The following is an inventory of the goals and objectives that I am focused on achieving within the 21st CLS Program this semester. Though I know that often as an individual makes progress on a project, goals and objectives may become different from when the project was started. I'll keep this in mind and I plan to make updates when/if my perspective changes...
I have a couple of general goals that I will focus on achieving through my projects this semester. The first is to acquire the ability to effectively evaluate obstacles and problems, and make critical decisions to alleviate them. My objectives for achieving this goal include communicating with my fellow interns and the facility staff to gather information about the needs of their community, finding out why those needs are not being met, and searching for solutions to meet those needs. I want to learn how to effectively manage/co-manage group projects. I am working to co-organize and facilitate the ALISS Book Drive with the other officers of the organization in order to reach this goal.
My more specific leadership goals are to maintain a connection with the Theodora House community in order to ensure that my project outcomes remain consistent with its needs, and to promote my interest and service for literacy development with the residents. In order to achieve these goals I have set aside time in my weekly schedule to allow for interested women in the facility to request help with developing their reading skills.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
And the journey begins...
I have now officially been working at my internship site for 2 full weeks and let me just say that I am delightedly overwhelmed! I don't think that I planned to eat such a huge elephant, but I keep reminding myself to just take it one bite at a time and to invite others to take part in the feast!
I am interning at Theodora House; a prison-release program facility sponsored by Volunteers of America, Indianapolis. My initial project was to assist with the Words Travel Program, which is a family literacy initiative offered by the facility with the help of Scholastic Books. However, after meeting some of the residents and learning of their interests in developing their own reading skills, as well as promoting their enjoyment of literature, I thought it only fitting to build an adult library for them to enjoy at their facility.
Presently, Theodora House has a very small collection. Many of the books are either outdated, in need of severe book repair, or both. Additionally, the books are shelved with no real organization, making it extremely difficult to locate a desired book, or to know whether one exists in the collection at all. And even more disheartening, because the books are housed in the facility's multipurpose room they are subject to share space with other items that may be in need of storage space.
ALISS (Association for Library and Information Science Students) has taken on the project of promoting a book drive beginning Jan.25th (today) and ending on Feb. 25th. The books we collect in this effort will be donated to Theodora House to help build their progressive library's collection. We will be accepting donations of books in the SLIS office at University Library (shameless plug). With the help of my internship supervisor, Sara Pugh, I was able to retrieve a large donation of books offered by Southport Baptist Church. I am so grateful for, and almost stunned by the amount of books they have so graciously donated. The goal for the rest of the week will be to take inventory of what has already been acquired. Then I hope to move on to create a simple classification system to maintain record of the holdings... So much to do, yet so little time... My adrenaline is pumping in overdrive!
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