10 Recommendations for Creating Internships with the Public Sector

Immediately upon graduating with my Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS), I began project-managing the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant funded Open Data Literacy (ODL) project headed by Carole Palmer and Nicholas Weber. Now, three years into my role, we are wrapping up the project and reflecting on our progress. We have provided placements at six governmental or public library locations for fourteen students. We have solicited and co-created internship projects from our civic partners that can be completed in a limited timeframe with specific deliverables. As is often the case, the internship projects and experiences have improved over the years and I wanted to take this opportunity to offer guidance to anyone taking on the task of partnering with external organizations to provide internships that benefit all parties involved. To that end, I have distilled my thoughts into a top ten list of recommendations for creating successful internships in partnership with public sector organizations.

1.Pay interns competitive wages

I have no doubt that offering our interns competitive wages during their approximately 8-week-long internships was one key to success. In our case, the stipends for internships were proposed in and paid for by the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program IMLS grant. The public sector partners committed their time and a physical location for the interns, but did not have to support the interns’ wages. Competitive pay meant that we could attract top-notch students to the opportunities and we could compensate them appropriately for the high-level work they performed. Moreover, unpaid internships can reinforce societal inequities and we embrace the University of Washington’s commitment “to advance the values of diversity, equity and inclusion”.

2.Scope the project

This is so important and yet difficult to describe in a “how-to” format. In our experience, most projects needed to be reduced in scope from the original idea. This is what our process looked like when it was most successful:

1. We solicited ideas for internship projects from partner organizations 7 months prior to the internship start dates.
2. We chose to fund internships that were best aligned with our grant goals and had the most clarity in deliverables.
3. We spoke with the project partners to further refine the internship plan.
4. In collaboration with partners, we hired interns whose interests and experiences were well aligned with the specific projects.
5. We asked interns to meet with the partner and fill out a Plan of Work document (including sections for Problem Statement, Goals, Deliverables, Sustainability, Milestones). Within the goals section we included a section for “Out of Scope” and “Time Allowing.” These sections provided a placeholder for the many ideas that surface but aren’t necessarily accomplish-able within the internship timeframe.
6. We reviewed the Plans of Work, provided feedback, and checked in throughout the internship on the progress.

A successfully scoped project feels like it has well-defined “walls” (what is within scope and what is without) and deliverables. It evokes a clear sense of steps required for completion. From day one, the intern will understand where to begin and how to progress. To gauge the scope, ask the intern, “do you know what to do next and what you will be doing for the next week?” If they are hesitant, the scoping needs more work.

3.Be flexible

As the project gets underway, new information is likely to change the direction of the project or the specific deliverables. As an extreme example, one of our internships pivoted in its entirety when the COVID-19 pandemic hit Washington state and the sponsor organization, Washington State Library, needed help documenting public library service changes due to the pandemic. Be flexible with changes to the plan, but always make sure that the scoping is reasonable and that there are clear deliverables. Part of the learning that comes with any time-bounded project is adjusting expectations for what is possible, and what is feasible to actually complete in an 8 week internship. We have found that taking these adjustments seriously requires a project mentor and support team to be regularly available for consultation, and to be active in the revision of a project’s scope. Doing so teaches valuable project management skills to students and helps them quickly realize the realities of working in a dynamic public sector setting.

4.Define roles and be available

Too many cooks don’t necessarily spoil the broth as long as each has a defined role. These roles should be explained and agreed upon by all parties prior to the start of the internship. Ideally, hosting an internship onboarding event will allow you to cover this in detail. Our interns received mentoring from us (the academic institution) and our partners (public sector organizations and libraries). The academic partners can elicit feedback from interns on how the internship is going, provide literature recommendations, new ideas, administrative information or referrals, and encouragement. The partners should provide the domain knowledge, orientation to the physical space, networking and introductions to other staff, and feedback on deliverables. We often found that one or two meetings that included all mentors and the intern were valuable in making sure everyone was on the same page.

5.Create community

If you have multiple interns, even if they are working for different public sector partners, provide opportunities for them to work together. We created a Slack channel for each year’s cohort and hosted happy hours and lunches throughout the internship timeframe. These opportunities allowed the interns to network, ask questions of each other, share ideas, and commiserate over shared frustrations.

6.Provide opportunities for dissemination

Provide interns opportunities to present or publish the work they are doing. We created a Medium publication and had interns publish two or more blogposts during their internship which we promoted via social media. We also held a showcase event at the end of summer in which interns gave short presentations on their work. We shared invitations to this event with sponsors and the iSchool community at large. Events like the showcase or a poster session also provide opportunities to network, create artifacts for resumes and portfolios, and to immerse them in a community of domain enthusiasts. We’ve had interns submit journal articles and present at conferences based on their internship accomplishments. These experiences give students tangible experiences to use in job applications and interviews.

7.Create an online workspace

Create an online place for the intern to store all relevant artifacts from datasets to workplans to blogpost drafts. We used Github repositories, but other platforms such as Open Science Framework (OSF), Gitlab, or Bitbucket are also available. These workspaces should be made accessible to all stakeholders of the internship, if not fully open to the public.

8.Encourage documentation

The online workspace allows interns and stakeholders to track the progress of the internship. This is useful for following along and for retrospective review. Each internship will have different documentation requirements, but examples include methodologies (for data collection, for analysis, for tool building, etc.), code, changes to the Plan of Work, drafts of blogposts, slides for presentations. We often review our interns Github repositories when writing papers, presentations, and annual reports.

9.Provide opportunities for remote work.

If at all possible, offer some remote internships. The University of Washington MLIS program offers both residential and online degrees and we strive to make opportunities available to all students. We worked closely with a couple partners to craft remote internships that mean we could recruit and hire some outstanding students who were not local. For us, this required regular online check-ins via Zoom or other conferencing applications, but it was time well spent.

10.Feed interns

Seriously, food goes a long way to creating community and building relationships. Host lunches, happy hours, or coffee times.

To celebrate a successful project, we are hosting an online alumni event for interns, public sector and public library sponsors, and our team. The enthusiasm for the event suggests to me that we made a lasting impact on interns and partners alike. Not only did the interns leave the experience with resume-building deliverables and experiences, but the partners continue to build upon and utilize deliverables. We, the ODL team, were able to use feedback from the interns about their experiences to update coursework to better prepare students for this type of work, and to create resources for professionals in the field to use now. Each year we improved our internship program based on the experiences of the previous year. In the end we have a cohort of former interns that are still excited about engaging and networking with each other, partners who are eager to hear from former interns, and new graduate students who are benefiting from a data curation curriculum that is fresh and relevant.

I hope that others can benefit from what we learned as much as we did!