Internship at the Priddy Library

          

My name is Leah Rufus and thanks to my advisor Dr. Melissa Blair, I have a unique internship that allows me to work in the library at the Universities at Shady Grove and with the Pleasant View Historical Site in Quince Orchard. Although they are separate components my internship is facilitating collaboration between the library and the historical site to see what kind of assistance the library can offer in the preservation of items belonging to the historical site. This internship will allow me to gain valuable knowledge about different aspects of public history and library sciences. Through his internship I hope to gain enough insight to decide if these are fields I would like to pursue a career in.

            My experiences thus far in the library have allowed me a brief glimpse at the difficult tasks that accompany the creation and promotion of exhibits. Projects can be time sensitive with time-consuming work. It is important to be able to multitask and manage your time effectively in order to complete everyday work while also working on projects. Lots of effort goes into making sure that the information or visuals being presented are not going to offend anyone, while still trying to get your point across. Recently the library put together an exhibit on regional gangs. With a sensitive subject such as this one lots of consideration was taken into account concerning how the information and images would be received. The goal was to include as many regional gangs as possible to show the diversity of gangs in the area. Lots of time was spent researching the history of gangs and putting together short biographies. I helped to edit these biographies and to select the images that would accompany the bios. I helped to brainstorm ideas about the design of the posters that would be used and how they would be arranged for the exhibit on Gang Indicia: Graffiti, Drawings and Tattoos. Accompanying the exhibit was a panel on gangs where experts in the subject matter gave presentations. Putting the posters together for the exhibit and organizing the panel may have taken lots of time and work but they were not the hard part. The hardest part about the exhibit process is promoting the event. The Universities at Shady Grove is a commuter school and from my experience that experience of those I am working with it is difficult to get a large portion of the student body to attend events. The event can be promoted all over the school but the difficulty is getting people to pay attention to the promotions and to get them to show up. The exhibit process has shown me that the content of what you are presenting is important but so is how it is presented and how it will be perceived. One of the biggest goals we have in the library is to connect with our Shady Grove community. This internship will allow me to explore that process with the people I am working with.