The Food And Nutrition Information Center (FNIC) began the Information Technology portion of the internship. Six weeks was spent working with two different teams, WIC Works and Web Reference.

WIC Works is an online resource for WIC personnel to find information as professionals, client materials and helpful resources to use in the local clinics. WIC Works provides many different resources that can be used within the WIC clinic as well as training materials for WIC personnel.

With WIC Works, I updated two different websites and added a Fiber section within Topics A-Z. The pages that I updated within Wic Works were Whole Grains, Infant Nutrition and Feeding. Newer resources were added to these pages. Also, I updated the Childhood Obesity: A Resource List for Educators and Researchers that was published in 2008.

The Web and Reference team responds to questions that come in from the public on a daily basis. The questions are researched and the individual is provided an answer based on library standards and other resources are provided if needed.

For our final project, my partner and I made a presentation (PDF) about our time at FNIC.

 

 

The International Food Information Council is located in Washington, D.C. IFIC seeks to provide nutrition and food safety information to health and nutrition professionals, educators, journalists, government officials and others providing information to consumers. IFIC is supported primarily by the broad-based food, beverage and agricultural industries.

Two weeks were spent at IFIC. The first week, I worked with the nutrition team. The new Cancer Review was being published and I updated the web page Questions & Answers about Cancer, Diet and Fats. I also used the list of IFIC funders and provided them information as to whether these companies cited IFIC on their own websites. A majority of the funders did not mentioin IFIC on their websites so they asked for suggestions as to how to approach the funder to get more exposure to IFIC through their website.

The second week I worked with the Food Safety team. did a CPE Program entitled Understanding Food Allergy. I also placed responses of a nutrition survey into an Excel spreadsheet for later use. During this week I helped to put together binders for the annual board meeting held the next week.

Lastly, I had the opportunity to go to the APhA Conference and exhibit with some of the employees of IFIC.