This morning I went to a session where presenters shared tips and experiences about working with volunteers, interns and students. Rebecca Crago kicked off the session by sharing her experiences as a new professional managing an army of volunteers and interns at the Historical Society of Frederick, Maryland.
She has these staff members research references questions, perform catalog maintaince, process collections and greet visitors. She doesn’t have them work on the budget, respond to reference questions, amend or develop policies, page or re shelve collection materials. At the end of their internships, interns fill out an evaluation, which helps Rebecca to adjust her program to provide these staff members with a memorable experience, while balancing the time constraints working with volunteers and interns means.
Jim Gerrncser of Dickinson College talked about his strategic approach to working with student employees. In 2008, Jim surveyed 10 years of student workers to examine the impact their internships had on their career path. The response was overwhelmingly positive. Jim strives whenever possible to match an intern’s interests with a potential project. For example, one of his interns created a website and workflow to make available the recently digitized issues of the college’s student newspaper. He and his permanent staff work as a unit to determine how many students they can take on, what the projects will be and who will supervise the students.
Adam Minakowski shared his experience as an intern while going to library school. He hopes that supervisors will create opportunities for interns that will give them skills and experiences to make the strong job applicants.
We then had a wonderful discussion about quality control and managing this temporary workforce. The big take aways were:
Be realistic about your own time constraints and the commitment you can make to students, volunteers or interns.
Have clear expectations of project deliverables.
Check quality of work often during the training process, then spot check as project continues.
Experiment with group work to ease the supervisory burden.
Understand that students have many other responsibilities other than working for you and we must be as flexible as possible.
Do you have other thoughts about quality control and managing students?