This semester, the Instruction and Outreach Department hosted two MLIS interns to create a series of online learning objects focusing on foundational research skills and social justice. After a productive semester of learning and mentorship, interns Rae Johnson and Mariann Lactaoen are excited to share their work and reflect on their experiences with Gleeson Library.
Reflecting on the goals you set at the beginning of this internship, how has your experience during this time been?
Rae: Working with Annie, Magaly, and Mariann has been nothing short of edifying and enlightening. Their perspectives have shaped the holistic view of librarianship I sought in its many facets. At the beginning of the internship, I had noted how much each week’s thematic focus for readings resonated with my personal values and career plans. I set out to make genuine meaning from the texts that Annie and Magaly intentionally selected, and have benefited immensely from doing so. These texts have strengthened my dedication and belief in the link between social justice and librarianship, especially in academic libraries. I wanted to experience library operations in higher education as a professional setting I hope to return to, and knowing that there are institutions that value social justice in their approach has been incredibly encouraging.
What were your tasks and responsibilities?
Mariann: Every week, we were tasked with evaluating literature addressing critical pedagogy in library instruction: themes include accessibility, Universal Design for Learning (UDL), feminist pedagogy, student success for BIPOC students, AI, and epistemic supremacy. While creating our online instruction videos, we kept the theory from this literature in the front of our mind: we hope you can detect the aspects of our video modules that are drawn directly from liberatory active learning strategies!
Alongside reading and reflecting on the literature, we spent the main part of the internship building learning objects – brainstorming, doing research, drawing on previous Gleeson Library workshops, scriptwriting, creating visuals, recording audio, editing videos, writing captions, and, finally, uploading our video series onto YouTube and the LibGuide. We checked in with each other and our project sponsors, Annie Pho and Magaly Salas, to ensure quality and consistency.
What did you learn from this internship?
Rae: The constructive process, the social proximity and conversations with everyone here have been invaluable to me. Discussions on insights and our conclusions from the readings were essential for me as many of these pedagogical approaches were unfamiliar to me. Concepts like feminist pedagogy or epistemic supremacy were new terms, but gave words to values I have long held that attracted me to this internship originally. Magaly, Annie and Mariann have been instructing students in a way that I seek to in the future and their experience helped me bridge many gaps between expectations and practice.
The technological skills I learned and practiced during this time were also important to me in my current technology-focused MLIS path. Multimedia editing and accessibility were interests of mine, but this internship gave me the opportunity to actually engage with a project and experiential knowledge I would not have otherwise from texts. I thoroughly enjoyed learning the breadth, procedures, and utilizing different educational technologies over the semester. Software like Panopto and the Springshare apps were interesting, but I really appreciated seeing how Gleeson wields them to support the USF community!
Mariann: Besides the technical skills of building online learning objects, much of what I learned was through connecting with the great folks at Gleeson Library. Having weekly internship meetings in which I could discuss my MLIS program with Magaly, Annie, and Rae gave me the opportunity to expand the theoretical knowledge from my courses, in ways that I could not achieve anywhere else. We were welcomed into Instruction and Outreach meetings and overall Gleeson communications, which gave me unique insight into day-to-day librarian life. I also learned so much from Rae, who is approaching LIS from a very different background than my own, and I feel so privileged to have worked alongside them.
What are you most proud of?
Rae: I’m really proud of the dedication that our work here stands to represent — that there are opportunities, resources, and support networks for stewards of information to critically approach librarianship in an equitable manner. I’m also really proud of myself, I set out on this internship to challenge myself in being more comfortable with creating things for consumption, especially recording my voice. I could feel week to week how it got easier, less anxiety inducing, and were products I was proud to be on.
Mariann: I’m most proud of the creativity and humanity that we were able to channel through our work. With much conversation about AI and library instruction, it felt good to collaborate on a project with so much creative freedom, surrounded by the warmth of human intentionality and care.
What do you see as the next steps for you and for the work you’ve done for the internship?
Rae: With more of my MLIS program remaining, I plan to take the next few weeks following the end of semester to build all of the work we’ve done into my online portfolio. I’ll be taking this experience and learning objects to create proposals and submit for nationwide LIS conferences as I consider what my next big move will be, both professionally and geographically! Student success is so dear to me, I hope to return to working in higher education and in an academic library, whether that is to support educational technology, web accessibility, or critical librarianship.
Mariann: Frankly, the next steps for me are to graduate with my MLIS next summer! As directly related to this internship, however, I hope that our video modules can be implemented into Gleeson Library instruction and reference sessions. I will definitely keep these learning objects in my back pocket, and I look forward to sharing them with students in my current and future instructional roles, or even at professional LIS conferences.
Learn more about the interns on their introductory blog post, “Introducing Gleeson’s Library’s new Social Justice and Instruction Interns.” Then, visit the Online Instruction Social Justice Internship Fall 2024 LibGuide and the Gleeson Library YouTube channel to view the video modules that the interns have completed over the semester.