This summer, MS/LIS student Loida Pan is serving as an intern with the Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM) National Center for Data Services (NCDS). She is one of eight students who were selected to participate in the competitive internship program, which launched in 2022. During her work on the NNLM Evaluation Center (NEC) Data Warehouse project, she will be learning how to build and use relational databases, hone her programming language skills, and retrieve data from application programming interfaces.
"My internship has been great," said Pan. "While we come from different backgrounds, we are all interested in exploring the intersection of data and librarianship. The program mentors have been very supportive, and I get to work with some really cool data!"
The Data Warehouse stores NNLM data on subaward projects, activities conducted by staff and subawardees, and participants in NNLM activities. Towards the end of the summer program, Pan and fellow interns will focus on a research question to explore with the data.
Pan earned her bachelor's degree in Spanish and philosophy from Smith College and worked at Penguin Random House for two years before coming to the University of Illinois.
"I've really enjoyed taking metadata courses at UIUC, especially focusing on how bias affects the way we store and manage data. After graduation, I definitely want to explore data librarianship, but I am also open to other paths," said Pan, whose research interests include topics related to censorship and intellectual freedom.