Investing in the Future of International Studies Librarianship: Building an Internship Program

Barbara Alvarez, Leigh Billings, Fe Susan Go, Jeffrey Martin, Kamala Nautiyal, Sujira Prayoonhong, and Beth E. Snyder*

Academic libraries face a scarcity of qualified candidates necessary to enrich and sustain the field of international studies librarianship. Factors contributing to the problem include general limited awareness of this specialty as an occupation, and a lack of professional training opportunities focused on cultivating and blending technical skills with the linguistic and cultural knowledge essential for the job. This case study describes the effort of the University of Michigan Library to boost interest, competency, and ultimately recruitment, in this line of work through an internship designed to introduce international studies librarianship as a compelling career path for students with non-Western language expertise.

Introduction

International studies, also known as global or area studies, is a specialized domain in many large academic libraries, which is devoted to developing and describing multidisciplinary collections focused on world regions, including Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, Australia, and the Pacific. To provide successful and effective international studies services, libraries must depend on a staff with multifaceted skill sets, composed of subject librarians, catalogers, and acquisitions specialists with diverse linguistic and cultural knowledge. Vernacular language and non-Latin script expertise in every one of these roles is vital to make international collections discoverable and accessible to the research community. Yet, recent reports in the field conclude that international collections face challenges that will affect their future growth and integrity (Center for Research Libraries, 2021; South Asia Cooperative Collection Development [SACOOP], 2021; University of Minnesota Libraries Area Studies Collections Task Force, 2021). The most concerning of these are: a diminishing pool of cataloging specialists with advanced non-Latin script language skills, and a lack of institutional investment in both professional development and recruitment aimed at drawing new librarians to the field and ensuring healthy succession in stewardship of international collections (SACOOP, 2021).

To address these acute needs affecting many libraries across the country, the University of Michigan (U-M) Library International Studies Department decided to create a new internship program that would attract students with advanced knowledge of a non-Latin script language who may be interested in exploring a career in international studies librarianship. We were fortunate to secure support from the library administration for this initiative and obtained funding through the library’s Strategic Opportunities Fund.

This article describes our process of developing and conducting a paid summer internship program, which may be used as a model should other institutions want to consider offering similar programs.

Literature Review

The challenges facing international studies recruitment, training, and succession have been a source of concern for some time. A trio of publications all issued in 2021 expressed the seriousness of the situation on a national level and prompted the U-M Library International Studies Department to envision solutions to these problems. In its report, the University of Minnesota Libraries Area Studies Collections Task Force outlined the specialized skill set necessary to perform this type of work:

Area studies collections work generally requires specialized language and area expertise. ... In the past, area studies librarians at research universities were often required to have a second subject master’s in the area. ... Language expertise is also vital for acquisitions and cataloging work in area studies, and more labor hours are often required due to language and cultural barriers, differences in vendor processes, working with small vendors, and making the materials available in our systems (2021, p. 5).

The Center for Research Libraries identified how a lack of intentionality in promoting and retaining staff with language specialization has been severely hindering international research endeavors:

Our community is founded on the linguistic competence needed to accurately identify, procure, and describe our collections and to serve them to a broad community. A diminished investment in these skills and competencies is having a significant negative impact on discovery and access to global publishing and knowledge production (2021, p. 8).

Participants of the South Asia Cooperative Collection Development Workshops urged:

library administrators to seek solutions to the current troubling decline in specialized metadata experts, including the examination of realistic personnel budgets, the encouragement of professional and linguistic training, the examination of systemic intellectual and linguistic discrimination in libraries, and the possibilities of shared solutions (2021, p. 1).

Taken together, these reports and our own experience compelled us to develop an internship to begin reinvesting our skills and expertise into training a future cohort of international studies librarians.

Even though library and information studies (LIS) programs offer a wide range of internship opportunities, there are relatively few that focus on technical services (e.g., ordering, cataloging, and metadata maintenance) and even fewer where the focus is on international studies. Several studies have examined the role of internships in training new librarians. Most of these studies examined subject-based internships. Largely, the research has focused on LIS students with scant attention paid to students from other disciplines or undergraduate students. For example, a study by Sargent et al. (2011) focused on LIS students working in subject teams with a particular emphasis on collection development and reference services. Additionally, there have been some thought-provoking articles, such as “Internship in LIS Education: An International Perspective on Experiential Learning,” which broaden the scope of internships, but there is no suggestion that this sort of program could be implemented for non-LIS students (Bird et al., 2015).

There have been, however, a few papers that considered undergraduate students who were not necessarily engaged with library science. Harwood and McCormack (2008) pointed to the ongoing need to develop more business librarians. To this end, they created a program in which they mentored interested undergraduates. Thanks to the close mentor/mentee relationships developed during the program, the authors were able to both help the students create several online resources for the library and pique the students’ interest in the profession. In a similar vein, the U-M Library international studies internship program was specifically created to be a “spark” experience for students from different backgrounds who did not necessarily have experience working in a library.

The program that most closely matches the U-M Library’s internship has been jointly administered for several years by the Library of Congress (LC) and the Council on East Asian Libraries (CEAL), a standing Committee of the Association for Asian Studies (Council on East Asian Libraries Committee on Technical Processing, n.d.). Participants in the LC-CEAL Cataloging Internship Program receive instruction in East Asian language materials cataloging when their home institutions lack the ability to provide such specialized training (Council on East Asian Libraries Committee on Technical Processing, 2016). However, it differs from our project as it targets individuals who are already professional librarians, whereas we intended to focus on “enticing” students into the profession, specifically international studies librarianship. In that sense, our internship was a new venture.

Method

Institutional Context

International, global, or area studies in libraries comprise both public and technical functions. Public services responsibilities often include collection development, materials selection, reference, instruction, and outreach, while technical services encompass such activities as ordering, receiving, and cataloging. No matter which specific duties someone performs, international studies work is best served by employees who have appropriate language, cultural, and subject competencies in the regions they cover.

Organizational models may differ among institutions. Some libraries are arranged primarily by function and group similar roles into either a public or technical service unit, regardless of language or regional expertise. Other libraries, such as the U-M Library, are organized with international studies as a single department that contains both subject specialist and technical roles under a common reporting structure. In this model, the U-M Library is able to pool language and cultural expertise to more cohesively provide appropriate descriptive and subject access to the library’s distinctive international collections.

It is within this context that we at the U-M Library witnessed a growing need for a new generation of international studies librarians in general, but most especially for candidates with language expertise trained to understand the special and unique requirements for non-English language and non-Latin script cataloging. With this in mind, we attempted to remedy this shortfall of qualified candidates and to create an internship that would introduce the fundamentals of international studies librarianship and non-Latin script cataloging to students holding specific language skills. The languages we recruited for corresponded to areas where we had the most acute needs for cataloging and existing staff expertise from which to provide qualified training and guidance.

Pedagogical Framework

To meet these needs, we set out to design an engaging and compelling program to attract people to this kind of work as a career and to teach them essential skills they would not readily find elsewhere. Consequently, we chose to focus the internship training primarily on cataloging and other technical services activities. Our secondary focus was on teaching the broader fundamentals of non-Western European language librarianship, including materials selection, collection development, reference, and instruction. This broad approach to training was important because international studies librarians may be called upon to perform both public and technical services roles.

We envisioned the internship program as a combination of classroom sessions, individual training with metadata specialists, self-directed study, and hands-on work experience. The following “Technical Services Learning and Work Project Goals,” that we developed early on for the official internship announcement became the touchstone that kept us on task throughout the design of the program:

Through a combination of one-on-one training with those currently active in the field, self-directed study time with real-world examples, and actual work experience, the intern in this position will gain a basic understanding of non-Western language cataloging by learning:

• the structures and purpose of library catalogs
• Machine Readable Cataloging (MARC) formatting for catalog descriptions
• subject headings and classification of library materials
• how to search databases (OCLC WorldCat and Alma) to find bibliographic records by author, title, or standard numbers
• the use of Romanization tables for non-Latin script materials
• how publication practices differ across countries and impact cataloging policies

The intern in this position will apply skills learned through one-on-one training and self-directed study to the processing of a non-Western language technical services workflow. Processing tasks will include pre-catalog searching and basic copy cataloging with some original cataloging as time permits (personal communication, July 22, 2022).

Recruitment Process

Given the expertise, capacity, and needs of our department, as well as the available funding, we decided to focus our first iteration of the program on providing training in cataloging to one intern for either South Asian or Southeast Asian languages. Our requirements for potential candidates were centered around high language competency, attention to detail, and good interpersonal and communication skills. Aside from that, we welcomed applicants from any academic background. Additionally, we wanted to attract candidates who demonstrated an interest in a library career and an aptitude for cataloging. We hoped to show them that librarianship as a career is intellectually interesting and rewarding, as well as a good fit for people with language skills.

With those requirements in mind, we chose to recruit nationally and to consider both graduate and undergraduate students (junior standing or higher). The decision to recruit beyond our university was made to ensure the broadest possible pool of candidates and language expertise. We posted the position in January 2023 and advertised it via our regular posting channels, as well as to the listservs for the Committee on South Asian Libraries and Documentation (CONSALD) and the Committee on Research Materials on Southeast Asia (CORMOSEA). The response to the posting greatly exceeded our initial expectations. We anticipated less than a dozen candidates, but received 26 qualified applications, and many more expressions of interest from across the United States and abroad. Given the high quality of the candidates and the necessary choice of one target language, the final selection proved very difficult. Thus, we approached our Development Office and obtained additional funding to accept one more intern so that we could host two parallel internships in both the South Asian and the Southeast Asian units. After a series of Zoom interviews, we selected a graduate student from a different institution with a native knowledge of Burmese and a local undergraduate student with advanced coursework in Hindi. There were also three other U-M University students who had worked in our department with Slavic, Jewish, and Modern Greek languages and expressed great interest in the program. They joined the internship cohort as affiliate interns; thus, what had been planned for one student expanded to five.

Practical Notes on the Internship Program

The internship was an eight-week full-time program of 40 hours per week, offered in the summer. The two full-time interns who were recruited to the program were paid $20 per hour. The university also covered their tax duty of 7.85 percent, and no benefits were paid. As this program was not offered in collaboration with an academic department or school, and the U-M Library is not a credit-granting unit, no academic credit was awarded. For the out-of-town intern, we covered travel expenses and facilitated a housing arrangement at International House, a nonprofit living learning community that houses international and U.S. students and scholars. Our unit does not have any base-funding for internships, thus funding for this program came from one-time monies. Continuity of the program will rely on working with the Library Administration and the Development Office to secure necessary funds.

The affiliate interns were graduate students already volunteering or employed as temporary student library assistants in our department. They took part in classroom learning activities, readings, and seminar discussions to enhance their understanding of their jobs and library work in general. However, they were not employed through the internship, did not receive work assignments related to the internship, and were not expected to complete the same deliverables as the full-time interns.

Class Development and Implementation

Having completed the intern selection, we proceeded to refine the internship learning objectives we had developed at the conception of the project by creating a weekly outline of core topics that could be covered within eight weeks. The group recognized from the outset that the internship demanded a lot of training time for the participants to process the information and gain the skills they would need to do their assigned work responsibilities. To get participants to the point of being able to catalog, we chose to build toward that goal with a daily mix of guided self-study, group lecture, discussion, in-class exercises, and hands-on practice. Because we needed to account for multiple target languages, it became clear that we had to provide examples in a shared language (i.e., English). This original training outline formed the basis for building content modules in Canvas, U-M’s online learning management system.

For the first four weeks of the internship, cataloging instructors held classroom sessions almost every day for two hours (see Appendix A). This class time spanned a total of 32 hours across 18 days. Students were assigned modules to work through and quizzes to take one day in advance of a session. The next day, instructors presented the main points of the previous day’s assignments in an informal lecture and interactive discussion format.

The classes concluded when participants had been given enough general baseline information and had reached the point where they were introduced to specific language cataloging standards and processes. At that stage, the two full-time interns were ready to start processing materials in specific languages and proceeded to work with their assigned language trainers. The affiliate interns returned to their regular duties outside of the internship.

Hands-On Experience

The scope of the projects and materials the two full-time interns would work with were planned and ready before the start of the internship program. As early as the first week of the program, the interns began working in earnest with their individual trainers and were introduced in stages to their assigned collection materials and processes. This incremental approach allowed the trainers to synchronize and reinforce—with hand3-on experiences and real materials—what was learned in each class.

The shared internship experience became completely individualized and diverged into different paths for each intern when they began working with their respective languages: Burmese and Hindi. To be able to search or catalog these non-Latin script materials, each intern had to know how to Romanize the script of their assigned materials using the appropriate ALA-LC Romanization Table (Library of Congress, n.d.a). Romanization standards are frequently unintuitive and often deficient in representing certain languages; therefore, both interns required time to learn, absorb, and practice Romanization. Becoming adept with transliteration is typically easier and quicker for those with more expertise in a non-Latin script, which proved true for our interns. We knew that four weeks were not enough to teach someone all the nuances of non-Latin script cataloging and that, from time to time, we would need to adjust our hands-on experiences to meet the individual needs of the interns.

The Southeast Asia internship work project goal was to catalog Burmese language materials. The successful applicant had native proficiency in the Burmese language and a familiarity with the ALA-LC Romanization Tables gained before joining the internship program. This was advantageous in several ways. Not only did it allow the intern to spend less time learning the Romanization scheme and more time on hands-on work with the language materials, it also meant that the intern could read and understand the books easily enough to recognize appropriately (or inappropriately) assigned subject headings and classification numbers. Additionally, this pre-existing language expertise freed the intern and the trainer to delve into more advanced topics, such as learning the differences between Library of Congress cataloging and local cataloging practices, assigning Library of Congress Subject Headings, deriving MAchine-Readable Cataloging (MARC) records in the OCLC database, and creating new original MARC records from scratch. At the end of the internship, the Southeast Asia intern successfully completed their personal goal of learning to perform original cataloging.

The incumbent for the South Asia internship was hired to work with publications primarily in the Hindi language. As the intern had an intermediate proficiency in Hindi, the trainer concentrated on building the intern’s skills for searching non-Latin script books in OCLC and the local catalog, noting that it is very difficult and complex to search books in non-Latin script, sometimes even for experienced non-Latin script catalogers. Yet, being able to search accurately is an essential skill for any competent cataloger. The intern spent some quality time unpacking and receiving new South Asian language materials, discovering the breadth of the collection, and enjoying seeing such a variety of books in so many languages and scripts. Additionally, the intern learned about our primary South Asian materials acquisitions arrangement. Through our membership in the Cooperative Acquisitions Program (CAP) the Library of Congress overseas offices in New Delhi, India, and Islamabad, Pakistan, acquire and distribute collection materials directly from their countries of origin to our library (Library of Congress, n.d.b). By the end of the internship, the South Asia intern learned key elements of copy cataloging that included searching books using OCLC and Alma, using the ALA-LC Romanization Table for Hindi (in Devanagari script), and using the Cutter table for shelflisting in our local Alma database.

Overall, we felt that eight weeks was too short for an intern to fully learn what had been taught in the classroom and gain enough hands-on practical experience to achieve a minimal level of independence in cataloging. Despite this shortcoming, the interns can continue to use and apply any knowledge gained during the internship to their studies and research in the future when they need it.

Subject Librarian Training

While the technical services training was of paramount importance for this internship program, we wanted the interns to understand the full spectrum of responsibilities an International Studies librarian could encounter. Further influencing this choice was our recognition that South and Southeast Asian Studies librarians are often hired primarily as subject specialists, where job duties may include collection development, materials selection, instruction, and outreach. With this in mind, we devoted a portion of the internship to these other key facets of the job and where they fit within an academic library system.

To do this, we arranged several tours of different library departments and independent libraries on campus. The interns also toured the Conservation Lab in the Preservation Services Department to get a better idea of efforts aimed at ensuring the longevity of our materials, especially those requiring special treatment. Lastly, to get a more complete picture of technical services operations within the U-M Library, the group was introduced to the Technical Services Department in the Collections Division and the Asia Library Technical Services Department where they were able to learn about print and electronic resource acquisition, as well as cataloging workflows for other language materials.

Another important component of the interns’ training involved selected readings followed by discussion sessions that would give the interns a more in-depth analysis of what international studies departments do. Weekly readings of chapters from Supporting Research in Area Studies: A Guide for Academic Libraries were assigned and discussed in a seminar style, eliciting many lively exchanges of thoughts and opinions (Pitman, 2015). The librarians guiding the group specifically illustrated how different concepts in the readings played out in real life in the library environment. The discussions encompassed both essential public-facing functions, such as reference and outreach, and technical services processes.

Probably the most interactive component of the subject librarian training (and the most fun for the interns) was their introduction to the material selection process. First, they learned about the philosophy of selection work and were shown how materials were ordered by the library through different bibliographic tools. Working with the corresponding subject librarian, the interns discussed the collection priorities for their area and delved into the vendor and publisher catalogs. They very much enjoyed the actual selection work, particularly weighing whether to purchase something. Some orders were placed on the strength of the interns’ recommendations.

Interns’ Feedback

As this was our first time conducting such an internship program, we were eager to assess the undertaking by gathering feedback in a variety of ways. First, we created a form to survey the two full-time interns about the many thematic and structural components of the program and their level of satisfaction with the amount of time and types of activities devoted to each topic (see Appendix B). We also asked for ideas to improve the program, its various components, and the format of delivery. Another valuable piece of feedback came from the assigned program deliverables: a weekly journal containing reflections on the learning experience, interesting issues, challenges, and victories; a portfolio of materials processed during the internship; and a capstone presentation to the International Studies Team in the final week of the internship. One intern also contributed a personalized account of the internship experience and learning milestones as a post to the U-M Library’s “Student Stories” blog (Kyaw, 2023).

From the survey, we learned that the interns felt that they spent enough classroom time on the various topics covered by the program curriculum. They also appreciated the opportunity to review the content of a module one-on-one with their trainer for the second time. They wished for some more hands-on exercises, either integrated into the classroom sessions or as pre-class assignments. One participant proposed an idea of creating a MARC record for an English language title together in class and being able to discuss as a group the process and the decisions that would go into creating it. They all enjoyed having a larger cohort of interns to attend classroom sessions, reading discussions, weekly debriefing, and tours of library departments together. It was apparent that they learned a lot from each other’s questions posed during instruction sessions, which in turn helped our instructors to adjust the class content to their needs. The interns found our Canvas modules “well organized, easy to navigate” and the reading load “manageable.” They asked for a list of comprehensive definitions and liked the approach we had taken within the training of presenting common mistakes or problems that frequently occur in any given area.

The weekly journals gave us a glimpse into more intellectual aspects of the interns’ learning and what they found memorable or surprising. From the beginning, they noted a tension among library science standards and principles, one’s background knowledge, and the geopolitical situation of the day. They commented on the role of personal judgment and subjective interpretation in catalogers’ work, as well as the bias concealed in controlled vocabularies that results from value judgments and specific worldviews. An intern who had previous experience cataloging for a commercial company felt slightly alarmed, in retrospect, at the lack of training offered in that environment. The interns came to regard cataloging as both art and science, organic and iterative and a practice that benefits from a critical approach. While performing some of the receiving tasks—such as unpacking freshly arrived materials—they were delighted by their great variety of languages, formats, and topics. At times they were surprised to see some unlikely suspects—such as board games, movies, and musical scores—being collected by the library. A particularly illuminating point from the journals concerned the interns’ assessment of their own research skills. Having received a thorough orientation to catalog searching and metadata in the public interface, the interns noted that prior to the internship they really did not know how to do library research. They acknowledged that the internship experience considerably sharpened their research skills and made them feel much more confident in their findings.

As we had talked at length about the candidates’ interests in a library career in our recruitment interviews, we did not address this point in our survey. We felt that it was too soon to ask because, given the circumstances, the interns would likely offer a similar answer to the one they gave at the interview. However, we know that (at the point of writing this article) one of the interns was looking into various LIS programs, and that arrangements were made for him to spend another two months in our department to continue his cataloging project the following summer. The other intern obtained a job as a reference assistant in one of our branch libraries and was exploring a range of graduate programs.

Conclusion

Overall, this was a very rewarding experience both for the interns, as well as for the members of the internship team. We really enjoyed the challenge of creating a new program that would attempt to respond to an acute need in our field and inspire students to consider international studies librarianship as a career choice. Nevertheless, starting from scratch and working through every component of the program was a huge undertaking for the entire team, as well as a continuous learning and adapting experience. Although we regularly hire and train students of all levels to perform aspects of technical services work, including cataloging, it is rare that we give them intensive training in such a compressed time frame. Throughout this experience, we found that conducting an effective program in which participants can learn enough to get a true taste of the library profession, while also acquiring specific skills that allow them to perform real life cataloging duties, is a monumental and impactful effort for everyone involved.

One clear lesson that our team took from this experience was the need to manage and reduce unnecessary details in parts of the interns’ training to focus on concepts that get participants thinking about and working with the materials more quickly and effectively. Teaching both “why” and “how” international studies professionals do things was an important goal for this internship. Unfortunately, the internship schedule left little time to thoroughly teach both concepts in their complexity and also allow adequate time for the interns to become comfortable using their new skill sets. By the time in-class lessons got past the “why” and interns were shown how to put methods into practice, there were too many different workflows to parse and remember for work to become truly smooth, efficient, and independent. Next time, for example, rather than teach how to enter metadata into both a local and national database, we will spend less time on our local integrated library system (ILS) because this adds another layer of procedures that are specific only to our institution. Instead, we will provide a more universal training for cataloging in the OCLC Connexion online cataloging tool so that only one system needs to be mastered. We learned that simplifying and streamlining the training activities will free up the interns’ time and mental energy to focus on working through more concrete examples and exercises, and to ultimately feel more confident in their ability to successfully complete their assigned projects.

Notwithstanding the considerable investment of time and energy, the internship was also an experience of joy and satisfaction. We loved the time spent with our interns in the classroom and on their individual projects. We appreciated their feedback and their insightful questions that allowed us to look at the seemingly obvious (for us) from a different and critical perspective. They helped us see with fresh eyes the day-to-day activities that we usually take for granted. They inspired us to further improve our program and continue our efforts of recruitment to the profession. We hope that we were able to inspire them to explore further the path to international studies librarianship.

References

Bird, N. J., Chu, C. M., & Oguz, F. (2015). Internship in LIS education: An international perspective on experiential learning. IFLA Journal, 41(4), 298–307. https://doi.org/10.1177/0340035215596352

Center for Research Libraries. (2021). Diversity as knowledge: Annual report fiscal year 2021 (Annual Report of the Center for Research Libraries, 2021). https://digitalcollections.crl.edu/record/901929

Council on East Asian Libraries Committee on Technical Processing. (n.d.). Subcommittee on LC-CEAL cataloging internship program. Retrieved September 22, 2025, from https://www.eastasianlib.org/ctp/Subcommittees/sub_LCinternship.htm

Council on East Asian Libraries Committee on Technical Processing. (2016, September 1). 2017 LC-CEAL. Cataloging internship program announcement. https://www.eastasianlib.org/ctp/Subcommittees/sub_LCinternship/Internship%20announcement_2017.pdf

Harwood, D., & McCormack, C. (2008). Growing our own: Mentoring undergraduate students. Journal of Business & Finance Librarianship, 13(3), 201–215. https://doi.org/10.1080/08963560802183195

Kyaw, W. (2023, August 17). Internship in Southeast Asian studies librarianship. Student Stories, University of Michigan Library, MLibrary Blogs https://blogs.lib.umich.edu/student-stories/internship-southeast-asian-studies-librarianship

Library of Congress. (n.d.a). ALA-LC Romanization tables. Retrieved September 22, 2025, from https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/roman.html

Library of Congress. (n.d.b). Overseas offices. Retrieved September 22, 2025, from https://www.loc.gov/acq/ovop/

Pitman, L. (2015). Supporting research in area studies: A guide for academic libraries. Chandos Publishing.

Sargent, A. R., Becker, B. W., & Klingberg, S. (2011). Incorporating library school interns on academic library subject teams. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 37(1), 28–33. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2010.10.004

South Asia Cooperative Collection Development (SACOOP). (2021, Spring). Statement on cataloging and metadata. University of Texas Libraries LibGuides. https://guides.lib.utexas.edu/ld.php?content_id=60138108

University of Minnesota Libraries Area Studies Collections Task Force. (2021). Report of the University of Minnesota Libraries area studies collections task force. University of Minnesota, University Digital Conservancy. https://hdl.handle.net/11299/226215

Appendix A

Class Timeline & Topics by Week

Week 1: Five sessions: nine hours total

1. Orientation & Onboarding

2. Technical Services Work & Workflows Collection development & technical services life-cycle (International Studies focus) Acquisitions—selecting, ordering, receiving Management of backlogs and processing queues Cataloging workflow steps (general overview)

3. Cataloging—General Overview Philosophy of cataloging Structures of library catalogs (bibliographic, holdings, and item records) What is cataloging and classification? What are controlled vocabularies?

4. Bibliographic Elements & Searching the Library Catalog Identifying bibliographic elements for acquisitions purposes (from a catalog) Identifying elements as they appear on your physical items Identifying elements: Monographs or continuing resource? Pre-order searching in the U-M Library catalog Quizzes

5. Searching in Alma & OCLC Searching vs. browsing Searching in Alma Quizzes

Week 2: Five sessions: eight hours total

1. MAchine Readable Cataloging (MARC) Introduction to MARC21 Transcription vs. recording data Core/Key MARC fields for monographs Different MARC views: System display differences

2. Pre-catalog searching Searching in OCLC Record evaluation: Did you find what you searched for?

3. Copy Cataloging Basics Bibliographic record evaluation: Copy cataloging or original cataloging? Bibliographic record review & cataloging rules (AACR2, RDA, and so forth)

4. Non-Latin Search & Descriptive Cataloging Practice Transliteration Non-Latin script cataloging (basics) Non-Latin script cataloging: Southeast Asia; South Asia; Hebrew; Modern Greek; Cyrillic, Armenian, and Georgian

5. Copy Cataloging Instructions (continued) Copy cataloging in OCLC Connexion Client Copy cataloging—Basic steps

Week 3: Four sessions: eight hours total

1. Non-Latin Script Cataloging (continued)

2. Cataloging in Connexion (continued)

3. Intro to Controlled Vocabulary & Authority Control Introduction to subjects (LCSH): MARC fields and subfields Introduction to ClassWeb (LCSH) Authority records & controlled vocabulary

4. Intro to Classification & Call Numbers Introduction to Library of Congress Classification (LCC) Introduction to ClassWeb (LCC) Call numbers and cutters Quizzes

Week 4: Three sessions: five hours total

1. Copy Cataloging Review

2. Cataloging with Alma Overview of Alma searching, record display, and Metadata Editor Exporting bibliographic records from OCLC to Alma; creating holdings & item records

3. Shelflisting Review of cutters (author vs. subject) Shelflisting in Alma

Week 7: One session: two hours total

1. Advanced Cataloging Topics Intermediate LCSH: Introduction to subdivisions: Free-floating and chronological Geographic headings (651) and subdivisions ($z) Form/Genre headings (655) and subdivisions ($v) Intermediate LCC—using tables, and so forth Quizzes (PLUS: Optional advanced topics: Reading and resources provided, but not discussed in class) Advanced LCSH: Assigning LCSH from scratch Advanced LCC: Finding an LCC number when none is provided; individual works of literature

Appendix B

International Studies Internship 2023 Feedback Form

International Studies Internship 2023—Feedback

Please be candid! Your comments will help us modify our content for the next interns! Thank you!

Did we spend enough time on these topics during the technical services “class” sessions?
	Not enough information provided	It was just enough	Too much information provided
Acquisitions workflows	⭘	⭘	⭘
Why we catalog / Philosophies	⭘	⭘	⭘
Identifying bibliographic elements on physical materials	⭘	⭘	⭘
Transcription vs. Recording Data	⭘	⭘	⭘
MARC fields	⭘	⭘	⭘
Non-Latin scripts	⭘	⭘	⭘
How to search in Alma	⭘	⭘	⭘
How to search in OCLC Connexion	⭘	⭘	⭘
How to identify correct records / what is a full record	⭘	⭘	⭘
Controlled vocabularies & authority records	⭘	⭘	⭘
Library of Congress Subject Headings	⭘	⭘	⭘
Library of Congress Classification	⭘	⭘	⭘
Cuttering & Shelflisting	⭘	⭘	⭘

I wish I had more hands-on-practice *or* one-on-one guidance in (check all that apply):

▢ Acquisitions work (Unboxing, checking off invoices)

▢ Identifying bibliographically significant elements on physical materials

▢ Searching in Alma

▢ Searching in OCLC Connexion

▢ Understanding MARC fields, indicators, and subfields

▢ Transliteration

▢ Inserting script data/Creating paired fields into MARC records

▢ Understanding LC subject headings

▢ Understanding LC Classification

▢ Creating Cutters and shelflisting

▢ Copy cataloging in Connexion

▢ Cataloging in Alma

▢ Creating holdings and item records

▢ Other:

_____________________________________________________________________________________

I had enough time to do my technical services work (reading and cataloging) and learn about other aspects of the profession.

• No
• Sometimes
• Yes
• Other:

Was there anything about the technical services training format (first reading, then class, then hands-on activity), that you would change? (For example: the classes were not helpful; the reading took too much time; the order the information was presented in was unhelpful)

Your answer

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How would you suggest we improve the Canvas modules? (For example: More quizzes; too much text or information per sections; more examples; too much to read in one day)

Your answer

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How would you suggest we can improve the technical services related aspects of the course overall?

Your answer

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How would you suggest we can improve the program of subject librarian training, tours, and general library activities?

Your answer

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What other comments about the program would you like to share?

Your answer

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