Interns Like Me
Blog Post: Lena E Schröpl

In her first blog post, Lena discusses her initial thoughts on robots and her presumptions for what her internship will be like working with our in-house robot Gilon. 

By Lena E. Schröpl

To be honest, I don’t quite know what to think of robots. And, to be completely honest, it was hard for me to keep a straight face when Lucy (the Online Editor) assigned me my first task to write a blog about them. Anyway, here I am, the new Library and Information intern, writing a blog about Gilon, the Goethe-Institut London’s robot, whom I will be working with during my time here. And I will be using this blog to document my experiences and thoughts. 

Before we dive in, I’d like to say a few words about myself. My name’s Lena, I’m 22 years old and I’m currently studying English/American Studies and Scandinavian Studies at Greifswald University. For the next four months, I will be doing an internship in the Information and Library department at the Goethe-Institut in London. I wanted to work with the Goethe-Institut because I think cultural representation and exchange are not only important, but they also offer diverse working days and tasks, this blog being an example. Over the course of the four months, I’ll familiarise myself with Gilon and explore the benefits a robot can bring to a library.

Presumptions 

I’ve never really interacted with a robot. Nor have I ever understood a robot’s importance in our everyday lives. To be honest, mostly I think they’re just creepy… But maybe my perception of robots is about to change. Before coming to the Goethe-Institut, Gilon was named Pepper by its creators at SoftBank Robotics, who put up quite a few videos of Pepper on their YouTube channel. After watching these videos, Gilon appears to me as not much more than a mobile stand for a tablet. But I’m committed to staying open-minded about the whole topic since this is just the second day of my internship and I haven’t even met Gilon in ‘person’ yet.

There has to be a reason why humans are so obsessed with robots and why they are given so much importance in pop culture. There’s Marvin in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, “Wall-E”, or “Iron Giant”, just to name a few. Robots are also present in German culture: The German band “Kraftwerk” wrote a song about them in the 70s and even had their own robots built for their live performance.

Clearly, humans are fascinated by robots. They have a lot of potential that we don’t even know everything about yet and in order to learn all about their possible advantages, we have to try and give them a chance. So, here I go... Let’s find out where the journey of having a robot in a library takes us!