Thursday, February 2, 2012

Internship - Archives of American Art

The Archives of American Art has is seeking a graduate intern for the summer or fall of 2012 to assist with a project funded by the CLIR (Council of Library and Information Resources) Hidden Special Collections and Archives grant program. Applicants must be students or recent graduates of graduate archival programs who have an interest in audiovisual media, or students or recent graduates of specialized graduate programs in audiovisual archives and preservation with an interest in working in a traditional manuscript repository setting. The project collections all relate to late 20th century art forms and movements resulting in significant media documentation, so the internship will be of particular interest and value to students interested in contemporary media and art history.

The intern will gain experience working with mixed-media collections and assisting with the development of archival approaches for processing and describing archival manuscript collections that contain large amounts of audiovisual media. The internship is designed to provide hands-on experience with archival processing and handling of archival audiovisual media. Interns will be expected to process a project collection and to write a finding aid to the collection in EAD. Interns may also be assigned additional collection management tasks related to film, video, and/or sound recordings in the project's collections. Interns will work under the supervision of the Audiovisual Archivist.

Intern will be expected to commit to a full-time schedule for ten weeks in the summer or fall of 2012. Intern will receive a small stipend.

Required Skills and Abilities:
Coursework in archival descriptive practices and standards.
Familiarity with obsolete audiovisual media formats.

Preferred Skills and Abilities:
Experience with archival collections processing
Experience using EAD and DACS
Experience identifying and handling archival motion picture film, video, and sound recordings

To apply:
Send a letter of interest, a CV or resume, and an academic or professional letter of reference to Megan McShea, Audiovisual Archivist, at mcsheam@si.edu by March 15, 2012. Your letter should indicate when you are available for the internship. Questions may be directed via e-mail to the same address. No phone calls, please.