Zerrenner interns with Library of Congress as Junior Fellow

Emily Zerrenner

MS/LIS student Emily Zerrenner recently completed a ten-week internship as a Library of Congress Junior Fellow. This competitive program provides students with the opportunity to explore digital initiatives and increase access to the institution’s collections while working under the direction of library curators and specialists in various divisions. For her project, Zerrenner researched audience engagement for LC Labs, a directorate housed within the Office of the Chief Information Officer at the Library of Congress.

"My research has been on the 'federal challenge,' which can also be referred to as a contest, competition, open innovation, or hackathon. LC Labs ran a Congressional Data Challenge in 2018 but would like to run another, so my work was a kind of jumpstart to that process," said Zerrenner. "My final deliverable is an internal recommendation report for LC Labs to refer to as they dive into planning."

It was during her three years working at the Grand Valley State University library as an undergraduate that Zerrenner decided upon a career in library and information science. She is interested in instruction, academic librarianship, and user experience as it relates to the physical space of a library.

"I came into the MS/LIS program very focused on academic librarianship and trying to work directly with students and patrons, and that still interests me," she said. "However, given my experience as a Junior Fellow, I find that I'm interested in pursuing government librarianship as well."

Watch Zerrenner describe her project in this video from the Junior Fellow program’s Display Day 2021.

Updated on
Backto the news archive

Related News

Kemboi receives international award for digital preservation work

PhD student Gladys Kemboi has been awarded the 2024 Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) Fellowship Award for her distinguished contribution to securing digital legacy to advance local and Indigenous knowledge in development in Kenya and across Africa. She received the award virtually during the DPC's biennial awards ceremony, which took place last month during the International Conference on Digital Preservation (iPRES 2024).

Gladys Kemboi

iSchool instructors ranked as excellent

Ten iSchool instructors were named in the University's List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent for Summer 2024. The rankings are released every semester, and results are based on the Instructor and Course Evaluation System (ICES) questionnaire forms maintained by Measurement and Evaluation in the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning. Only those instructors who gave out ICES forms during the semester and who released their data for publication are included in the list.

614 E. Daniel Street

Herrera and Ryan selected for ARL Kaleidoscope Program

Master's students Caitlin Herrera and Isabel Ryan have been selected to participate in the 2024-2026 Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Kaleidoscope Diversity Scholars Program. With the goal of attracting MSLIS students from historically underrepresented racial and ethnic groups to careers in research libraries and archives, the Kaleidoscope Program offers financial support to scholars as well as leadership development through the ARL Annual Leadership Symposium, a formal mentoring program, career placement assistance, and a site visit to an ARL member library.

Isabel Ryan and Caitlin Herrera

Get to know Chloe Miller, MSLIS student

MSLIS student Chloe Miller is using her journalism background in her role as editorial assistant for the iSchool's quarterly journal, Library Trends. In the span of a year, Miller has proofed and edited nearly 2,000 references across approximately ten languages for adherence to the Chicago Manual of Style and provided foundational research for new policies and procedures.

Chloe Miller_square

New NSF project to integrate human and machine intelligence to address information integrity

Identifying whether online information is faulty or ungrounded is important to ensure information integrity and a well-informed public. This was especially challenging during the COVID-19 pandemic when misinformation spread like wildfire across the Internet. A new project led by Associate Professor Dong Wang will integrate diverse human and machine intelligence to examine multimodal data (e.g., text and image) that was produced during the pandemic. His project, "Crowd-Assisted Human-AI Teaming with Explanations," has been awarded a three-year, $599,999 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Dong Wang