Student Stories

This past week, the Michigan Library Engagement Ambassadors went to the Hamilton Crossing Community Center for their Family Reading Night event.

Throughout my work as a UM Library Engagement Ambassador, I have begun to feel like I am a part of something greater than myself and am proud to contribute to such an important part of the University as a whole. This experience has shown me that the library is not only a place for books and research, but it is a kingdom of opportunities, learning, and growth.

Walking up to the tables and chairs set up on the 1st floor of the UGLi, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I had heard of Café Shapiro but had never attended one before, or any event like it. For those who don’t know, Café Shapiro is an event held in the Shapiro Undergraduate Library that features original student poems and short stories. Students are nominated by their professors to read their work at the event, and anyone can come and listen.

Starting last October, I worked as the University of Michigan Library Student Engagement Ambassador. With six other wonderful ambassadors, we aimed to actively publicize library resources and services to the campus community through events and social media. We functioned in two different teams: the programming team focused on creating and planning events while the social media team concentrated on publicizing by making posts on Facebook and Twitter. The system was flexible enough to chime in and share ideas on both parts through our whole group meetings. I soon noticed that viewing the library from a student’s perspective could be effective.

Insider view of the Shapiro Design Lab from the Library Student Engagement Ambassadors. The Ambassadors had the fantastic opportunity to tour the Shapiro Design Lab and find out all about what different facilities and capabilities they have there. We even got to try out some of the equipment, which was pretty cool!

A student perspective and reflection from the exhibit “Striving to Stimulate Serious Thought: Jewish Scholarly and Cultural Life at Michigan Across Two Centuries”.

On Tuesday, November 13th from 3-5pm the Michigan Library Engagement Ambassadors held our first event of the semester in the Shapiro Undergraduate Library. Employees from the Career Center came to take free professional head shots and provide advice on how to improve your LinkedIn profile and use it to network successfully. We had a great turnout of students who came dressed to impress and took advantage of this event.

I had only been a User Information Services Specialist for two weeks before a student employee approached me for professional guidance. I knew the position had been created for this very purpose—to provide added expertise on the reference desk and support for student staffers—but nonetheless, when this first happened, I found myself somewhat taken aback; baffled that I could be perceived as an authority by anybody else, when in fact I had only just made the transition from student employee to regular staff member myself. I was even more surprised when the answer I offered was met, not with wariness, but rather with an exuberant response of “Now it makes sense! That’s so helpful, thank you!” As I picked my jaw up off the floor it dawned on me that maybe I knew what I was doing, after all.

The Wolverine Podcast is a series of short audio narratives comprising interviews and stories about students' experiences during their first year at the University of Michigan and beyond. This series is produced by University of Michigan students who use storytelling and audio engineering to craft compelling narratives from all around campus. Each interview is an exciting peer-to-peer process in which both parties can guide the conversation.

Episode one is a student interview about living on campus at the University of Michigan. Each Monday we will bring you a new student story. For more information about The Wolverine Podcast, contact mlibengaged@umich.edu.

This blog post was written by Faith Weis, a second-year graduate student in the University of Michigan School of Information.

I work at the library both as a User Information Services Assistant, staffing the Ask a Librarian service, as well as the Shapiro Collections Intern in Shapiro Library Reference Services. These two roles allow me to put into practice much of what I learn in the classroom as a master’s student at the School of Information. I can happily say that working at U-M Libraries has been the best, most rewarding part of graduate school these past two years.