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 Many of the books are either outdated, in need of severe book repair, or both.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!