can always contact Joanne directly if you have any problems with the application please contact us right away if you have any questions type into that question section we can answer them for you right now we've got everybody on the line we can do that or you can contact Joanne at the office right here at home at the office we have some quotes up here which we won't reach the whole thing but they sort of echo I think don't you Joanne some of the comments that we've heard from the intern supervisors and from Amy the intern and of course at the end of every internship we ask both the supervisor to give us feedback and the intern and they all sound very similar where the interns are saying that it's much more than they expected in the library and the supervisors are so happy that of how their interns turned out and what they were able to do for the library and and I'm impressed with this first one here where they had a good experience and such a good experience with the internship through us that they were able to find another source of funding to keep the internships going I'm always happy to hear that kind of thing and I'm sure they were happy too and again that idea that the intern is an ambassador and an advocate for the library intern feedback sounds a lot like Amy's feedback you find out just how much there is going on in the library and also you learn about the specifics of that specific library I love this one, librarians aren't quiet and shy or old and mean well that's good there are different movies there's plenty of movies that show us as otherwise yeah exactly and I like the one where and of course you all know it they meet people in all walks of life on a daily basis and have to give them good customer service and sometimes you have to deal with difficult people we had seen that as well what a good learning experience for a young person to get that in their head early on and I do like that last quote I see the library is much like a book, you can't judge it by its cover and even we've heard where students that have spent a lot of time in the library prior to their internship because of study groups and whatnot still had their eyes open to what a library does all that behind the scenes stuff that you never see out when you're just a user we do have one question that came in talking about the application if they set a timeline for the internship in their application but things don't work out for who they hire or for other reasons can that timeline be modified or adjusted or they stuck with what they came up with and we purposely asked them for a tentative timeline so they know that they can adjust that if they need to the only thing that would be kind of a drop dead thing is that they do need to be wrapped up by the end of November right, we'll need to get all our reports and get everything going by then I was just going to open this and see how what it looks like you can see it's pretty simple and as Joanne said it's a tentative timeline and we asked them whether they think they're going to try for a high school or college and again if they put one down and they go in the other direction that's fine too we're just trying to get ideas of what the library is thinking about then we just asked you to agree to what Joanne mentioned before and sign it so you can see it's a three page application it's fairly straightforward we hope but if you have long questions long answers it can be more than the three pages because it'll just keep adding lines well we've gone a little over we appreciate everybody staying with us we started a few minutes after the top of the hour anyway so that's fine thank you all very much and we're looking forward to your applications and hearing about what your plans are so what are we going to do next week? let me see the mouse here thank you everyone for attending thank you Joanne and Mary Jo and Lori and Amy and Rose and Laura for your input sorry we couldn't get your connection working from our side technology is fun isn't it? we'll go with that next time in Encompass Live you got the keyword Mary Jo just type in Encompass Live and it will bring it to our website here so that will wrap it up for today's show it's been recorded and it will be on our website here just beneath our upcoming sessions we have our archives we'll put the recording up here it goes into our YouTube account channel and the PowerPoint slides will put up as well and I'll also include a link directly to the internship page the main webpage here so you can quickly jump to that as well when you're looking at the archive here on our Encompass Live page should be sometime this afternoon I'll let everybody know send you an e-mail letting you know that it's ready for you to watch or share with anyone else who you might think would be interested next week our topic is secrets of the NLC website yeah that ought to be interesting I believe I'm supposed to talk about a secret spot on the NLC website we're going to have now we don't have a list here because I think it's a work in progress approximately 10 or so maybe library commission staff are going to be here it's going to be like speed dating there's a lot of neat things in our library commission website as you saw when Mary Jo was getting you there's a huge menu on the left hand side with so many pop out things and there's a lot of good resources in there that we want to make sure people are aware of we're concerned that some people haven't seen certain things so we're going to give you a lot of good tips and learn all the things that we do or the resources and things we can share with you do note right here in red next Wednesday is a holiday it is Veterans Day we are closed so next week's Encompass Live will actually be on Thursday November 12th so not Wednesday morning Thursday morning whenever we have these holidays that fall on our Encompass Live day we just bump our show to another day so definitely join us for that and any of our other shows that you see coming up here on our schedule other than that I don't think any last minute urgent questions came in nope we are good to go thank you very much very much everyone for attending and we'll see you next time and thanks to all our remote presenters yes thank you everyone for getting in for joining us, your input was great thank you so much and give us a call if you have any questions alright thanks bye