Internship – American Museum of Natural History

The American Museum of Natural History is implementing two grant funded programs for the Library and Science Department archives:

The IMLS funded project to produce a comprehensive risk assessment of the libraries and archives held in the Museum’s scientific departments.

The CLIR Hidden Collections project to produce nearly 1400 catalog records of archive collections held in the Library.

Beginning in January 2012, interns are needed to continue the process to survey, identify, and make minimal level descriptive records for archival collections held in departments throughout the Museum. Interns will work in teams supervised by two Project Archivists with oversight by the AMNH Museum Archivist.

Interns will survey the collections and gather data on spread sheets to be batched into the Museum’s internal risk assessment database. That data will form the basis for developing the risk assessment resulting in a strategic Museum-wide plan to manage risk to the collections.

See: http://museum-sos.org/htm/index.html

The spread sheet data will also be batch loaded into the AMNH Library’s online catalog and OCLC. In addition, these records will be transformed into skeletal EAD-encoded finding aids to increase discovery of the collections through online search engines. Students will learn how their collected data is transformed using metadata crosswalk standards.

Requirements include a knowledge and aptitude for organizing archival materials and creating catalog records, including a familiarity with MARC, DACS and EAD. This is a learning experience but students must be familiar with the basic concepts and have an ability to think analytically, take initiative and be mindful of details. Interns must be dependable and committed to the completion of their part of the project; have good communication skills and the ability to work with others including the scientific staff. A strong interest in natural science is required, with knowledge of the subject matter helpful.

Send resume and cover to rmorgan@amnh.org. Cover letter should include availability, specifically the days, hours, and number of hours a week available.

We are seeking interns for the spring semester.