The Beginning..

Hi everyone!


After starting my placement a little late (my supervisor was on leave) I have now completed 4 days of my placement at the State Library Foundation as their PR intern. My internship falls under the WA State Government internship programs which run in semester two in a variety of government departments. I was lucky enough to get my first preference in terms of the project that I wanted to work on within the program. I wasn't too sure about what the Foundation actually was before I started my placement and I'm sure most of the fellow bloggers on here aren't really sure either.


It gets a little complicated to explain- basically the Foundation isn't actually a government department as such. Our offices are located in the State Library in Northbridge which falls under the Department of Culture and the Arts but the Foundation is actually a registered charity. We are bound by government rules and have government email addresses but the Foundation runs as a separate entity to the State Library with it's own board etc. I didn't know all of this when I applied for the internship- I assumed I would be working for the Department of Culture and the Arts. From thinking that I would be working in a government environment I am now working in the not for profit arts sector!


The Foundation was established in 2009 and aims to provide projects to the community that increase access to information and help to preserve WA's history. Through corporate sponsorship the Foundation has been able to establish several ongoing projects. These include the 'Spelling Bee Competition' which is run in conjunction with The West Australian newspaper and 'Our Page in History'. 


The 'Our Page in History' project is my main focus for my internship as I will be working to promote the re-launch of the website. The project started back in 2010 and is an interactive website that allows the community to upload their personal photos, videos and documents to the website to create their own 'page in history'. The website really is a great idea- it allows people to research their family and where they grew up and it adds to the State Library's collection of WA history. Through digitising photos it also ensures that even if the originals are lost there is still a record for generations to come. This has shown to be so important with events such as the Victoria bushfires and the Queensland floods. 


The website is being re-designed and the project is being rolled out to 20 regional and metropolitan towns/suburbs over the next 10 months. The team will be visiting Broome in late September and York in November to launch the project in these towns. Over the next 16 days of my internship I will have lots of work to do putting together a PR plan for the rollout. I have been given lots of flexibility in the way I want to do things although with limited staff and resources (money!) it's probably going to be a bit of challenge!


My first four days have been pretty busy! All the staff in the Foundation have a weekly Work in Progress (WIP) meeting and I have also sat in on a meeting with staff from the State Library. I also organised to meet with the project manager who has been hired to work on the Our Page in History roll out. All these meetings meant that I had a lot of information to take in but it has been good in that it has let me get up to speed with what is happening! I also encountered a mini 'crisis' for the Foundation on my first day. The web design company in charge of the redesign for the website have told us that there is going to a six week delay. Nobody was very happy to hear this- it now means that the launch of the website is pushed out by 6 weeks.


Other than that I have been working on writing up the annual report, drafted some new information for our brochures, wrote an article to appear in the Dept of Conservation's newsletter and started on the PR plan. I've been given lots to do but I have found it good to be working on a few things simultaneously- I never get bored! 


Hope everyone is enjoying their placements and staying nice and busy! 


Jaimi Baile
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