Internship for first-generation high school students

The Stanford Libraries will once again host several high school students this summer for the Libraries High School Internship Program. The program supports first-generation, local, college-bound students by providing paid work experience, along with enrichment activities that highlight topics and skills relevant to the college experience. The program, which first began in the summer of 2013, has been on hiatus for several years, however, starting June 2022, the Libraries will welcome eight students from the East Palo Alto Academy. We hope this will be more than just a summer job for these students, but also a meaningful learning experience. Several units throughout the Libraries will host the interns for seven weeks (June-July) with a wide variety of projects:

Access Services, Green Library Circulation (Catherine Descanzo/Mario Pamplona/Danielle Noble). Interact with library users at the main service desk of Stanford's largest library, performing customer services such as book check-out and processing materials. Projects will include exposure to website usability testing, academic library information literacy, and inventory management.

Reference, Green Library (Pauline Lewis/Bogdana Marchis). Students will help the Reference Group gather data on book displays that other university libraries and public libraries have created in recent years. Working from a pre-selected list of library websites, students will keep track of their findings in an excel spreadsheet, including the themes of the displays, highlighted titles, and any other notable features.

Electronic Resources Unit (Sarah Forzetting). Test accessibility on vendor platforms to understand where patrons with disabilities may have issues in accessing some of the Library's digital content. The work would involve navigating to a platform (like Taylor & Francis) and going through a checklist to see if various functionality exists and then recording findings on a spreadsheet.    

History of Science & Technology (Henry Lowood). Search gift collections against the Searchworks catalog to identify duplicates. These collections include software (mostly games) and books (mostly in history of science), plus a few journal titles. They will also assist in preparing the items for transfer to designated locations, such as Media-Microtext, STK, SAL3, or Special Collections.

Conservation Lab at the Redwood City Campus (Kristen St. John). Introduce student intern to lab operations (assessment, enclosures, and beginning repair for collections). Longer projects might include labeling and photographing sample collection (different types of books kept for study and testing) or working on a transcription project for internal documentation.  Orientation to working in a lab: safety, equipment, staff roles, and types of collections handled by the unit/lab.  

Science Libraries (Alma Parada). Work on updating holdings of state geological surveys for the Western United States (at least to start, we could always do more states). This involves either manually or programmatically pulling the geological surveys and associated files from the State websites, gathering necessary metadata, and helping me upload them into the Stanford Digital Repository (SDR).

Social Sciences Group (Regina Roberts). Create an inventory of data CD-ROMs and videos from a Journalism Department collection. Create a bibliography from a paper file of African Studies articles, using shared Zotero at the citation tool.  Searching gift collections against the Searchworks catalog to identify duplicates. These collections include books on baseball history, graphic design, and archaeology. 

Special Collections (Ben Stone). Searching/listing ca. 15 boxes of printed materials encompassing labor activism, radical politics, alternative press, ethnic studies, etc. donated by the family of a local activist. Listing newspapers, periodicals, etc., and checking against Stanford Library holdings.   

University Archives (Hanna Ahn/Josh Schneider). List collection materials, undertake archival research, perform scanning, and contribute to a Spotlight exhibit and blogpost.

Thanks to the various library units, supervisors, and staff who have agreed to be a part of the program and mentor our 2022 summer interns, and many thanks to Vice Provost and University Librarian Michael A. Keller who recognized the importance of reinstating such an important program.

By Adan Griego and Kelly Fields
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See also:
Stanford University Libraries 1st-generation summer intern program
Archive of Recorded Sound intern Abraham Tewolde
Update by Abraham Tewolde
Library Intern: Jazmin Contreras
Second year for 1st-generation summer intern program
A gig at Stanford’s Libraries for a summer internship