Unique Partnership Marks Golden Anniversary

Group photo of interns and staff infront of bookshelves — Spring 2024 EPA-RTP Library Interns and Staff

The Environmental Protection Agency was a fairly new agency when Edward Holley, dean of the UNC School of Library Science, received a visitor.

“Stanley Coerr, then with the EPA Office of Administration, approached the new dean with a question: would the School be interested in providing, under faculty supervision, library service to EPA researchers in the Research Triangle Park (RTP)? The EPA was combining three libraries from the Southeast in RTP, the Nixon administration had placed a freeze on Federal positions, and the only way he could see of getting the job done was to contract with an educational agency for the needed personnel. Could we help? We could, and we did,” recounted Holley, in the April 1989 special edition of The Galley, a SILS student publication.

In 1974, the school and the EPA entered into a contract for library services. This year, the UNC School of Library and Information Science (SILS) marks the 50^th anniversary of this unique program, which has provided funding and invaluable professional experience for hundreds of students and allowed the EPA-RTP library to provide the highest-level service to patrons.

Did you know?

The EPA Library in the Research Triangle Park is the only one of the EPA’s 22 libraries staffed by a university and with an internship program.

The Student Experience

Originally, the internship program was open to students who had completed at least one semester. Their pay began at a salary of $4,500 for 12 months, and students participated in a rotation through a variety of duties. The first student interns began work during the summer of 1974.

Dav Robertson was one of the program’s first interns in 1974, was hired as the supervisor of student interns in 1975, became the library director at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) in RTP in 1977, and brought interns to the NIEHS library in 1985. In a 1993 story in Endeavors, the UNC Research and Graduate Education magazine, Robertson shared that he looked forward to the arrival of new interns each year, “It’s like a breath of fresh air. It causes us to look at our way of doing things and question, ‘Could it be done any better?’ It keeps us on our toes, and that’s what I like about it. It really is a good illustration of how the federal government and a state-supported university can cooperate in a program for the benefit of everyone.”

As the program marked its 15^th anniversary in 1989, the SILS newsletter reported that an average of 14 students worked each year at the EPA and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) libraries, both in RTP.

“In providing library and information support services, the interns answer reference questions from EPA researchers, and from other federal agencies nationwide, make referrals to other information agencies when appropriate, maintain the serials collection, process incoming and outgoing interlibrary loan requests, provide the technical services of cataloging and acquisition of new materials, assist patrons with online database searching, and consult with users in the microcomputer information center.” (News from Chapel Hill, Spring 1989)

Over the years, several students from North Carolina Central University and UNC Greensboro participated as EPA or NIEHS interns, increasing the educational reach of this program.

Awards and Recognitions

2001 – EPA and NIEHS were honored with the North Carolina Chapter of the Special Libraries Association’s Information Management Award. The award recognized EPA and NIEHS for offering such strong support to the special libraries that serve them.

2017 – The EPA library at RTP was recognized as the Federal Library and Information Network Small Library/Information Center of the Year.

Launching Careers

In 2009, SILS student Laura Westmoreland (Gariepy) researched the EPA internship program for her master’s thesis entitled “The Environmental Protection Agency and National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Libraries Internship Program: Its History and an Analysis of Former Interns’ Careers.” She reported that:

Students who have participated in the program, regardless of the library/libraries in which they worked, generally indicate high levels of satisfaction
Nearly all (95%) of respondents went on to work in information/library science for at least some length of time after the conclusion of their internships, and 82% of respondents continue to work in them now.
67% of respondents indicated that they believe their internship had a strong or very strong impact on their overall careers

“I think that the internship not only prepared us to work in the libraries but also to really be active leaders in the field, and that included taking an active part in Special Libraries Association, the Medical Libraries Association, ALA, ASIS, whatever organization we were in,” said Dav Robertson. We can credit the internship with having a wider influence than just interns providing services to the patrons. It had quite a network of former interns who went into association-level work as well as going to work in libraries across the country and around the world.”

Rebecca Carlson (MSLS ’12) currently works as the Health Sciences Librarian and Liaison to the Eshelman School of Pharmacy at UNC-Chapel Hill. She worked as an EPA-RTP Library from 2011-2012 and said the internship was foundational for her career. “I hadn’t considered working in STEM libraries before becoming an intern, but I saw at the EPA how librarians could have a direct impact on public health and environmental health. I wanted to continue doing that work, so I used the research, instruction, and outreach skills I gained as an EPA intern to secure my first post-MLS job as a health sciences librarian. I am still using research tools I first learned as an intern and think highly of the program and my experience in it.”

EPA-RTP Library Today

Today, the internship program continues to allow the library to be on the cutting edge of services. For example, interns have helped the library introduce bibliometric analysis to help researchers see how often their research is cited and where. Interns continue to rotate through different operational areas of the library, gaining practical experience while meeting the information needs of EPA staff; this distinguishes the internship from those where students are limited to one job or project.

“The association with UNC allows the library to benefit from interns with fresh ideas on new library trends,” said current Library Director Susan Forbes. “It’s an innovative way to get high-level information services informed by what students are learning in SILS.”

Library staff and interns serve a patron base of around 3,000 EPA researchers. The primary focus of the collection is air pollution, and the library is a repository for air-related EPA documents. The library also provides electronic access to over 2,000 scientific journals.

Five permanent library staff members, all UNC SILS employees, train, and mentor the interns. “I feel very strongly about what we do for interns, what we offer them,” said Forbes. “The internship is a leg up to get their first job right out of school. It’s rewarding personally to help students discover what they’re passionate about – seeing how students develop in the field and beyond. Students have a growth mindset, which inspires the rest of the team. Their desire to learn and grow and develop is contagious.”