LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE (MLIS)
MLIS Student Gains International Experience
MLIS candidate Jeanne Doherty spent eight weeks in July and August 2005 as an intern for the United Nations International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, Netherlands, home of the world’s largest international law library.
While assisting the ICJ’s head librarian, Doherty edited bibliographies for published court documents, scanned books and periodicals for passages relevant to the court and its cases, assisted with development of new cataloging software and assigned preliminary subject keys for new acquisitions. Her favorite project was creating a small library in the office of an ICJ judge. “I devised a simple subject classification based on his collection, organized and labeled books, and created a system for the seamless addition of new works to his collection,” Doherty explains.
Doherty found out about the internship from a fellow student. “She knew of my interest in law librarianship and wanted to let me know that it was a good opportunity and well within my reach,” says Doherty, who expects to receive her degree in June 2006. “She was second in line for it last year.”
Surrounding her internship, Doherty also traveled in the Netherlands, France and Scotland and observed firsthand the workings of international tribunals in The Hague. “The ICJ is fascinating and meaningful on a number of levels,” she says. “It has a funny, little library with an idiosyncratic way of doing things, but its users are in a deadly serious business. The ICJ’s idealistic goal is to replace war with peaceful arbitration. Although they have not yet succeeded, being around people who spend their daily lives in service to that goal is both exciting and humbling.”
Doherty and her two fellow interns also braved several levels of security to see a session of the case against deposed dictator Slobodan Milosevic at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. “We were sitting not 20 feet away from Milosevic,” she recalls. “Even with the glass wall, it was a bit creepy.”
A Seattle native and graduate of the Evergreen State College, Doherty was a software tester before entering the MLIS program. “It was time to start applying my technical skills to something about which I really cared and for which I really had a passion,” she explains. “For me, that is the written word, knowledge, information, literacy, and all related permutations.”
During the academic year, Doherty serves as a Government Publications graduate reference specialist for UW Libraries. She provides reference assistance to users of the library’s extensive Government Publications collection and trains them to use specialized statistical and government document databases.
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