I was chosen to participate in the Metropolitan Cooperative Library System (MCLS) From Interns to Library Leaders (FILL) Program this summer. Although working full-time and commuting from Ventura fills each day, adding 14 -20 hours per week of internship at the Oxnard Public library was worth the extra effort. As a FILL intern, I got to experience some of the daily work of a public library special collection. The FILL program gave me additional benefits: a California Library Association membership, and the opportunity to participate in a two-day diversity tolerance workshop at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. The fourth benefit of the program is probably what made the application process so competitive: a substantial check at the end of the 132-hour practicum. This was enough to pay for several of my library school class fees and expenses. The FILL program not only had educational benefits, it had economic benefits.
I worked with Brenda Crispin, Oxnard's Local History Librarian, in the Special Collections Room. Also working in this small room were two people who for the past year had been digitizing and cataloging nearly 2000 of the collection's non-copyrighted photos. They were funded by another LSTA grant from the Library of California. After taking part in the Shades of California Project in which 49 photos were digitized as the Shades of Oxnard, the Oxnard Public Library became the sixth California library to receive a digitization grant for 2002. I didn't work on the project directly, but I was able to observe and discuss the procedure and learned about digitization and grant proposals in general.
During the application and placement process, Brenda had asked me how I would deal with repetitive, somewhat boring work. I thought it was a question of personality and work ethic at the time, but I discovered, as I spent hours sorting through folders of old papers, newspaper clippings, programs, meeting agendas, newsletters and photos, that it was about the type of work I would be doing. I was surprised to find it all fascinating. Being a history major and Ventura County resident, the bits of "stuff" I sorted through gave me a tremendous amount of background and trivia about the City of Oxnard, surrounding areas, its families, businesses, cultural diversity and politics.
June 29th was the kickoff of the Oxnard
Centennial Celebration and Brenda chaired a committee charged with creating
a Wall of History. The Wall included one hundred of the photos
from the Oxnard Heritage Digitization
Project. I was able to participate in a committee meeting and,
while making a delivery, I discovered the many different types of displays
commercially available. The Wall made its debut at the kickoff, but
it appeared at the Oxnard Salsa Festival and the Ventura County Fair later
in the summer. The Wall is currently at the Oxnard Public Library,
but will continue to travel throughout the city and county during this
Centennial year.
My favorite project was to design a brochure
for the Local History Collection because I got to create it from scratch
while browsing through a wonderful assortment of digitized files.
Once I had my concept in mind, I was able to use Access to search for what
I wanted. Eventually, all of the collection will be searchable through
the library's new online catalog, but because they are working with a new
system, it will probably be searchable through the Online Archive of California
sooner.
Reference questions did not come often, but I found the ones I got to research very interesting - when it last snowed a "considerable" amount in Oxnard (1949), who designed the Woolworth building on A Street, and what might have caused the people of Oxnard to spend time and money to preserve their Carnegie library building when most cities demolished theirs.
There is much more about my experience that I'd like to relate, but won't take up more space in this issue. I was struck by the similarities as well as the differences between a public and an academic library, between a developing Local History collection and an established Special Collections Department, and a university and a municipal bureaucracy. I came away with a broader idea about what I might do when I finish library school and a clearer idea of how I might fit into various niches. The diversity training at the Museum of Tolerance was invaluable and will have to be shared at another time. (The workshop consisted of the emotion-filled museum tour; thought-provoking discussions, role playing, critical thinking and planning; small-group sessions with a Holocaust survivor and another with one of the Little Rock Nine; a session in the Library with their Director, a reference librarian and their archivist; an online tour of hate group sites with a researcher, and much more than I never imagined could be fit into two days!)
For more about the FILL program, read this article in the California State Library and Library of Calfornia newsletter by Cindy Mediavilla, the program coordinator.