Library and Information Science Virtual Capstone

Institution: Rhode Island College

Title of Presentation: Supporting University Records, Archives, and Digital Collections at Rhode Island College 

Summary: Adrienn Mendonca-Jones completed an archival internship at Rhode Island College in Providence, Rhode Island, where she focused on processing multiple university and personal collections, enhanced metadata for digital collections, and assisted in the translation and publication of digital materials. Collections Adrienn processed included Rhode Island Freedom to Read ephemera, Cape Verde Study Abroad records, and the Richard A. Lobban, Jr. papers at RIC. She also assisted with updating metadata for the Nancy Elizabeth Prophet digital collection and editing transcriptions for digital archives.

Adrienn continued to develop skills in drafting and finalizing DACS-compliant finding aids, physical processing, intellectual arrangement and description, metadata enhancement, EAD markup, primary and secondary source literacy for students, and more. During the course of her internship she delivered a poster presentation "Rhode Island Freedom to Read ephemera" to the Society of American Archivists Students and New Professionals section, as well as a second poster presentation entitled "Building Primary Source Literacy through Digital Literacy: Using the Jay T. Last Collection of Graphic Arts and Social History at Huntington Library and IIIF Manifests to Encourage Informed Digital Curation Practices" to the Visual Resources Association annual conference in Portland, Oregon, on October 3, 2025. Adrienn will discuss the role of primary source literacy at the intersection of visual literacy and SAA, RBMS, and ACRL standards for her capstone presentation. 

Institution: Crown Point Community Library

Title of Presentation: Bridging Knowledge and Community: Insights from a Public Library Internship at the Crown Point Community Library

Summary: The goal of this internship was to gain hands-on experience in a public library setting. O’Dell did not have previous professional experience working in a library environment before beginning the MLIS program. This internship offered the opportunity to gain that experience working at the Crown Point Community Library. Primary areas of focus included day-to-day library operations, reference tools and services, program planning and implementation, and collection management. O’Dell was able to learn the SirsiDynix ILS, participate in the annual inventory, assist patrons at circulation and reference, help with multiple children’s story hours and engagement events including Movie Night at BullDog Park and the Pumpkin Walk. O’Dell also attended board and budget meetings, which provided valuable insight into how administration and staff collaborate to achieve library goals. Lastly, she was given the opportunity to design and develop a panel presentation focused on Artificial Intelligence for National Media Literacy Week. Support from the director, librarians, and staff was key to achieving the internship’s learning goals. 

Institution: Library Futures 

Title of Presentation: Growing a Digital Skill Set: Independent Research and Game Development at Library Futures 

Summary: This internship took place at Library Futures, a non-profit organization based within NYU’s Engleberg Center for Innovation Law & Policy. Library Futures' mission is to “advance a fair digital future for libraries and the communities they serve.” The aim of the internship was for Oristaglio to gain more experience with both digital curation and LIS-related independent research. Oristaglio worked on several projects, including helping to write, code, and implement a web-based choose-your-own-adventure game. The game, which will soon be released, enables library students and librarians to prepare for challenges to intellectual freedom in the workplace. Oristaglio also conducted an independent research project that examined library contracts with vendors to evaluate whether these contracts enable libraries to perform one of their core functions: preservation. In this capstone presentation, Oristaglio will discuss how the internship helped her acquire a set of digital skills that she hopes to apply towards future digital curation and research within the field. 

Institution: NATO

Title of Presentation: Digital Preservation in the NATO Archives

Summary: The NATO Archives has a mandate to collect, maintain, and provide access to records created by the Alliance in both its political and military activities. In her role as an Archives Intern, DiAcetis concentrated her work within the Digital Preservation team. She explored technical options and developed workflows for a variety of digital record types, including web archives, email, and digital carriers like floppy disks and hard drives. This involved working with programming languages like python and java and selecting open source digital forensic tools that addressed the technical and security requirements of the organization. Additional areas of focus included addressing digital processing backlogs, maintaining and implementing NATOcore metadata, preparing collections for external digitization, and assisting with outreach activities. The internship provided valuable hands-on processing experience and a look into the challenges of implementing record policies within large, multinational organizations. 

Institution: Burritt Library

Title of Presentation: What It Is and How to Find It: Information Literacy at Burritt Library

Summary: First, Celeste aimed to get experience in most of Burritt Library’s departments: Access Services; Digital Resources; Information Services and Resources (Cataloging and the Makerspace); Archives and Digital Humanities; and eventually Reference and Instruction, where she focused the majority of her internship hours. Her goal there was to support the four Reference and Instruction librarians in planning and delivering lessons about information literacy, which has been a lifelong interest and a recurring topic in her MLIS coursework. When Celeste taught Writing (WRT) at the same institution, she had helped pilot the embedded librarian program, in which Burritt librarians would be assigned WRT sections to tour the library, visit classrooms, and teach information literacy multiple times per semester, and students from those sections would visit the library to complete scavenger hunts and research consultations. Now, she participated in this program from the position of the librarian. Most of the internship concentrated on planning and delivering one-shots or series lessons on information literacy (scholarly research, AI, annotated bibliographies), and ensuring students received multiple “points of contact” with the library. She applied lesson planning skills from LIS-S574 Information Instruction, previous college instruction experience, and worked from the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. While the first few lessons were shared with other librarians or her supervisor, by the end of the internship she built and conducted her own, which will be showcased in the capstone presentation. 

Institution: Calumet Regional Archives

Title of Presentation: Navigating Transition: Policy & Workflow at the Calumet Regional Archives

Summary: This internship took place at the Calumet Regional Archives (CRA) at Indiana University Northwest, and was designed for immersion in day-to-day archival operations. With the archives experiencing technical issues (e.g., an offline online finding aid), limited staffing (a newly appointed sole archivist), a backlog of unprocessed materials, and constrained physical storage space, the internship required someone to juggle a variety of roles. Pollock also developed a suite of “products” for the repository: a refined collection-development and researcher policy, a rotating calendar of monthly display materials, and a partnership with Chicago PBS’ Lakeshore Media via social media post curation. Through these activities, the internship contributed to shifting the CRA from a maintenance mindset toward a more proactive allocation of staff time and resources. The CRA is not only transitioning between archivists, but also evolving from the operations typical of a small-repository toward the more structured practices found in larger university archives. 

Institution: Avon-Washington Township Public Library, Huron Heritage Room

Title of Presentation: Archives Internship at Huron Heritage Room

Summary: The overall internship objective was to have Roahrig-Malloy gain experience in working with archival collections. Her previous archival experiences have centered on records in the government and legal settings, this internship allowed her the opportunity of working with an archival collection for an organization. The collection she focused on was the Avon Homemakers Club collection. With this collection she was able to begin the initial process of organizing the collection, preparing the materials for archival storage, and creating finding aids. Roahrig-Malloy also gained experience in other areas of working in an archival settings of a library by assisting with research on one of the first pioneer families of Washington Township for Avon Heritage Days, indexing names for The International Travel Study Club, and checked that materials were in the correct collection on the library's digital archives through the use of the software PortfolioAdmin.

Institution: IU Health Archives

Title of Presentation: Collection Creation at IU Health Archives

Summary: During her internship, Madison Warden reviewed materials pertaining to the Methodist Hospital School of Nursing. This collection included documents, photographs, and objects/artifacts. The primary goal was to see what materials were to be preserved, including archival prints and digital copies. The second goal was to understand the importance of these materials and how they should be organized. For example, there were folders of board minutes that were out of order and in multiple boxes. Warden had to assess which board minutes they were, their chronological order, and their placement in the collection as a whole. Lastly, the final goal was to create the collection through ArchivEra to provide access to users. All was done collaboratively with the archive supervisors to make sure the collection followed the goals and purpose of the archives as a whole.