Nicholas Carson ’22 — This summer, I have been working for Dr. Stephen Morillo as a research assistant. In this role, I have been creating a master bibliography for use in his future books and research. What this entails is the painstaking task of going through the chapters of his recent books, and all of his academic articles, examining footnotes, and then creating a bibliography in third-party software so that they can be easily accessed and used in the future. The goal for the end of my internship is to have created a master bibliography that is subdivided by the article or chapter from which they were originally cited.
From this internship, the most obvious thing that I have learned is how to utilize bibliography software. This is not the only thing I have learned over the course of this internship, however. After having interacted with all of the different articles and chapters, I came to the realization that frequently the same sources were cited across multiple different publications. To me, this speaks to the importance of keeping a detailed research library, with a record of what sources pertain to what. I hope one day to be published, in order to achieve this goal I have to have strong documentation. Starting now by keeping an orderly library of sources will help me going forward into my senior year, and then into my professional career.
Finally, I would like to thank the College for giving me this opportunity. This is my third summer as a research intern, and I can say that doing this job for three summers has taught me a lot about how academics go about their work. Combined with what we learn in the classroom, I think that this experience really helps to drive home the proper ways to research and write high-level academic publications. Additionally, I would like to thank Dr. Morillo for this awesome opportunity. I have enjoyed this work experience greatly and I know that I will take the lessons about a well-organized research library with me into the future.
