Amanda McCollom of Wilmington, Delaware, is the spring semester Digital Library intern where she works with Michael Foight, Digital and Special Collections coordinator. McCollum has a bachelor’s degree in English with minors in Theology and Women and Gender Studies; she earned her bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. She has a Master of Arts in Film and Media Studies from Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, and is attending Drexel University’s College of Computing and Informatics, enrolled in the master’s program in Library and Information Science.

What made you decide to become a librarian? I love the combination of being pushed intellectually and helping people, whether it is locating an item for a patron or creating access through digital libraries. While in my first graduate program, I was fortunate to work at Emory University’s library digitizing audio tapes and, through that experience, I decided to pursue a career in libraries.

How do you see this internship benefiting your future career? I think it is invaluable to gain this kind of hands-on experience and I hope it will help me stand out to future employers. It’s also a wonderful opportunity to make sure this is the direction I want ot go in my future career.

Career plans/goals? I would love to work in an academic library that focuses on digital libraries and digital scholarship. My ideal position would be one that balances working with the public and utilizing technology to build digital collections.

What are your research interests? My academic research interests are in Film and Television Studies and Gender and Sexuality Studies. I’ve always been interested in the way we can think about the female viewer’s identity and relationship to the screen.

What are you currently reading? I was very excited to be able to read for pleasure over winter break and I just finished Stephen King’s 11/22/63. I found the experience of reading it so be so immersive and after over a thousand pages, I still wasn’t ready for it to end.

Hobbies and/or special interests? I love to be creative whenever possible, whether it is through needlepoint, coloring or finding fun new fonts and patterns.