Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Interns, Working with

Librarians should always do their best to teach summer interns important transferable life skills while working in the library... like shelf reading, putting newspapers on sticks, and scrubbing the urine from the inside of the after-hours book drop.

Ask the readers: Which jobs do you save for your interns?

10 comments:

Jared said...

We like to leave the annual coffee pot cleaning to the first day of the new intern.

Anonymous said...

Nothing kills a keen young person's interest in libraries more than making them dust books and washing shelves.

Anonymous said...

Considering there's already a glut of un- and under-employed librarians, anything that discourages the career-tepid has to be a good thing. More menial tasks, I say.

shushie said...

Our interns get to do fun things like go on fruitless scavenger hunts searching for books that are marked as missing inventory, suffer from brain damage after using a really strong magic marker for hours to blacken out barcode numbers on discarded books, and busy themselves with "useful" projects that will never see the light of day.

Anonymous said...

Amen.

Michael said...

I like to send them to starbucks with a really complicated order. I don't drink the coffee (they might spit in it) but I like to put the fear of Melvil Dewey in them ♥♥

Anonymous said...

We made ours do inventory,polish my boss's shoes and take minutes for all faculty meetings.

Anonymous said...

What a luxury...interns! WE have teen volunteers who don't show up, barely know how to read or write and who don't know how to roll coins.

Spencer said...

Change .gif files to .jpg files. Review tutorials. Distribute fliers.

Brandy said...

As a current library employee, former student worker and current MLS student I have done almost (no shoe shining) all of the above and continue to do some of the above. It didn't keep me away! I am in agreement with the teen comment and ideas for my future interns and volunteers!