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Track: K-12 Education and Library Science
James Sloan
Pennsylvania State University
302 Walker Bldg
University Park, PA 16802
Telephone: 814-865-8116
Fax: 814-863-7943
E-mail: jls@gis.psu.edu
Elizabeth Wentz, Melissa Lamont
The GIS Internship Course at the Pennsylvania State University Libraries
As GIS use continues to grow, so does the need for qualified staff to administer and support GIS facilities. The growth in GIS use has also meant that more students are becoming interested in learning about GIS. Unfortunately, as demand increases for qualified GIS staff and as more students are selecting GIS-related courses, university budgets are being tightened and funding for staffing has decreased. Furthermore, to educate these students, university programs face a constant struggle to provide both technical and practical training and experience, as well as a theoretical grounding in GIS. This paper explains how we are addressing the specific problems of (1) providing practical training and educational opportunities for students, and (2) finding resources, both human and financial, to staff and maintain university GIS facilities. At Penn State, an internship course, offered through the Department of Geography and held in the Library GIS Data Center, targets both of these issues. Students enrolled in the
Library and GIS Internship course are trained as library staff and provide technical support and general GIS guidance to patrons of the GIS Data Center. The Center, supported by the University Libraries, the Center for Academic Computing, and the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, serves as a clearinghouse for spatial and other tabular data. Library patrons have access to Esri and Wessex software packages, as well as an extensive collection of data on CD ROMs. Both in-house and off-site patrons may access a variety of spatial and tabular data through the World Wide Web. An important component of the center is the support staff who answer basic-level queries and who direct users to the appropriate person or office for answers to more complex questions. The course objectives fall into two broad categories. The first is to provide the student interns with a practical, real-world experience with GIS including the opportunity to develop communication skills to assist GIS users. The second is to provide the
library with a trained staff who assist with the daily operations of the GIS Data Center. To meet the two objectives, students propose, design, and implement a project that will further the services of the center. Project topics have ranged from customizing software for courses, to data compilation, and developing training documents. The projects expose the students to several software packages, to programming languages, to library protocol, and to library patrons.
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