Line Manager: Elle Lund (Library Management Systems Administrator)
Pathways Programme: Pathways to Professional Services in Higher Education
Summary of Department: The University of Exeter Library is a complex organisation consisting of teams across Customer Services, Content and Discovery, Academic Liaison and Skills, Open Research, and Heritage Collections, working to provide students and staff with the content, spaces, and services they need to achieve their study, teaching, and research goals. The Library manages multiple websites and digital platforms, including but not limited to, the library catalogue, a large number of library guides, and the reading list platform.
How did hosting an intern via the Professional Pathways programme benefit you and your department?
“The process of creating web accessibility statements is an in-depth one, including auditing webpages for 50 Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) criteria. It has been a challenge for Library staff to find time to commit to such detailed and specific work, and the work done by our interns has given us a huge boost towards getting these statements published, and beginning an ongoing cycle of accessibility improvements for the library’s webpages. Hosting our interns also helped motivate me to commit time to this work so that I was able to provide relevant training and support throughout the internship. This work is extremely important not just from a legal perspective, but from an equality perspective, and I believe both interns really appreciated working on a project with such an emphasis on ethics and inclusion.”
How was your experience of hosting a Pathways intern?
“The Library hosted two interns with different working hours and locations – one was part-time with a mix of office and home working, the other was full-time and worked fully remotely. This did require careful planning to ensure training could be delivered concurrently, as well as a thoughtful approach so that the intern working remotely did not feel at a disadvantage in terms of not being able to have ad hoc conversations in the office. We stayed connected through a dedicated Teams chat, which all files were shared in, interns could add questions or requests for calls, and where I shared updates on shifting priorities and focus areas. I encouraged a flexible approach to hours, though I learned that if I’m going to offer flexibility, I need to make sure to be completely clear on times where we do all need to be online. Due to time limitations the interns mainly ended up working directly with me, as I was only able to put one meeting with two other colleagues in. While the office-based intern may have had more opportunity to speak to other members of staff, I was aware that the intern working remotely may have felt isolated. In future I would try to embed more collaborative work so that interns can meet more Library staff and learn more about wider Library activities.”
Given the Professional Pathways internship is 35 hours in total, how would you recommend ensuring both you and your intern(s) gain as much as possible from the experience?
“I created ‘Library Accessibility Assistant Infopack’ slides to guide us through the training which took place on the first morning of the internship – and to be a resource to refer back to throughout the internship. These included contextual background, their roles, a work plan, my availability, healthy working practices, and a lot of detail about the work required and how to complete it. The final slide thanked them for their incredible contribution, detailing the positive impact it would have on the Library and university community, and specified the knowledge and skills they gained through this work. The healthy working practices slide included regular screen breaks, as this was a screen-heavy piece of work, as well as encouragement to do what was needed to stay cool and hydrated, as this week fell on one of the most intense heatwaves of the summer! My availability indicated when I would be in meetings and when I would be able to provide support and answer questions, so they were able to work around these slots and hopefully not feel uncertain about my whereabouts or how long it would take to get a reply to a question. The work plan outlined tasks for each intern on each day, split into morning and afternoon, but I made it clear that this plan was flexible and subject to change. The detailed nature of the work and it being a new area for the Library meant that it was difficult to estimate how much time each step would take. By the middle of the first week I was able to see how much progress had been made so far and use that to create clear goals for the remainder of the time, which I think worked well and gave the interns specific outputs to work towards.”
Why would you recommend hosting an intern via Professional Pathways?
“First of all, having student insight on an area of work is extremely valuable. I was lucky enough to get two interns with different interests and backgrounds, who both really impressed me with their thoughtfulness and commitment to this work. Due to the nature of the project, having people be able to put sustained effort into this work without being called away by competing priorities was also very helpful, as this is very difficult to achieve with staff who are always being pulled in multiple directions. I would also recommend submitting a project for the group work that the Professional Pathways interns undertake before beginning their internships, as this both gave the interns a helpful starting point for their internships (for us this meant developing familiarity with library webpages), as well as giving the Library an additional opportunity to get student input on an area of work. Finally, it was simply a really enjoyable experience to work with students, to find out about their interests and goals, and to hopefully provide them with some helpful experience to take forwards into their futures. It was extremely gratifying that both of our interns said that they really enjoyed their time with us, found the project engaging, and were potentially even now interested in pursuing Library work!”