Toronto Reference Library Blog

Today's post is a guest entry by the Swedish student intern who we've had the pleasure of hosting for the last few weeks at the Toronto Reference Library (TRL).  Here are her impressions of our library and our work:

My name is Karin and I'm a library student from Uppsala University, Sweden. Instead of staying in Uppsala for our five week internship, I decided to travel across the pond to Toronto to do my internship at Toronto Reference Library. 

I arrived in Toronto three days before the start of my internship and decided to visit the library right away. I instantly liked TRL, the beautiful architecture, the light, the atmosphere, and I couldn’t resist posting a photo of it on Instagram with the slightly smug caption “I think I’m gonna like it here”. 

On my first day I was introduced to all the delights of working life. My own desk! Endless supply of stationary! Staff lounges!

I also got started on my first project: cataloguing European maps. Having no experience of cartography, the project turned out to be way more interesting than I'd thought, and I soon found myself deeply invested in indexes and insets, scales and distance charts. The downside was that it made me acutely aware of my ignorance of European geography. The Faroe Islands belong to Denmark? I really had no idea. But after all, I'm here to learn, and now when I meet people from lesser known parts of Europe I no longer have to pretend that I know where their hometowns are!

My next project was helping out with an ongoing project of digitizing the architectural drawings submitted by the contestants in the Toronto City Hall and Square competition in 1958. My job was to transfer images of the finalists’ drawings from microfilm onto an USB-stick. "Nobody ever loved microfilm" one of the librarians told me as she showed me how to use the microfilm reader, and yeah, I can see why. I had to have a few tries before I figured out how to correctly thread the microfilm reels, glancing enviously at the man at the microfilm reader next to me, who seemed to know exactly what he was doing. 

I enjoyed the drawings though, and was surprised to see so many innovative and futuristic designs, considering they were created more than 60 years ago. 

I've also been shadowing the Humanities and Social Science (HSS) information desk. Having worked at the info desk at the arts, humanities and languages branch of the Uppsala University Library, I thought this would be pretty much the same types of queries (where the washrooms are, how to use the photo copier etc.), but I was surprised by the variety of reference questions asked and impressed by how well the staff are able to answer them. It's been slightly awkward any time a customer has asked me something though, (an easy mistake to make since I'm not wearing a sign saying "Intern") and I've had to refer them to someone else. So if you've approached the HSS desk expecting to talk to a competent member of staff and instead met with an utterly confused person, chances are that was me. 

On the third week of my internship I moved up a couple of floors to the Languages and Literature Department. There I got to look at the Swedish collection, which had many of my childhood favourites like Anne of Green Gables, Ronia the Robbers Daughter by Swedish literary icon Astrid Lindgren, the Moomin-books by the famous Finnish writer and artist Tove Jansson, and even a few by Maj Bylock, who writes excellent, and at times gory, historical fiction for children, which unfortunately seem hard to get by English translation. Perhaps Anglo-American publishers don't consider the 17th century witch burnings an appropriate topic for children. 

Sweden is no exception to the most recent Sherlock Holmes-mania that has swept the world since the BBC-series. Mattias Boström's Från Holmes till Sherlock about Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes was awarded the Swedish Thriller Academy's prize for best non-fiction and the fourth season of Sherlock is highly anticipated. Therefore I was excited about the project the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection had prepared for me – cataloguing Sherlock Holmes comics. 

Perhaps I would be more efficient had I not been remotely interested in Sherlock Holmes. The temptation to not only catalogue the comics but also read them cover to cover is sometimes very strong.

All in all, I've had a blast at TRL and I'll be sad to say goodbye to everyone at the end of this week. Everyone's been so kind to me and I've learnt so much. TRL, I will be back.

Today's post is a guest entry by the Swedish student intern who we've had the pleasure of hosting for the last few weeks at the Toronto Reference Library (TRL).  Here are her impressions of our library and our work:

My name is Karin and I'm a library student from Uppsala University, Sweden. Instead of staying in Uppsala for our five week internship, I decided to travel across the pond to Toronto to do my internship at Toronto Reference Library. 

I arrived in Toronto three days before the start of my internship and decided to visit the library right away. I instantly liked TRL, the beautiful architecture, the light, the atmosphere, and I couldn’t resist posting a photo of it on Instagram with the slightly smug caption “I think I’m gonna like it here”. 

On my first day I was introduced to all the delights of working life. My own desk! Endless supply of stationary! Staff lounges!

I also got started on my first project: cataloguing European maps. Having no experience of cartography, the project turned out to be way more interesting than I'd thought, and I soon found myself deeply invested in indexes and insets, scales and distance charts. The downside was that it made me acutely aware of my ignorance of European geography. The Faroe Islands belong to Denmark? I really had no idea. But after all, I'm here to learn, and now when I meet people from lesser known parts of Europe I no longer have to pretend that I know where their hometowns are!

My next project was helping out with an ongoing project of digitizing the architectural drawings submitted by the contestants in the Toronto City Hall and Square competition in 1958. My job was to transfer images of the finalists’ drawings from microfilm onto an USB-stick. "Nobody ever loved microfilm" one of the librarians told me as she showed me how to use the microfilm reader, and yeah, I can see why. I had to have a few tries before I figured out how to correctly thread the microfilm reels, glancing enviously at the man at the microfilm reader next to me, who seemed to know exactly what he was doing. 

I enjoyed the drawings though, and was surprised to see so many innovative and futuristic designs, considering they were created more than 60 years ago. 

I've also been shadowing the Humanities and Social Science (HSS) information desk. Having worked at the info desk at the arts, humanities and languages branch of the Uppsala University Library, I thought this would be pretty much the same types of queries (where the washrooms are, how to use the photo copier etc.), but I was surprised by the variety of reference questions asked and impressed by how well the staff are able to answer them. It's been slightly awkward any time a customer has asked me something though, (an easy mistake to make since I'm not wearing a sign saying "Intern") and I've had to refer them to someone else. So if you've approached the HSS desk expecting to talk to a competent member of staff and instead met with an utterly confused person, chances are that was me. 

On the third week of my internship I moved up a couple of floors to the Languages and Literature Department. There I got to look at the Swedish collection, which had many of my childhood favourites like Anne of Green Gables, Ronia the Robbers Daughter by Swedish literary icon Astrid Lindgren, the Moomin-books by the famous Finnish writer and artist Tove Jansson, and even a few by Maj Bylock, who writes excellent, and at times gory, historical fiction for children, which unfortunately seem hard to get by English translation. Perhaps Anglo-American publishers don't consider the 17th century witch burnings an appropriate topic for children. 

Sweden is no exception to the most recent Sherlock Holmes-mania that has swept the world since the BBC-series. Mattias Boström's Från Holmes till Sherlock about Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes was awarded the Swedish Thriller Academy's prize for best non-fiction and the fourth season of Sherlock is highly anticipated. Therefore I was excited about the project the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection had prepared for me – cataloguing Sherlock Holmes comics. 

Perhaps I would be more efficient had I not been remotely interested in Sherlock Holmes. The temptation to not only catalogue the comics but also read them cover to cover is sometimes very strong.

All in all, I've had a blast at TRL and I'll be sad to say goodbye to everyone at the end of this week. Everyone's been so kind to me and I've learnt so much. TRL, I will be back.