The most important Answers concerning the Internship
in the Master's Programme and the combined Bachelor's Programme as major and second subject
1. How many internships do I have to attend and how much time should it take?
2. How do I get an internship placement?
3. What should my internship tasks look like?
4. What information should be included in the internship report?
5. What are the aims of the compulsory internship?
6. What else should I take into account?
7. How can I get credit for internships that I already attended in the past?
1. How many internships do I have to attend and how much time should it take?
for the Bachelor's Programme (Major and second subject):
Your internship should last at least seven weeks, i.e. 300 hours and should be attended after your second but before your fifth semester.
for the Master's Programme:
You should attend an intership in the library or information sector of at least seven weeks, i.e. 300 hours.
for the Bachelor's Programme (minor subject - Beifach):
With Library and Information Science as minor subject an internship is not mandatory. Still we recommend you to attend an internship of a least four weeks in a self-selected sector. Remember to get an informal certification from your internship organisation.
The internships have to be attendet during the lecture-free time between the semesters. Wether they are paid or not is not crucial for the acknoledgement.
2. How do I get an internship placement?
You are in charge of selecting and applying for your internship placement.
The host institution needs to get acknoledged by the Berlin School of Information and Library Science. Consider the following list of already acknowledged Libraries and ID-Institutions.
Before starting your internship, your host institution needs to sign the "Praktikumsvereinbarung" (Placement Agreement) to confirm that the internship will meet the requirements stated in the "Praktikumsrichtlinie" (internship guidelines).
If you choose an organisation that is not listed in one of the documents above, make sure to contact the internship supervisor or, if not available, the deputy internship supervisor or student internship advisor before the start of your internship or signing any documents.
- Internship supervisor: Prof. Dr. Konrad Umlauf
- Deputy internship supervisor: Dr. Gertrud Pannier
- Student internship advisor: Ulrike Stöckel
3. What should my internship tasks look like?
In the Bachelor's Programme
- Gain an overview of mission, tasks, structure and functioning of the internship organisation
- learn about their workflow by introductions and active integration, e.g. in business procedures, collection development, purchasing, cataloquing, conditions and restricitons of usage
- gain knowledge about public relations, about the use of data technologie, marketing and service provision and about cooperations with suppliers, partners in service provision and clients or users,
In any case your internship should allow you to work independently on a certain task or in a certain field.
In the Master's Programme
you implement the knowledge obtained in your studies through specialization on a particular field or handling a specific task.
Your tasks should cover some of the following fields:
- Information Marketing (e.g. market and requirement research, basic, value-added and meta information services, E-Commerce, E-Business, trust management, non-profit marketing, advertising, public relations and cultural work);
- Digital Services (z.B. work-flow management, organization and prozess modeling, long-term archiving, man-machine interface modeling);
- Managing access, stocks, collections and archives, licences, conventional and digital archiving;
- Formal cataloguing and content indexing;
- Application of quantitative methods like bibliometrics, informetrics and scientometrics
- Information politics, digital rights management;
- Information transfer and retrieval, knowledge-based;
- Business methods in the library and information sector, e.g. strategic management, employee's management and guidance, cost and service calculations, fiscal management, calculations of profitability, controlling, quality measurement and management, quality certification
- Communication and knowledge management, e.g. data mining, content management, use of groupware and expert systems, telework, intercultural communication, information competence training;
- Media management, e.g. electronic publishing, media databases, digital (open) archives, autenticity and integrity protection, multimedia methods, working with markup languages and meta-data standards, semantic data modeling, ontologies
- Preservation and indexing of historical collections, digitization of historical collections
The content of the internship can alternativley be related to a project module, that's been attended.
General Information
Please take care that the contents and tasks of your internship fulfil the requirements stated in the internship guidelines (Praktikumsrichtlinie). We can not acknowledge and give credits for an internship, that is not focused on library or documentation tasks. If necessary, contact the internship supervisor. The following examples will show you some tasks, that can be part of your internship, but should not be predominant.
- Gather data in a database without editing their content
- shelve books
- Guide a public tour in an exhibition
- File and register documents
- Conference organization
Tasks, that may be predominant:
- Indexing of documentary reference units
- Classify books
- To evaluate press reports about exhibitions or take part in planning and designing an exhibition based on the collection
- Take part in evaluation or destruction of incoming files
- Research and information retrieval to prepare a conference
4. What information should be included in the internship report?
For every internship you have to write a report including the following data:
- Personal data (Name, semester);
- Internship organisation;
- Internship period;
- Internship supervisor of the host organisation;
- Internship programme or tasks;
- Structure and function of the internship organisation;
- Departments or work fields you got to know (including duration);
- Tasks you dealt with;
- Problems that you detected, open questions;
- Overall evalation of your internship;
- Date, signature
The report should at least be five pages long. For more detailed information consult the internship report guidelines. You can also consult the following Examples.
We recommend you to take notes in a logbook during your internship, which will help you write your report. The report must be hand in within two month after your internship. Please hand it to
- Internship supervisor: Prof. Dr. Konrad Umlauf
- Deputy internship supervisor: Dr. Gertrud Pannier
together with the placement agreement (Praktikumsvereinbarung), the institution's confirmation about your internship and the completed "Praktikumsnachweis" (form, that proofs your work placement) - Forms
5. What are the aims of the compulsory internship?
First of all you can use your internship to get in contact with the practice of your profession already during your studies. You get a insight about daily and specific tasks. After your graduation you can refer back to those in your applications. The results of your internship mainly depends on yourself.
For the internship you will receive an internship certificate (Praktikumsnachweis) from the Examination Board. You will need this to apply for your exam / thesis:
Combined Bachelor's Programme (Major and second subject)
To get your certificate of attendance (Modulabschlussbescheinigung) for the module (Berufs(feld)bezogene Zusatzqualifikation), you have to hand in the following documents to the Examination Board.
- the internship certificate (Praktikumsbescheinigung),
- the records of study (Studiennachweise) of your complementary expertise courses (Teilmodul BZE Ergänzendes Fachwissen),
- the certifications for your key qualifications (Teilmodul BZS Schlüsselqualifikationen)
Master's Programme
Hand in your internship certificate (Praktikumsbescheinigung) together with all the other module certifications when you assign for your thesis.
6. What else should I take into account?
During your internship you stay member of the university concerning all your rights and obligations - assuming that you re-registered in time. That means, that there is no changement in your health insurance status. (However, if you get paid by your internship organisation, your status could be different during this period. Please consult your health insurance for further information.)
During the practical training the work regulations of the internship organisation are also valid for the student. The are no financial obligations for the internship organisation. Transportation and accomodation will be paid be the student. A financial recompensation from Humboldt-University can not be provided.
Humboldt-University does not provide their students with any liability insurance. Therefore, we recommend our students to take out a liability insurance that also covers internship activities for students, if necessary also for foreign countries.
7. How can I get credit for internships I already attended in the past?
If you already attended an internship or worked in a field that is suitable for the internship requirements stated above, you can gain credits for these experiences instead of absolving a new one. Therefore you have to fill in the forms "Praktikumsanerkennung" (which is part of the Internship Guidlines), write a report of aproximately five pages about the work you did and hand it in to the internship supervisor. The report has to fulfil the same requirements as the usual internship report and must be structured in the same way (characterization of the internship organisation, tasks, new experiences that are useful for your study etc.) Please note: You also have to hand in a certificate of your employer, that indicates the internship period and the hours absolved.