The summer is coming to an end, and with it, my time traveling with the Making in Michigan team to rural libraries in Michigan to hold professional development workshops for librarians and educators. It has been a long and fruitful summer for me. The overwhelming feeling I have from this time is that I am so thankful to all of the amazing librarians I met this summer, who invited us into their spaces and shared their experiences with us. I learned so much from them and definitely gained some insight into perspectives that library school doesn’t give me access to. The passion and the energy that so many librarians and library workers bring to their work, who will fight to give their communities the best resources and programming, was frankly inspiring. I hope to be able to carry over that same passion into my own work.

Often when we talk about innovative and important library programming, we look to the big libraries – Chicago, New York, Ann Arbor, Sacramento, and the like – but what have learned this summer is that, those those institutions are doing good work as well, we are missing out on a big opportunity by not looking closer at the smaller libraries that have less resources. The programs I saw there were innovative and accessible, more so than many of the programs at larger libraries. I think that we in library school fall into the assumption that excess breeds innovation, but I think it’s quite the opposite. Excess can produce innovation, but scarcity demands it.

So that’s what I want to leave this internship with – a fire in my soul and a grateful heart.  Thank you to every one of the people who came out to our workshops and shared their talents and thoughts with us. And thank you to the Making in Michigan Team for letting me be part of it for this short time in my life. The lessons I have learned here will definitely affect how I approach my career from this moment on, and all for the better.

Best wishes,

Alyssa