The Wayne State University School of Library and Information Science Announces Expanded Partnerships with National Cultural Institutions:

In conjunction with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and the Smithsonian, the School is offering a condensed internship in Washington DC, various local NARA offices and Presidential Libraries. This will happen during Wayne State's Spring Break which is March 16-20, 2015. This is a great resume enhancement but it is not for credit.

Candidates will be hand chosen from the pool of applicants. This is competitive and applicants will need to be able to pay for airfare, a reduced hotel rate(in DC) and other living expenses. The School is supportive of student fund-raisers, however, and is examining ways to assist students in coordinating bake sales or other options.

These kinds of projects can give you the edge in job searching when you graduate so please consider this great opportunity.

Please submit a resume, unofficial transcript, three references and a cover letter to the Project Coordinator, Kim Schroeder (ag1797@wayne.edu) by February 6, 2015.
In your cover letter please mention what types of skills you offer and desire to develop. Also, specify, which location that you prefer (see list below).
Students must have satisfactorily taken LIS 7710, had some metadata coursework or job experience and be a current student. (In some cases, students with solid archival or historical professional background and DCM courses may be considered).

NARA Projects

Please find below the proposed project proposals for participation in Wayne State University's Spring Break Program (March 16-20, 2015).

Facility: Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library & Museum

Address: 200 S.E. 4^th Street, Abilene, KS 67410

 

Project Description:

The proposed assignment is to cross-index copies of the White House Gift Unit cards for films, tapes and sound recordings to entries in our audiovisual accession logs and document the findings. The work will determine the provenance of individual items and whether those items are covered under an existing deed of gift. The proposed project will give the intern experience in archives administrative practices.

Skills needed: Knowledge of basic archival practices including accessioning. Basic word processing is needed to update accession logs.

Facility: Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum

Address: 4079 Albany Post Road, Hyde Park, NY 12538

 

Project Description:

The project intern will have an opportunity to fully digitize a small yet historically significant archival collection from the holdings of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library. Tasks include preparing materials for digitization, image capture, metadata creation, digital file management, and archival description. Upon completion of the project, the resulting digital collection will be added to the Library's FRANKLIN digital repository, opening the materials to a global online audience. Through this project, the intern will also gain a greater understanding of the National Archives and Records Administration and the presidential library system.

Required Skills: Basic knowledge of archival theory and practice and familiarity with Microsoft Office software. Prefer experience with Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Acrobat software.

Facility: George H.W. Bush Presidential Library

Address: 1000 George Bush Drive West, College Station, TX 77845

 

Project Description:

Last year we hosted two gentlemen (Steve and Sean) from Wayne State and they did terrific work for us and by their own account really enjoyed their experience.

Although the duration of the program is short, we will engage the student(s) on a number of levels, include at least one day handling research and reference duties in the research room and learning about the public side of a presidential library and b) at least two days participating in a large project to rebox, preserve and relocate our unclassified holdings. This project includes hands-on work with the records, limited preservation, the transfer/disposition of non-record materials and database management. Finally, we will provide the student with a basic "intro to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)" course that will provide a broad overview on the FOIA process at Presidential Records Act (PRA) libraries from intake to review to the research room. This part of the program will include readings that are provided as part of our new employee orientation.

At the end of the program, the student will leave with a solid understanding of how a presidential library manages the FOIA process.

Facility: Herbert Hoover Presidential Library

Address: 210 Parkside Drive, West Branch, IA 52358

 

Project Description:

The proposed project will involve scanning materials pertaining to Laura Ingalls Wilder and the Little House on the Prairie books. The papers of Rose Wilder Lane include a series of correspondence with her mother discussing, in detail, how to tell some of the Little House stories. These are the most heavily used materials in our collection and photocopies have traditionally been served to researchers.

The project involves scanning folders of correspondence and manuscripts that are either fragile or specially protected due to high risk of theft. The student will scan PDFs of the folders for easier access, TIFs for preservation purposes, create folder level metadata, and write a brief summary of their experience both for social media and inclusion in our Foundation's newsletter.

Prefer a student familiar with metadata which will allow them, under supervision, to document their work into NARA's online catalog.

Facility: NARA - Chicago

Address: 7358 South Pulaski Road, Chicago, IL 60629

 

Project Description:

Students will receive an overview of functions performed at National Archives Chicago facility. This will include:

• Contribute to an ongoing processing project of maritime records;
• Assist with reference operations;
• Interview and observing staff in functions such as accessioning, records management, description, and outreach;
• Contribute to an ongoing holdings maintenance project; and
• Update our finding aids with the records they reviewed.

Some familiarity with archives, either through practical experience and/or class work.

 

Facility: NARA - Ft. Worth

Address: 1400 John Burgess Drive, Fort Worth, TX 76140.

Project Description:

The student intern(s) will be working on our "Slave Manifest" project which consists of working with records of the U.S. Customs Service in New Orleans, Louisiana from 1807-1861. These manifests are pre-printed fill-in-the-blank forms which were required by law and captured a variety of very detailed information. They include the name of the vessel, its ports of departure and arrival, dates of certification by the collector of customs (or surveyor), the captain or master's name, and a description of each slave on the vessel, including name, age, sex, height, name of owner or shipper, and color.

The interns will be gathering and indexing the information from these manifests by entering the data into a database. They will also assist in gathering resources to develop a handwriting guide

​ for others to use when researching these records. Our staff will be available each step of the way to train and give them the best archival experience possible. In this short time, the interns will gain experience in preservation, description, and information dissemination. ​

 

Facility: NARA - Philadelphia, PA

Address: 14700 Townsend Road, Philadelphia, PA 19154

 

Project Description:

The two projects listed below will allow students to conduct research and create content for public viewing on the National Archives at Philadelphia Facebook page, which will help the student gain exposure to the record holdings and resources available at the National Archives at Philadelphia and beyond, as well as get experience in the metrics of social media outreach and marketing from a humanities institution, as is in the context of the LIS program. Because the focus on outreach in March will be to complete microprojects that commemorate the sesquicentennial anniversary of the closing of the Civil War in April, the student will be working with Records of the Provost General Marshal (Record Group 110). Choices of microprojects to work on within that group will be outlined below.

Skills Required and Preferred: Strong critical thinking skills and being able to adequately write descriptive text. Being able to read old handwriting is a plus. Being able to lift 30 pounds or more is also a plus.

 

Facebook:

1. Letters Notifying Surrender

• Everyone knows that General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant in the courthouse in Appomattox, VA, on April 9th, 1865. To commemorate the 150th anniversary of this event, we will explore a potentially under-researched aspect of the results of this, which would be how it affected those coordinating the troops.
• Estimated time of completion: 20 hours
• Posting on Facebook the week of April 6^th to April 10^th.
• Steps:

1. Identify letters / telegrams / memoranda in the "Letters Received" and "Telegrams Received" series within RG 110 advising districts of the surrender at Appomattox.
2. Review the "Letters Sent" and "Telegrams Sent" series to identify reactionary statements to the surrender.
3. Scan the selected documents to the shared hard drive.
4. Create a descriptive piece of text to accompany the scanned letters on Facebook.
5. Ideally, this will be in the format of a photo album, therefore captions and citations will accompany each individual scan.

 

2. The Offices Within

• Create a spotlight on the functions of the Volunteer Recruiting Service.
• Estimated time of completion: 16 hours
• Posting on Facebook the week of April 27^th to April 30^th.
• Steps:

1. Use the Guide to Records of the American Civil War at the National Archives at Philadelphia (which will be provided) to locate records relating to the Volunteer Recruiting Service.
2. Compile a descriptive photo album (much like above) using records from the "Volunteer Recruiting Service" records. Look for records that might describe the various functions of the service.

3.Write a short piece to accompany the scanned documents (much like above).

Accessions:

• Will teach the student the intricacies of the accessioning process, in a life-cycle environment. And will provide a real-life, practical MPLP project, with records for which the MPLP approach was created.
• Estimated time of completion: 40 hours
• Steps:

• Locate and pull accessions from the Records Center.
• Conduct preservation risk assessment.

• Complete other steps to meet NARA's minimal processing standards (stable box, labeled with basic information and bar code that links to the holdings database; update descriptive information in the National Archives Catalog and narrative finding aids for accretions to existing series, or create a series description for new series).
• Scan boxes to shelves in the Archival bay, and upload that data to the holdings database.

 

 

Smithsonian Projects

 

Various D.C. Facilities: Please list preference in application

 

Creating EAD Finding Aids for various entities including the Archives of American Art, National Museum of American History, and the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives (National Museum of African Art). Students would be working with EAD / AT cleanup and legacy data importing. At EEPA, they would be helping to create new finding aids. Students would gain experience with creating and updating EAD finding aids using one or more of the following : AT, NoteTab, oXygen, MARCEdit, Excel and SI's EAD conversion tools.

 

Facility: Freer Gallery of Art

 

Digitizing the famous art collector, Charles Lang Freer's Manuscript Collection containing correspondence and financial information. This material will be shared with the Freer House in Detroit Michigan. http://www.asia.si.edu/about/charleslangfreer.asp