By Richard M. Jost

As we in the baby boom generation get closer to retirement, we continue to serve our library community and keep up with the new technologies flooding the library market. Inevitably, as we look toward the end of our careers, we wonder who will take our place and carry forward our libraries' goals and missions.

The good news is that the decline in the number of library schools has stabilized. Even though many of the schools have changed names or departmental structures, they continue to graduate new librarians with cutting-edge skills. I am fortunate to be working on a campus that has an information school with a library science program as well as to be working in a library that has its own law librarianship program in conjunction with the University of Washington Information School.

The University of Washington law librarianship program is a one-year academic program supplemented by an intern program at the Marian Gould Gallagher Law Library (MGGLL) or the King County Law Library (KCLL). Although not mandatory, law librarianship students are strongly urged to participate in the intern program to gain practical library experience while earning their degree. Student interns at MGGLL work in the Reference Department all year while rotating between the technical services and circulation departments. These are paid positions in the library, and interns face the same employment responsibilities as other student employees.

This has been a very successful program throughout the years, due to the combination of classroom learning and hands-on training. Our graduates have been placed in many libraries throughout the United States and even in some foreign countries. The staffs in both libraries spend a substantial amount of time training and supervising the interns in their work, providing real-life examples of how libraries currently operate and what challenges they face.

However, it became apparent over the last several years that our student interns could benefit from a more holistic approach to library operations. While the full-year rotation in the Reference Department gave students an excellent exposure to the library's reference services, the half-year rotation in technical services and circulation did not provide enough context for the students to fit these pieces into the whole library environment. In addition, there was little room to expose students to new technologies or encourage them to explore other areas of library operations.

To address these gaps, the MGGLL decided to make some changes to the intern program for the coming year. The first major change will be to replace the former Reference Department "Boot Camp," which was designed only as an introduction to reference services, with a two-day "Library Boot Camp," which will cover all operations of the library. This workshop, taught by librarians from both MGGLL and KCLL, will focus on providing an overview of library operations and departments as well as practical information (including scheduling, passwords, and time sheets) that they will need for employment.

The second major change is that instead of working in reference for the entire year and in technical services and circulation for partial years, the interns will now work in all three departments simultaneously throughout the year. Although challenging logistically for the staff, year-long exposure to the major departments will give interns a broader picture of the library earlier in their library careers. If an intern develops an interest in either technical services or circulation, he or she will be able to focus on that interest throughout the year instead of learning about it only halfway through the program.

The third major change is to institute a weekly series of presentations called Library Talks. Approved for academic credit, these one-hour presentations are open to all interns and any interested library staff and are taught on a rotating basis by librarians and library staff. Library Talks are intended to help student interns continue their education through formal classroom presentations or small group presentations throughout the work area. In addition to providing more information about reference, technical services, and circulation issues, these presentations will also offer insight into areas that the students may not come across in their daily work (e.g., budgeting, personnel, facilities, and interlibrary loans).

As this is the first year that these changes will be implemented, we will monitor the results and student feedback to see if the changes were beneficial. Our goal is to fine-tune a very good training program to make it even better for students, many of whom begin their year of study with little or no library experience. It is our hope that this revised intern program will further enable the University of Washington law library to meet the needs of the next generation of law librarians.

Richard M. Jost is Information Systems Coordinator at the Gallagher Law Library at the University of Washington School of Law in Seattle. His e-mail address is rmjost@u.washington.edu.