iSchool student Lindsay Moxley went the distance for her summer internship – traveling from Michigan to California, where she got her first hands-on archival experience at San Francisco’s Exploratorium, which describes itself as a museum of science, art, and human perception.

Moxley spent most of her summer 2010 internship helping build an inventory of Exploratorium records to send over to the Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley. With the help of iSchool instructor David de Lorenzo, who teaches records management courses, Moxley and her colleagues composed a records inventory to interview staff members about the records. They then pulled the records to create 16 series that they’ve submitted to the Bancroft Library.

“I learned a lot about working on a team to achieve a common goal,” said Moxley, who hopes to be an archivist in a museum, government, or corporate setting. She earned her undergraduate degree in English: Creative Writing at Western Michigan University, and she credits her “love for books and history” with her decision to become an archivist.

Moxley found the Exploratorium internship through the iSchool internship database. She used the database to find a second internship opportunity for fall 2010, at the Santa Clara County Archives.

While working at the Exploratorium, Moxley lived with her aunt in Santa Clara and commuted nearly two hours each way to San Francisco on the train and bus.

“Even though it’s difficult being so far from home and my parents, the move has given me a sense of independence,” she said. “The commute has been rough, but it’s well worth it for the experience. Hopefully my work at the Exploratorium will help me ‘get my foot in the door’ with prospective employers.”